If there are two things you can be increasingly certain of these days, they would be (1) people will take to the Internet to craft petitions whenever something on television offends their sensibilities, and (2) Discovery Channel will not rest until they have killed a man. And so, with that mind, this shouldn’t come as a surprise: people want Discovery to pull its upcoming show about some dude getting eaten by a snake.
A petition demanding Discovery Channel cancel its dining-on-a-naturalist anaconda special, Eaten Alive blew past its goal of 25,000 signatures at 5:49 ET this morning, and is well on its way to its new goal of 35,000 — just six days after its launch on Change.org. Discovery is not commenting on the petition, and has yet to issue information about the program it sneak-peeked during Nik Wallenda’s Chicago high-wire walk. [Deadline]
More importantly, can you believe this is a thing? Like, any/all of it? Some dummy is going to put on a scuba suit and let a giant snake eat him, and Discovery Channel — a network ostensibly dedicated to science — is turning it into a one-hour special. And now 25,000 people who have apparently never heard of the Streisand Effect are giving the network exactly what they want by generating free publicity in the form of controversy. What are we even doing anymore?
You know, if you think about it, the snake is the only one in this whole charade who is acting reasonably. I vote we put him in charge.
