The chonker in question.
Most of the links in the thread are now to deleted posts, Perky's owner seems to trying to cover his tracks
Uh, it's a medical condition, chuds
/r/Rats drama as it turns out that subreddit favorite Perky the rat is obese, and not just suffering from a benign fatty deposits disorder like her owner claimed. Much criticism is leveled at the mods who claimed that they had vetted the owner and confirmed the diagnosis
Perky the rat is a very very very fat rat that has been a favorite of the subreddit for a while, and even has her own spin-off sub where her owner posts images and videos of her and his other rats. Today the mod announced that they have found out that Perky is almost certainly actually just obese and wont be allowing their owner to post her anymore. Most likely she is actually being overfed and fed unhealthy food, and so are all the other rats the owner has and had.
A user makes a thread claiming Perky is fine. Comments don't seem to really believe that is true. Several users are fairly upset at the mods for allowing this to happen.
Yeah what makes it worse is that the mods weren't upfront about it. They could've just stickied a comment saying "Owner has told us that Perky has a medical condition, we choose to give them the benefit of the doubt and are allowing these posts."
Instead, here's a mod stickied comment from two days ago: "Mods have properly vetted the situation and deemed there to be no abuse. (...) Edit: keep reporting it losers, its staying up🤣🤣🤣🤣"
I think it's understandable that people believed the mods when they said they'd vetted the situation, because the mods have, to their credit, shown in the past to truly care about rats. So this seems like an uncharacteristically big frick up. I truly don't understand why they would pretend that they had vetted the situation when they had not.
Either way, none of this matters as much as the health and wellbeing of poor Perky and Satan. I wish I could do something for them. Poor sweet babies.
Super interesting, I went back to look at recent perky posts bc I did see the exact mod comment you're referring to ("keep reporting, losers"), and it looks like it may have been deleted. Funny, that.
One user also calls out the mods of another sub for still supporting the owner.
People on that sub aren't reacting well to the stickied post supporting Perky's owner.
Some users claim they were affraid of speaking up and that they were threatened with bans from the mods
I assumed that the owner had provided proof. That and the threat of a ban for questioning or coming off as "negative" kept me from ever commenting.
Exactly, me too! I was worried about getting banned or suspended, so I assumed due diligence was done for that level of strictness. If it wasn't and just based on his word, that's unfortunate and disheartening.
It was so weird that people were allowed to comment on overfeeding on other posts but Perky, the most overfed rat on here, somehow had a pass for an undisclosed "medical condition" so that they could just avoid consequences. And everyone believed it?
So many people tried to speak up. One even pointed out the size of the other rats + unsuitable foods Perky had been filmed eating. All shouted down by well-meaning people. Lessons to be learned here.
More posts are made on the topic.
Some are general discussion posts.
Others are more venty. One mod claims they have contacted animal protection and given them information on Perky's owner.
Some are handling it with memes.
One user with medical knowlege posts a PSA about fatty disposits.
People also pass out tips for helping their pet rats lose weight
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Everyone was extremely reluctant to stop taking blatantly false 'medical conditions that defy thermodynamics' at face value because then the same thing might happen with their own excuses for being obese.
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