The original post: /r/television by /u/The_Man_of_Steel on 2026-02-01 15:04:17+00:00.
Don’t Fuck With Cats is a Netflix documentary about a Facebook group of internet sleuths who tried to find the identity of a guy who posted videos of himself killing cats, and eventually posted a video of himself killing a man.
It’s gripping for the first episode and a bit, when you still think it’s a story about how these random people helped catch a killer, until the police get involved and you start to realise how useless these online detectives really are. They impress you a couple of times by deducing the location of the killer from his online photographs, but in the end not a single bit of their “sleuthing” helped at all. They didn’t contribute a single thing to his arrest, and if they had never gotten involved, the investigation and capture would have proceeded exactly the same. And the self-congratulatory tone they have had the whole documentary instantly gets a lot less charming when you know they did buggery fuck all.
In fact, not only did they initially get the wrong man and harass him until he killed himself(!), they only “found” the real culprit because they were so terrible at finding him he just messaged them his own name in the guise of an anonymous tip. Even then, the cops found him from identification papers he left with the body, not because of the group.
And the fucking audacity they have to be frustrated at the police for not taking them seriously and tweeting “I told you sos” at them (one gets an entire dramatic recreation of the abuse she tweeted at the cop’s official Twitter account), when none of their information could have prevented the murder and they contributed NOTHING to the investigation or eventual capture. It was the ordinary work of those actual police and Interpol that got him. Meanwhile the murder of the actual victim Jun Lin is a barely-mentioned afterthought to them. The contrast between their reaction to the video of his death vs the genuinely traumatised police detective’s is sickening. You just get such a horrible sense of how they completely trivialised his life cos it was all just a fucking game to them.
At the end when they’re recalling the killer’s capture, they cheer and hoot like they had fucking anything to do with it. They were of NO value to the police or the victims. All their hours of obsession and they did NOTHING. They did no good for the world. In fact, if they stayed out of it the world would probably be a little bit better. That man they hounded might still be alive, and they would’ve given the killer less of the attention he was desperate for. They only gave him more than he would’ve gotten otherwise, and got a guy killed.
For fuck’s sake, they made an entire Facebook group dedicated to the murderer, which they KNEW HE WAS IN, and instead of shutting it down they just kept feeding him the attention like a dedicated audience. He played them and turned them into an attention farm and they’re PROUD of it?? They felt like such clever clogs, but he knew they were rubes who’d keep giving him exactly what he wanted and lavishing attention on him. He knew these pathetic nutcase obsessives were as sick as him, and played on their obsession to feed his own sickness. Just a perfect match of parasites feeding off each other online. They arguably escalated him into the murder, they even mention that briefly, but only to go on about it haunts THEM sometimes. They never seem to question if they should have gotten involved in the first place. They still feel like the plucky little good guys in the end, but you’re left with the feeling that there should have been some kind of legal action against them.
And in the final line of the documentary, one of these no-life chair-moisteners looks right into the camera and shames the audience for being part of the problem for giving the killer more attention. For watching a whole documentary THEY made about him. I would never have even known his name if they didn’t spend three hours jerking themselves off about how much attention THEY gave him!! They’re literally PROFITING off of him and shaming everyone else about it??
Why do they eat up so much oxygen in this documentary? Why are they the main subjects? They are such a side story compared to the actual professionals. Would it have even been three episodes without them droning on about themselves and their useless pointless busywork so much?
They thought his arrest was gonna be their big moment, but then they had nothing to do with it, and years later they’re still trying to make it their moment. These self-important comic book guy dweebs are STILL so nakedly desperate to be recognised despite doing fucking dick. Just pissing around on the internet playing pretend cops and getting NOWHERE. Wanting to feel like heroes for doing NOTHING. Thinking they’re entitled to some kind of pat on the head for all the attention they gave this twat. They just can’t stop giving this guy attention so they can skim some off for themselves. It’s a fucking disgrace.
It’s accidentally the best case against internet vigilantism I’ve ever seen.