Tomas Pasiecznik lives in New Jersey with his parents, his
dog and 26 other species of animals, including a reticulated python, a Chilean
rose hair tarantula, a colony of Central American giant cave cockroaches and an
African pygmy hedgehog named Chloe. That count does not include all the animals
that Pasiecznik acquires to feed to his other animals. When we spoke on a
recent afternoon, over
Zoom, Pasiecznik dipped out of view for a moment and
returned with two electric blue hornworms wriggling in his palm — dinner for his
scorpions and tarantulas. “They’re supercool,” he said. “I have a hard time
feeding these. I’d rather just, like, watch them turn into moths and stuff.”
اضافة اعلان
Pasiecznik is 22, with a slight frame and a confusingly
appealing fashion sense. He can wear a voluminous logo T-shirt and tight
checkered pants — basically what I wore in middle school in the 1990s, except I
looked like a freak and he looks incredible. He is the kind of young person who
speaks earnestly about his passions: “My two main passions are animals and
technology,” he said. On Instagram and YouTube, he posts as Tomas Pasie, and he
is a denizen of an internet niche known as Pet Tube: a community of people who
film their numerous and exotic animals.
There are several reasons a person might come to own a large
number of unusual pets. For instance, because they are passionate about
animals. But also, because YouTube is passionate about animals — the more, the
better. “A large number of pets is not my goal, but a large number of pets gets
views on YouTube,” Pasiecznik said.
At the moment, Pasiecznik has 31 animals (his cockroach and
powder orange isopod colonies are too unwieldy to calculate as individuals, so
he counts each colony as one pet). This is a relatively modest number for him.
His most popular videos of all time include “Feeding my 31 tarantulas (GONE
WRONG)” (3.7 million views), “FEEDING ALL MY ANIMALS (100+ PETS) [INSANE]” (1.6
million views) and the Spanish-language version of that video, “ALIMENTANDO A
TODOS MIS ANIMALES (+100 MASCOTAS) *INCREÍBLE*” (1.8 million views).
Pasiecznik grew up watching YouTube (“I’ve been passionate
about YouTube since I was literally a kid”), and his content is attuned to
satisfy the platform’s impulses: It marries the demands for eye-popping
oddities and hyperpractical how-tos. In a typical video, he speaks to the
camera over synthesized stock music, projecting perfunctory competence as he
instructs his viewers in the details of raising spiders, preparing sausages for
lizards and properly humidifying a chameleon enclosure. He promotes his work
with colorful photographic collages featuring a central image of his face
flanked by a bunch of weird animals. The titles of his videos emphasize the
“insane” nature of his animal “collection.” In 2018, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not
featured him as a “prolific collector” of “crazy pets.” But Pasiecznik resists
that characterization.
“I don’t like using the term ‘collection,’” he said. He used
to amass stacks and stacks of Monster energy drink cans; that was a collection.
His pets are individuals whom he cares for and loves. Pasiecznik credits his
mother for his empathy toward strange creatures. “She really taught me to love
every animal,” he said. “Even the tiniest ones.”
Pasiecznik was born in Argentina — Spanish was his first language
— and after moving to the United States “with literally nothing” and occupying
a series of rental apartments, his family moved into its own home in suburban
New Jersey, where animal ownership also represented absolute freedom. Now there
was no landlord to stop Pasiecznik from having a snake or a lot of snakes. In
high school, Pasiecznik won the “Most Unique Male” superlative, appearing in
his yearbook in a T-shirt that said, “I’m a reptile guy. Just like a normal
guy, except much cooler.” Sometimes his friends would joke about murdering his
bugs, which he tolerated. “They might not have known they were being rude when
they said, ‘Oooh, I’m going to step on it,’” he said. “But I literally raised
that spider since it was” — he inched his pointer finger toward his thumb until
the distance between them was almost imperceptible — “thiiiiiis big.”
Pet Tube is a funny little scene. Its personalities include
Emzotic, a British former zookeeper turned YouTuber; Taylor Nicole Dean, a
gothy reptile enthusiast who just returned to YouTube after pausing her channel
for more than a year to focus on her sobriety; Marlene Mc’Cohen, an actress and
bird person who crafts little personas for each of her dozen parrots; and
Thmpsn, a classical violinist and influencer who surrounds himself with a
coterie of snakes, one enormous rabbit and various women with enormous breast
implants.
On its surface, the content can seem to emphasize the exotic
nature of the animal “collection” and the domestication of the wild inside the
suburban home. Part of its appeal is the pure sight gag of a parrot soaring
over a taupe carpetscape or a pile of snakes slithering on a piano. But seen
another way, its figures represent a radical commitment to caretaking, often
for animals that most people have not considered applying care to. They are
people who love animals, even strange animals, even potentially revolting
swarms of animals.
In his videos and Instagram posts, Pasiecznik’s performance
of expertise can tend to obscure the emotional depths of pet stewardship. He
recently graduated from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and he slowed
his YouTube output while he focused on college and the animals themselves. When
we spoke, his 7-year-old chameleon Rango had just died (after an appropriate
amount of time for a domesticated chameleon to be alive). Rango was, at the
moment, in Pasiecznik’s freezer, awaiting Pasiecznik’s determination of how to
properly send him off; he is considering preserving the bodies of his deceased
pets in the hopes of donating them to some kind of museum. I asked him whether
he learned about death as a child from owning so many animals, and for a moment
he was silent. “I’m really emotional when it comes to all the animals,” he
said. “I’m getting emotional right now.” He suggested I watch a YouTube video
he had posted on the subject several years earlier.
That night, I searched around YouTube until I found the
video. It is titled “He Died … My First Pet Lizard (FULL STORY)” and is
illustrated with a photograph of a young Pasiecznik proudly holding a slender
little creature in his hands. A big yellow pensive-face emoji looms over the
image.
This was a very sad story about a child and his lizard. But
it was also a testament to how slickly YouTube has asserted itself into the
animal-human relationship, shaping our most foundational emotional experiences
to fit its technological specifications.
The video’s description reads, “The
first lizard I ever got died …. THE DAY AFTER I GOT IT! He was a long-tailed
lizard from PetSmart! I was only 5 years old! Keeping reptiles as pets is
amazing! Pet lizards, pet snakes and pet frogs are all GREAT!”
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