Even if you haven’t heard the name Hasbulla Magomedov, chances are you’ve seen images of the Russian’s cherubic face, which exists in the pantheon of internet memes with the likes of Cash Me Outside Girl, Kermit and Condescending Wonka.
Magomedov is not a child, despite his 3’4″ stature and toddler-like appearance. He’s an adult man who suffers from a form of dwarfism, although he’s never publicly spoken about his condition in detail.
Normally known simply by the mononym Hasbulla, beyond his status as a meme the diminutive Russian is mostly known for hawking garbage (cryptocurrency, self-branded merchandise, supplements) and for his nebulous association with mixed martial arts, existing as a sort of barnacle on the UFC where he appears at weigh-ins, uploads video of himself providing commentary and is carried around as a kind of good luck totem by Russian fighters.
Now Hasbulla is famous for something else — horrifically abusing his cat.
In a new video — which Habsulla was apparently proud of and voluntarily shared publicly — the 20-year-old speaks in his native Russian while pulling violently on his cat’s ear. The feline — which is terrified of Hasbulla and flinches when he approaches — escapes to the safety of a shoe box, but his tiny tormentor follows, smacking the poor cat on its body and head while barking in the gutteral nonsense that passes for a language in his gas station of a country:
Hasbulla boasts six million followers on Instagram, 1.5 million on Twitter, and his videos on TikTok have amassed an astounding 10.3 billion views.
The video is disturbing enough on its own, though I can’t help but wonder if Hasbulla is willing to share this kind of behavior, what’s going on when the cameras are off?
And if people are willing to physically abuse their cats to feed the content beast and keep their viewers “entertained,” how will they lower the bar in the future when their clicks slow down and they feel they need to do something even more shocking to reignite interest?
Pain In The Bud 
Nasty little monster! What’s wrong with Russia, I wonder? Russians are supposed to be fond of cats, so what’s happened?
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I DETEST RUSSIANS!! Except for my client who loves her cats. She also detests Russia and supports Ukraine. SOCIAL MEDIA IS SICKENING.
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seems the common thread is Tik Tok. I am currently one of many funding a campaign through Lady Freethinker to get You tube to remove/ban and take action on animal abuse videos. Tik Tok needs to be next. The temptation to be abusive about him, his genetics his country etc etc the list is endless but achieves nothing. Going after Tik Tok ( and its obvious parent corporation ) is vastly more likely to achieve a result. ( oh yeah and he really is a small bag of shite .. couldn’t resist that one….)
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Interesting that this Lady Freethinker finally discovered the monkey abuse about 8 years after it became hugely popular. Something in me broke about the time I saw a video of Cambodian cameramen — former tuk-tuk drivers who found it was much more profitable to film and abuse monkeys for the entertainment of western audiences — steal a newborn macaque, put her in the hands of a notoriously abusive adult monkey, and film the monkey abusing the everliving shit out of the baby until she was paralyzed except for one limb. She died a day later.
I’ve seen videos of people in China wake up sleeping baby monkeys by lighting fireworks and throwing them into their cages, heap horrific mental abuse on newborns, force weeks-old baby monkeys to stand for hours at a time so their leg muscles develop enough to walk upright, using ropes tied around their necks tight so the babies have to stand on their tip toes or suffocate. I’ve seen a 4-month-old baby monkey, already with dead eyes, use its body to protect a 3-week-old baby monkey from physical abuse by a Chinese woman who likes to offer them bottles, then snatch them away the second the babies latch on…over and over and over until the babies are terrified to reach for the bottles even as they’re starving.
I saw a video of Cambodian cameramen steal a much-loved short tailed macaque baby from her mother, then dump the baby in the territory of long-tailed macaques to film the subsequent drama. The poor baby was almost killed, left with bite wounds all over her body by the resident long tailed troop. Amazingly, miraculously, an older female took pity on her and adopted her, and the poor baby seemed to be okay…until she was pancaked by a truck while trying to cross the main road that leads to Angkor Wat.
That baby lay dying as one of the alphas grabbed a female long-tail and fucked her literally on top of the dying baby’s body, indifferent as she gasped for air, half her internal organs outside her body.
I’ve seen Vietnamese sellers steal days old infants from rhesus macaques and sell them on YouTube and Twitter. I’ve seen adults in Jakarta buy baby monkeys for their kids at outdoor street markets, and do nothing as their kids slap and kick the babies for “fun.”
I’ve seen countless “topeng monyet” — aka dancing monkey — videos, where infant monkeys are purchased, brutally trained to perform tricks, then condemned to lives with chains around their necks, fed nothing but steamed rice and forced to do backflips for tourists.
I saw a Korean entertainment company beat the shit out of a macaque mother for not performing, then literally tear the days-old infant clinging to her stomach, requiring three adults to tear desperate mother from screaming infant.
I have seen so much fucked up shit, reported so many assholes who monetize and profit from animal abuse videos, tried to rally people in numbers to mass report the channel owners, contacted authorities in Hong Kong and animal rights groups in the mainland, begged PETA to intervene with YouTube, tried to DDoS sites charging membership fees to watch animal torture content…
I can’t even write about the shit I’ve seen with cats in Russian circuses. They abuse kangaroos, monkeys, tigers, ostriches…but the cats. Nope. Can’t do it.
I wonder what these people do with their donations that these channels still exist and the problem still persists after so long. Donate, donate, donate, do nothing.
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That’s absolutely heartbreaking. Getting Youtube to remove horrible videos is nearly pointless, even if the video is taken off. The same shit will appear again just a little while later, posted by the same freaks under a different name. I still report because that’s all I can do. And I donate to organizations that fix the damage done to the animals.
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As always you raise a good point, it’s been going on for so long that how many donations will it take to actually get it to stop? I didn’t realise LF had taken so long, thanks for that info I will enquire about them as I donate well to LF. I guess it’s the cash needed to fight the corporations. Interestingly in the UK, we are campaigning ( with some success) to ban trophy imports. However my MP (although she constantly votes against fox hunting and filming it-its illegal in the UK ) she is, as per any politician – a chocolate teapot, it still goes on,…..you get to a point where violent action is the only route to deliver change.
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Eh, I’m just salty today. I’m always wary of charities that form around cults of personality, and it rubbed me the wrong way when I looked her up and saw her fundraising off of the monkey stuff.
Somehow I was able to work for years as a crime reporter, seeing things like shotgun exit wounds and the brain plasma of dead motorcyclists smeared across asphalt (sorry for the imagery) and was able to compartmentalize, and for a while I was able to compartmentalize with the animal abuse stuff too, so I was surprised when I hit the wall so suddenly and couldn’t handle it anymore.
I don’t agree with any violence that harms anyone, but I do think good was achieved, for example, in those raids in the 70s/80s when animal rights groups broke into labs, photographed the horrors inside and rescued the animals, like Britches the baby monkey whose eyes had been sewn shut in some insane, Frankensteinesque “sensory deprivation” experiment. The stories about the experiments were written about in mainstream publications and forced people to think about what was happening behind closed doors.
re: Fox hunting. It’s illegal but members of the aristocracy still do it, yeah? Using the argument that it’s some sort of cultural tradition.
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Hi John! We’re on the same campaign at Lady Freethinker! I do think there’s something weird going on in Russia, the strangle grip Putin has on the people. Btw, my grandmother was Russian, there’s great fondness for the (Grand)motherland in my family. 🙂
Oh, and total agreement on the bag of shite.
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Hasbulla has been a vocal supporter of Putin, calling him a “lion” many times, and has supported Russia’s war in Ukraine, although it’s always difficult to tell what people’s real feelings are in a country like that.
I just read a story about leaked audio of a phone call between an oligarch and some other prominent Russian, both Putin supporters in public, who were brutally critical of Putin and his inner circle in the conversation. They’ll probably both end up dead within a week or two after “accidentally” falling out of windows, which seems to be the current favorite method of eliminating people in Russia.
There was also a story about a Russian man who was sentenced to several years in a Russian hard labor camp because his daughter drew a picture of a Ukrainian flag with “Slava Ukraini” in her class. The authorities put the dad on trial, took the girl and put her in an orphanage, and the father fled after the court found him guilty.
What a mess.
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I can’t read about bad things happening to cats or any other animal! Please don’t send them anymore!
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I’m sorry. You can skip those posts if you’d like. I will look at a way to add warning labels in the future. I pass on writing about a huge amount of abuse, but sometimes I think it’s important to relay these stories.
My personal standard is: Does this story have relevance beyond the act? And if it does — for example by highlighting a trend, or in this case illustrating what people will do for attention on social media — then it may be worth writing about.
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If I had a way to stop that jerk from hurting g his cat I would say it! But I makes me cry that ANYONE would hurt a cat, dog or any other animal like that and then be proud! What would he do if someone did that t him? What is with people these days? They are fulfilling 2 Tim. 3: 1-5! If you read this it will explain a iot!
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Despicable excuse of a human being. May the torture he inflicts on that poor defenseless cat become come back to him 10 fold. I sincerely hope someone rescues that poor cat from this sadistic SOB
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I wish someone would rescue the poor cat. Don’t they have anti-animal-abuse laws in Russia? Shame on that nasty guy.
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Ugly inside and out ! Yuck!
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