NB the last I heard he was still in a coma, and picture 2 are friends or family posting on his behalf. Someone did eventually supply the anti-venom, but after some refused, as it's horrendously expensive, zoos need them on hand at all times for liability reasons, and they felt he manifestly deserved it / was setting a bad example.
This ties into the thing about how part of the function of all the Russian/Republican lies is just to erode people's belief that there is an actual truth out there.
The absurd sexual language used in the insults is the tell.
Anybody else see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice? I saw it last night and enjoyed it a lot.
Oh, no! Just posting that here is a spoiler! Banned!
His students only get 3s on the AP Herpetology exam.
Well, the basic story is real - https://www.fitsnews.com/2024/09/09/south-carolina-snake-handler-fights-for-survival-after-venomous-bite/
But I assume that all the amazingly offensive social media posts were fake, because they're on Reddit. Obviously the guy's in a coma so he can't complain, and the story has a suspiciously huge amount of the "haha stupid old boomer had it coming" payoff.
You can link to FB posts. The Reddit post didn't, it just put up images.
Now, I think this guy is, to be honest, very stupid indeed. And it's possible that the SM posts are authentic - I don't have time to go back through his feed until I reach January. https://www.facebook.com/jeff.leibowitz.5, if anyone else wants to look.
But I think starting from "Reddit is full of trolls who make stuff up" is probably a safe strategy.
I was looking for updates on his condition and found a commenter on FB:
The underground ones proved the science wrong n got pushed under the rug. Even anti venom is a business, something from a natural living creature being used to save life's.
Facts, vials of anti Venom, a life saving device, cost more the latest Ferrari. Let that sink in for moment folks.
Edit: for those free thinkers, animal lovers, dare ya to dive into what they're doing to insects, horseshow crabs, you name it these people are about as sick as it gets
9: Yes, I guess the "antivenom is for pussies" part could be fake. But this article says police confirmed there was a taipan and they searched and found a large collection of other venomous snakes at his house - and from what I've read on Bluesky, it is seen as pretty wild to work with such snakes and not get antivenom. (The article also confirms antivenom was flown in from Florida, so it's correct he didn't have it.)
Civilization is an accumulation of errors that we are too lazy or soft-hearted to remedy.
A lot of the content the various articles are pasting is from a guy on Facebook, Brian Fry, who identifies himself as a professor of toxicology at the University of Queensland (link to that site, so he knows these snakes in particular. He said at the end of one post "Which is why I support the professional decision by Kristen Wiley to not send her zoo's antivenom stock to the hospital dealing with an unprepared private keeper."
Kristen Wiley matches this person at the Kentucky Reptile Zoo. Someone of the same name commented under Fry's post: "I will say that we didn't really have to refuse any- AV was sent from two other places. However, there were several posts made saying we were "in line" to send it- which prompted a reply. It is correct that we wouldn't send it- but I also want to make clear that we were never officially asked for it either."
Could be an elaborate fantasia. But all seems to match up beyond just the Reddit images, that he was known in the community as irresponsible.
It's possible that real life is now worse than Reddit, if not yet as bad as Twitter.
I fully believe all thr bits about this guy being bitten, being irresponsible, the antivenom thing. All of that is easily provable. But if you're a troll you wrap up your lies in a coating of easily provable truth.
The violent misogyny is distinct to this story, but the "cowboy wants to handle his venomous snakes the way HE thinks is appropriate, and having a bite plan including where antivenin will be sourced from is for wimps" is a familiar story. In 2016 someone I knew pretty well in another context made headlines, one state over from this guy, when he got bitten by his own king cobra, didn't have appropriate antivenin, had to be rescued by people literally airlifting the antivenin from a zoo in another state, and then he fought tooth and nail and lawsuit against local authorities who confiscated his 20 snakes.
As someone at another place said "it appears the Venn diagram of people who want to keep venomous snakes and those who should be allowed to keep venomous snakes is two non-overlapping circles."
Thanks for the warnings about Reddit fakery, though. That hadn't occurred to me (I don't spend any time on Reddit).
The reddit guy is named "canolli", which means we should take the information.
But I think starting from "Reddit is full of trolls who make stuff up" is probably a safe strategy.
For whatever it's worth, if I wanted to refer to anything inflammatory on Reddit, I'd use screenshots rather than linking directly to the content if there was any chance it could be scrubbed or edited after the fact. (Ideally, in addition to, but I'd consider the screenshot more important.) The link to the Facebook page is consistent with this; when I go there, I just see, "This content isn't available right now. When this happens, it's usually because the owner only shared it with a small group of people, changed who can see it or it's been deleted." I watched one of his videos on YouTube and while it's not as bad as the screenshots, it seems consistent with them.
I dunno. I spent long enough looking for hard evidence about the guy's character one way or another that it felt gross. That being said, I can't resist dropping two more bits of evidence that this guy is indeed an asshole. Here is a link to the Facebook group he runs about venomous snakes, note the banner image, and here is a post from last week, and because I said this is how I'd do it to start, here is my screenshot of it.
Instagram has brought me the shorts of a guy called @fishingarrett, who wanders barefoot through the Everglades, serenely calm about gators, gathering up pythons for removal and basically handling any other wildlife he can. He doesn't seem rude about it; none of the vibes from those comments. It is certainly something to see.
It's also common to screenshot rather than link to avoid the perception of instigating harassment. It's good to be skeptical but the rant sounds too unhinged to be fake. (Posting for antivenin? Antivenom? More likely to be fake than the rant.)
21: Apparently the WHO decided in 1981 on antivenom over antivenin as terminology.
When I first saw this, it didn't occur to me that the rant was fake. That kind of thinking is common on the internet and I do see why anyone would fake it instead of just finding it. I was worried that the snake bite was fake. Because life is rarely that quick on the karma.
Yeah, I don't actually see any reason to think any of it is fake.
The real scandal here is using "boomer" to refer to Gen Xers (I'm guessing at his age, but he's no boomer).
When I sent it in, I googled it and found nothing. But per 9, that's changed.
27: No one on that whole subreddit can tell 50 from 70.
I value accuracy, but if people want to not notice that most of the really horrible white men are my age, I'll keep quiet
my (admittedly somewhat limited) experience of knitting reddit has been v positive - helpful, informative, generally nice.
27: Talk to my kids! (And I'm practically a Millennial.)
Just threw one up. In the vomit sense.
The anti-archaeological-conspiracism short video guy miniminuteman had a reaction to someone saying the Cologne Cathedral had to have been built with power tools, and he (the reactor) said "I guess at this rate we're going to see conspiracy people saying woodworking isn't real."
According to some random guy on Bluesky, the snake guy is still alive but still on a respirator.
39: As in ventilator, or something else? Being on a ventilator is pretty bad overall. (The last 5 weeks of my dad's life.)
I put a case study in responsible snake handling in literally the first chapter.
His own FB feed had him saying "not dead yet" at 6 am yesterday. But I guess someone else could have logged in on his behalf...
One does have to move with the times.
There's a post on this guy's page that dives deep into the venom of the inland taipan. I'm not sure how to link the post, but it's about the seventh one down on the linked page, where there's a photo of a green and yellow snake in desert habitat facing you. And there are other interesting tidbits like how the poster, a genuine professor of toxicology, has himself been bit by venomous snakes (at least twice that he mentions just offhand in this post about venom).
38: Cologne Cathedral wasn't completed until 1880 and used then-current techniques, but it looks like that would still have been slightly too early for the electric motor and "power tools" in the modern sense.
48: We're talking Tartaria discourse here, not people who don't have their dates quite right.
Oh, I have no doubt. I was just intrigued by the possibility that one of the crazy claims might actually be correct by accident. (Seems like no, though.)
47: taipans are like maximally terrible; as well as the venom, when I was chasing cows round northern Australia I remember being warned in seriousness that unlike other snakes, who will bite you and then slither away, taipans will bite you and keep attacking until they finish you off.
We aren't very nice to them. They killed the guys snakes. I guess they were too dangerous to not be in a zoo.
You knew I was a snake before you took me in
The bird so poisonous you go numb just picking it up, poison derived from eating poisonous beetles. Apparently the bird also freezes when picked up, possibly expecting the predator to drop it quickly.
Local news update on snake man.
https://wpde.com/news/local/florence-man-bitten-by-one-of-worlds-most-venomous-snakes-it-slowly-improving-police-say-island-taipan-secured-police-department-cages-anti-venom-short-supply-chance-of-survival
Headline says he is slowly improving but most of the article discussed the fate of his snake collection--euthanized by freezing and antivenin concerns.
The antivenin theory makes sense, but what does Big Freezer have to gain?
The police report states the containment units for the snakes were plastic totes and they were "below acceptable standards and not adequately secured, posing a significant public safety risk."
Two of the cages containing snakes had "holes in their tops of sufficient size that enclosed animals could escape," according to the report.
Seems pretty dispositive on the "is this guy an asshole" question.
The comments on his FB page linked in 19 certainly seem to bear out the judgement that he's a creepy, misogynistic, homophobic psycho too. In my experience of the world, white men who are that creepy, misogynistic, and homophobic are almost always deeply racist and xenophobic as well.
Obviously he's an asshole. But the question was whether I'm an asshole for mocking him dying. I assumed he was going to die when I wrote the guest post.