Yelp is scrubbing thousands of angry comments from the page of a lion-murdering dentist

You might have read about the tragic death of Cecil the lion, a beloved mascot of Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park.

In case you didn’t: Dr. Walter J. Palmer recently took a break from his job at River Bluff Dentistry in Minnesota to kick back, relax, and pay $55,000 to kill a lion named Cecil. Palmer used an animal carcass to lure Cecil away from protected park grounds and kill him someplace more, uh, legal. Park officials found Cecil’s skinless, headless body and estimate it took him 40 hours to die.

So, naturally, it didn’t take the Internet long to begin its witch hunt.

The Yelp page for River Bluff Dentistry is currently being bombarded by negative reviews written by people who dislike the amateur trophy hunter’s latest “victory.”

Most of them are, naturally, one-star reviews:

Dr. Walter Palmer of River Bluff Dental paid over $50K to hunt and kill a revered, protected lion named Cecil, while on vacation in Africa. This beautiful animal was lured off a protected National Park where he resided for over a decade. Dr. Palmer injured the lion, who didn’t meet his untimely end until over 40 hours later. Dr. Palmer then viciously decapitated the creature, keeping the head as a trophy.

Dr. Palmer, I can only hope that when your time comes, karma takes over and puts you through even worse suffering, than what you did to Cecil the Lion. You are an evil man, a coward. Dare I say some sort of devil. You will get your comeuppance and many, MANY people will dance with joy.

One satirically inclined poster opted for a glowing five-star accolade:

Here’s what I look for in a healthcare professional:  a disgusting and thorough lack of compassion, sociopathic tendencies, a vile propensity for torture of the innocent, a bombastic self-importance, a demented and narcissistic sense of fun, a self-serving and egocentric disposition, a knack for betraying others’ trust, a history of lying to officials, a criminal record, and most of all a smug mug. I found all that in Dr. Walter Palmer at River Bluff Dental!

But Yelp is actively working to scrub the page of the negative reviews, which currently top 2,300. That number has fluctuated down to as low as 1,600 but has consistently rebounded to 2,000+.

In a statement, a Yelp spokesperson said “Media-fueled reviews typically violate our Content Guidelines … Reviews aren’t the place for rants … that don’t address the core of the consumer experience. Our user support team ultimately removes reviews that violate these guidelines.”

So if you dislike the idea of paying an exorbitant fee to murder an animal you definitely don’t intend to eat, feel free to say so on his Yelp page. Just know that Yelp will be taking it down any moment now.