With just three episodes, it’s hard to call Don’t F**k With Cats a proper series, but considering the content, any more than that would be too hard for most. The name represents the unspoken ‘Rule Zero’ of the internet; a rule broken by budding serial killer Luka Magnotta, and follows the journey of a Facebook group, made up of a bunch of untrained internet sleuths who did everything in their power to see that the man paid for his sins. Along the way, the serial killer would get involved in his own manhunt, taunting and scaring the group of armchair sleuths; (represented by the figureheads, John Green and Deanna Thompson) going as far as to stalk them at their own jobs, and sending videos of the same. Things come to a head when he finally escalated to murdering, dismembering, and raping an Asian gay man; mailing the body parts to Canada’s leading political parties, and even a school. Throughout the entire ordeal, he made sure that the group members had a front seat to everything that he did, as he used their captive attention to fuel his ego while relishing in their helplessness to do anything.
If your interest in watching this docu-series increased with every horrifying detail we mentioned, then you are the perfect audience for Netflix, as well as Luka himself, who spent so much time cultivating exactly this type of response. He relied on the curiosity of strangers as a way of gaining an audience, who he then manipulated with fake clues, alibis, and even stories of being setup. He even hired a lawyer, months before the crimes to build a fake alibi against a mythical ‘Manny’ figure, a subversive attempt that was lifted straight from Basic Instinct; a movie he emulated not only for this detail but also the murder weapon and the last name of the actress. The irony is that despite his remorseless actions and dastardly motives, he got exactly what he wanted.
The series has already become one of the most-watched crime documentaries in Netflix history, and Luka now has his own army of devoted people who populate the fake fan accounts he created for himself, where they argue his innocence and the negatives of mob justice. Realising this fact leaves a very bad taste in the mouth of everyone who watches the series, but we still can’t help but recommend it; if for nothing else than to witness the staggering negligence the police showed towards internet crimes when it first happened, and learn why it is important to never feed the trolls. You never know when one of them might just turn out to be a real murderer looking for validation through your attention.
