“Share to find the culprits!!!”
With this call, an image is currently being shared again and again and we are receiving more and more inquiries about it. It shows two dogs on the side of the road tied to the guardrail. But what is actually about the picture? We investigated the matter and came across a phenomenon, which we will examine in more detail here.
This picture is about:

Share to find the culprits!!!
Abandonment of two dogs on the side of the road…
Shameful and pathetic!!!(“Share to find the culprits!!!
Abandoned by two dogs on the side of the road….
Shameful and pathetic!!!”)
Of course this triggers something in us. Indignation. Maybe also anger or hatred. We are emotionally captivated by the image and the statement...
STOP!
Let's pause for a moment at this point and think about WHAT exactly we are seeing here:
We see two dogs lying on the grass verge at the edge of a road behind a guardrail, their leash loosely draped over one of the posts.
What if…?
Let's just imagine for a moment that the text that accompanies the image reads like this:
“The owner of the dogs had a car breakdown and had his dogs on a leash on the safe side of the guardrail to keep them from running into traffic.”
How would this image affect us in that context? Would we then also be outraged? Become angry? Feel hatred for the owner?
Probably not.
Images are powerful tools for conveying emotions and triggering them in the viewer. What is always important is the context in which they are shown. And this is provided, for example, by the description provided on Facebook.
So. And now back to this picture, which occupied us for a very long time in terms of research:
To be clear: We cannot prove exactly where it first appeared or who created the first post with which it was shared on Facebook. Especially not who the photographer is.
What we found out
The oldest sources for this image date back to 2013. According to an analysis of the comments found on this image, it may have happened in England. Many of the commentators report exactly the situation that we once assumed in our thought experiment above.
The owner of the dogs had a car breakdown with his truck and put the dogs behind the guard rail for safety while he waited for the breakdown service:

“This is a hoax…. the dogs have been tied up to keep them safe and just out of the picture is her father and her broken down truck…. they were all waiting to be picked up by the ambulance…. God knows why some idiots did this when there are real dogs in need of rescue…. these two are very loved and cared for.”
Comments with this information abound under this post, many of the commenters are from the North West of England or England in general, hence our guess as to the source.
According to the road sign visible in the background, this is a road in a country with right-hand traffic, but there are also claims in the comments that the image is cropped and that the original shows the whole story. So it would be possible that the image was mirrored during editing.
But whatever we can say about it
There is no proof, no clue, no hint or any useful indication that these are actually abandoned dogs.
Interestingly, many people in the comments ask for proof that these are NOT abandoned dogs, but share the picture with outrage without any proof that they are.
Now what, and above all: WHY?
What the story really looks like can no longer be determined after around 5 years, in which the picture has been circulating. So we don't know what happened.
However, why this image was shared around a million times from different accounts can be answered in one word:
“Like lust”. This word is a summary of various motivations why such “outrage images” are posted online. Shared around a million times. Tens of thousands of reactions to this picture. Something like this quickly goes viral.
Generally speaking – the animal suffering scam
This picture is just an example of a phenomenon that is unfortunately just as “at home” on Facebook as fake competitions, nonsensical chain letters and data octopuses in the form of apps that want to use my name to find out what my spirit animal is or the like.
Reach and interaction are key on Facebook. If you post a post, it won't spread much without help. So you either have to spend money and advertise it so that it appears in the target group's newsfeed, or...
...so you just take a post that goes viral on its own because you know that you can rely on the “power of outrage”. Always works. Without exception.
Whether it's a tattooed dog, a cat being held up by its ears or supposedly abandoned dogs. Doesn't matter. As soon as animal suffering is involved, some Facebook users know no boundaries. People share, express their indignation, sometimes hurl the worst insults and even blatant death threats into the world, and get angry. And in a style that even we, who now really get to see a lot, can't help but shake our ears.
Mission accomplished! The image goes viral on a wave of outrage and emotional Facebook comment orgasms.
And the creator of the post - if it is a company or community page - has saved a lot of money, his page has more likes, the posts have more interaction and other posts may now be classified as more important by Facebook.
Or if it's a private profile, then... yes, then we no longer know what's going on with such a person, what they want to achieve with it. Does he feel more important? Will he now brag that his post has been shared hundreds of thousands of times? What does someone think when they sometimes take a picture demonstrably out of context and send it on its way with a made-up story? Or when he shares a picture that is years old, the story is long over, or happened so far away that it makes no sense to share something like that here.
Cui bono? – Who benefits from it?
Certainly not the animals that these posts are about. Even with a picture shared in Germany about a 10-year-old story from Chile about dog abuse (real case!), you won't find a perpetrator. (In the example from Chile, for example, he had already been arrested long ago.)
It benefits the creators of the posts. The site operators or private individuals. Nobody else. A dubious benefit.
We don't know whether it helps the people who share this unseen and unchecked. We don't know what the people who comment hateful tirades and death threats on such pictures get out of it. Maybe a moment of satisfaction? The feeling of having done something? Not to have been idle?
You can call it clicktivism. There are plenty of opportunities to really and effectively get involved. Promote projects that take care of street dogs. Donations to animal shelters. Many veterinarians, for example, have a donation box for food etc. in their practice or you can sponsor animals and, and, and...
But because it is much easier to leave a comment or reaction to such posts from your home computer or smartphone, unfortunately, even in the future, the interactors' intentions, no matter how good, will die out on a viral wave in the vastness of social networks. without accomplishing anything.
Author: Rüdiger, mimikama.org
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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )

