Ain't No Way I'm Stepping Foot in SeaWorld - A Downright Shame and a Hard Pass
I've been livin' in San Antonio for a hot little minute now and I gotta say my piece on this "amusement" park. Look, I ain't one to preach about veganism and I'm well aware of the cynics who'll brand me a hypocrite, but you couldn't pay me in golden tickets, chauffeured limos and gourmet meals to step foot in fucking SeaWorld. Just take a moment to consider the expanse of their parking lots versus the pitifully undersized pools those majestic orcas are confined in. An orca's territory in the wild spans hundreds of miles - hundreds of fucking miles, dog! That vast freedom is condensed into what equates to a damned backyard swimming pool, where they're coerced into performing tricks for our amusement. It's not like we're even harvesting them for food! There's zero practical utility. To me, it's on par with those nauseating videos of monkey torture - it's fucking sickening!
And yeah, sure, factory farming is a brutal business too. But don't use that as a fucking smoke screen, alright? At least there's an argument there for a historical, agricultural basis - humans have been consuming meat since the dawn of time. But we sure as hell haven't been imprisoning killer fucking whales in glorified bathtubs, we ain't start doin' that until Seaworld came around. But but they have rollercoasters! Yeah? So does Six Flags dog, and they aren't torturing animals.
Granted, zoos can be pretty fucked up, but at least some of them do solid conservation work. You'll find plenty of success stories about endangered animals being rescued, living out content lives in captivity, and so on. And of course there has to be a place for abused wild animals (remember Tiger King?) to go and live. But you don't hear any of that feel-good shit with SeaWorld. The orcas there lash out, even killing people - and who can blame 'em? I'd do the damn same, trapped in a glorified bathtub, eeking out the rest of your life, fully fuckin' aware you ain't in the ocean. Shit's beyond fucked.
Free our Orca comrades, I say! There's no justification for this madness other than human arrogance, especially when considering these animals may well exist on a similar plane of intelligence, albeit different from ours. In an age when we're starting to give a damn about our planet, we need to rethink the role places like SeaWorld have in our world. For me, it's a big, fat no. We should aim for a future where we respect the titans of the ocean, not exploit them. I hope others in Gen Z feel the same.