The life of a low- to medium-tier famous internet influencer can’t be easy. There are millions of people out there trying to do exactly what you do: share every moment of your lives in the hope that you get a lot of sponsorships and can make money, or at least get internet famous. Sometimes, you get famous for the wrong things, like putting your dog down because it did something you didn’t like and didn’t want to fix. Oddly specific? Yes, because that’s exactly what happened with YouTubers Dan and Nikki Phillippi.
Since Dec. 2010, Nikki and Dan have been pumping out content and sharing their every waking moment with the world in the form of very inane vlogs about being a parent and making decisions about voting and using cloth diapers. Nikki’s page even has more than 1 million subscribers. It’s pretty run-of-the-mill influencer fare, and the family Phillippi would just be another mediocre influencer family if not for one bold move they took: euthanizing their beloved dog, Bowser.
Bowser! Was he sick? No. In pain? No. Did he have an incurable disease? Not at all. So what happened? Well, Logan, the couple’s first child, who was one-year-old at the time, apparently tried to take some food from Bowser’s food bowl. Bowser, being a dog, did not like that, and he bit Logan. This is obviously a no-no, and at the very least should be corrected with some training. The Phillippi’s solution? Kill Bowser.
On May 3, 2021, the couple posted a video titled, “We have some really sad news.” The caption called the euthanasia the “hardest decision we’ve ever made” without actually saying what it was they did. Look at that good influencing with clickbait! Dead dog? Let’s get some clicks!
Look, no one is going to deny this is a very easy couple to hate. Just look at them, the rustic-flannel aesthetic, the “quirky” demeanor, the need to share every second of your lives – to some it’s an ideal, and to others it’s desperate. When people who try to present themselves like this make mistakes, the world likes to pile on. There’s no surprise there. For the number of people who are “fans” of influencer culture, there are double that number who see it for the vapid smokescreen it really is. But that’s not what this is about. This is about how they took Bowser out of the game instead of, I don’t know, PUTTING HIM UP FOR ADOPTION or I don’t know, REHOMING HIM.
Bowser was nine, by the way. It’s not like they just got him and were like, “oops this was not the right dog.” This was a dog that was a member of the family for a long time. In the video, Nikki and Dan wore their usual influencer-ware and were well-lit in front of some influencer-approved LPs draped in strings of fairy lights. How many times did they move the camera before it was perfect? How many times did they change outfits? Did they rehearse when they were going to start crying? If they did, would you be surprised?
“I feel awkward, just like opening this video,” Nikki said, after making sure that everything looked perfect before filming it and presumably making sure she was framed elegantly on screen. “I don’t even – there is no cheery way to open this video, so, we’re here today to share with you what’s been going on in our life.”
“Going into the weekend on Friday, we had to put Bowser to sleep. Man, it’s so awkward saying the words. I feel like I don’t even know how to quite say it, and you know, Dan is with me because Bowser was, I mean he was our dog, but he was Dan’s dog and this was not a decision we came to lightly.”
She went on to say that, “People aren’t going to get it, people are going to be upset.” You think? Yeah Nikki, people tend to get upset when you put an animal down because it suddenly doesn’t fit into your “glamorous” vlogging lifestyle. Dan’s response? “Nobody is going to be as upset as I am upset, or as upset as I am.”
Then come the justifications. Dan called Bowser an “extremely dangerous animal outside the walls of my house.” An “outside animal that I had to keep inside,” he said. Why was Bowser aggressive? Because he was “attacked as a puppy.” Dan said that he and Nikki could have put Bowser down a really, really long time ago, and several times since, and have “just been putting the day off.”
Again, not to be that person, but there’s no talk of obedience school, or adoption, or rehabilitation. Nothing. Just to death with you, Bowser. The couple claimed Bowser “seriously injured a couple different dogs.” Whatever side of this issue you fall on, you have to admit that sounds suspiciously hyperbolic.
The re-homing issue was apparently not an option because the Humane Society said the dog couldn’t be re-homed. Again, not to state the obvious, but did they know there are WAY more shelters and helpful programs than the Humane Society? If you loved the dog so much, why wouldn’t you take it to a rescue? Something doesn’t really add up here.
Apparently, the couple’s son hurt the dog’s ear at one point. Okay… so? Then the dog bit the child in the face but “it wasn’t bad,” Dan said. He also admitted that it was when the kid stole some food from the dog, and the dog reacted well, like a dog would react in that situation.
“In the moment, I’m thinking I grew up with the movie Old Yeller and I wanted to pick Bowser up by the back of the neck and take him to the backyard and put him down right there,” Dan said. Yikes.
The next move was to hire someone to euthanize the dog at home. Sad, no? Well, before Bowser went to sniff butts on the rainbow bridge, he was subjected to a “goodbye” photoshoot. The “dangerous” Bowser posed with the very kid he was too dangerous to be around. This is part of why everyone got fired up, and boy, did they get fired up. It’s one thing to euthanize a dog, but then a video and a photoshoot?
If the Phillippis wanted a little viral fame, they got their wish. Maybe not in the way they intended, considering how hard the social pages are curated, but we’re writing about it now, still.
Here are some samplings of the feedback they got:
This says it all pretty much:
Oh and that photoshoot we were talking about:
The outrage seems justified in this case. So, where are they now? Nikki is still at it! Her Instagram was set private for a while, but everything is back as it should be: with Nikki trying to glamorize every aspect of her life for the sake of clicks and sponsorships. Her latest (as of this writing) video is called “Let’s catch up: who I’m voting for, adoption, moving again?! cloth diapers & banned books.” Can’t wait to watch!
Published: Aug 6, 2024 06:53 pm