By now, most anyone with an Internet connection has heard of the death of Cecil the African lion at the hands of Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer.
Media coverage of Cecil's killing led to online vitriol and a demand for accountability against Palmer, who, after admitting he fired the fatal arrow, has closed his dental practice and gone into hiding amid death threats and severe backlash against his business.
While the world plays a game of Where's Walter? looking for Palmer, Vox's Dylan Matthews penned a provocative headline: Eating chicken is morally worse than killing Cecil.
"Let's say you eat chicken. You thus cause massive suffering to anywhere from 1 to 20 chickens any given year," Matthews argued. "How does that compare with Walter James Palmer's killing of Cecil the lion? Well, you certainly inflicted more suffering."
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Matthews was hardly alone in using the public reaction to Cecil's death to draw attention to other causes.
The Washington Post pointed out how many endangered African elephants were slaughtered "as the world mourned Cecil."
Presidential hopeful Marco Rubio chimed in about abortion, tweeting, "Look at all this outrage over a dead lion, but where is all the outrage over the Planned Parenthood dead babies."
Thus, the one-upsmanship of Cecil's death was born online. As James Hamblin of the Atlantic reported, "superior outrage" is a game made for the Internet, where outrage spreads like wildfire and can be snuffed out like a candle.
"It’s meaningless, even if it’s fun, to go around one-upping people’s outrage," Hamblin wrote. "Next month the armchair lions-rights activists won’t care about lions anymore, because lions-rights outrage will not be trending. They will be on to some new outrage."
With all the social problems around ripe for public outrage, why did so many rally around the death of a 13-year-old lion? Perhaps, as Lea Lane wrote for the Huffington post, it's because injustices like Cecil's death illustrate how little is sacred in today's world despite differences.
"The incident jolts us without the cover of politics or nationhood," Lane wrote. "We are forced to see our worst selves: greedy, vain and cruel."
Related links:
How social media is changing the way Americans talk about politics
The owner of a diner yelled at someone's child and now the entire Internet has an opinion
Cycle of silence: How the Internet changed public discourse
Email: chjohnson@deseretnews.com
Twitter: ChandraMJohnson