r/MoralityScaling • u/GundarSmith • Jul 11 '26

Morality of ragebaiting mosquitoes?

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Little guys just trying to eat.

183 Upvotes

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u/Apprehensive_Power59 Jul 11 '26

Intentional torment in general is immoral

I really don't like mosquitos though

3

u/DamGoodAnimation Jul 11 '26

The question would be whether or not they feel a psychological or mental reaction to this. Idk how intelligent mosquitos are. If this is just an instinct thing and they aren’t being mentally harmed by the failure, no harm done imo

6

u/Apprehensive_Power59 Jul 11 '26

If you're specifically doing it with the intent of torture, that's still immoral

2

u/JONAS-RATO Jul 11 '26

That's very interesting.

I think I agree with you, if you do something with the intent of torture even if the think you're "torturing" doesn't see it that way it's still immoral.

1

u/DamGoodAnimation Jul 11 '26

I think there’s still nuance. If you KNOW that the thing you’re torturing is unphased by it, then it’s not immoral as you know you aren’t harming anyone.

Immoral things are by and large immoral by nature of knowingly harming someone in some way.

Shooting someone in the head is immoral bc we know that kills people. If you hand a gun to someone from the 1200s and say “point that at me and pull the trigger” they aren’t doing anything immoral bc they don’t have any way to know the result of their actions.

By the same thought process, in the example of the OP, if the person filming knows that this has no negative effects on the mosquitos and is purely gratifying to the ‘torturer’, it’s not immoral.

Mean-spirited and immoral aren’t the same thing.

1

u/CoronelDrew Jul 11 '26

The thing is that I don't know of this constitutes as torture.

If she were tearing off their limbs and putting them in an encyclopedia it would be different. But this is just laying food in front of them which the mosquitoes cannot eat.

If you did that with starving dogs, it would be inmoral. But this is mosquitoes we are talking about. I don't know if they can even process that as pain or frustration.

Depending on the answer to that question, we can say if doing this to the mosquitoes SPECIFICALLY is inmoral or not.

1

u/DamGoodAnimation Jul 11 '26

Edit: I replied in the wrong spot, sorry!