For nine years I had the world’s sweetest Swiss Mountain Dog mix, Vega, who never knew a stranger… unless you were a man. He hated men. A line of women could all walk through the door, and he’d happily wiggle and wag for their attention, but a man? On sight woofin’ and barkin’ until they were out of his house.
After some Reddit digging, it seems I’m not the only woman who raised a little misandrist, and the general assumption is that deep voices trigger some pups. That makes sense, considering Vega almost exclusively interacted with women. But in all of my very professional research (endlessly scrolling through social media at 2 am), I have only found one recorded instance of a snake that holds a grudge against one specific man.
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Taylor even did the science, seeing if she could pinpoint other people or things that give Tofu the ick. There’s clips of her showing Tofu other snakes, overstimulating cat videos, and even gauging his reaction to 9/11. He remained apathetic to all… except for Markiplier. When Mark shows up, the fangs come out, and Tofu launches himself at the screen like he’s auditioning for a remake of Anaconda.
Anyway, my favorite part of the whole ordeal is that the format Tofu sees Markiplier in doesn’t seem to matter. Tofu is pissed at all versions of Mark. Taylor tested his reactions to different videos of the YouTuber (he hated all of them, by the way), and then went so far as to print out a picture of this man’s face and tape it to a stick. The findings? Tofu hates analog representations of Markiplier, too.
If it’s of any consolation to Mark, Taylor admits Tofu is a weird little guy with the occasional moodswing. He’s usually not a “head shy” snake and lets her get away with pets around his face as a good boy reminder. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, Tofu decides that actually he hates everything and strikes. Now that I think about it, are we sure Tofu isn’t a cat? Or maybe had a distant feline relative? The switch between “this is nice, I like this” and “I’ll strike you down where you stand” is very cat-like behavior.
Most folks with any sort of significant online following are more than accustomed to people hating them for no good reason, but Markiplier may be the first person to have beef with a snake. I’m sorry Mark, you seem like a nice dude and all, so please go ahead and own up to whatever it is you’ve done and apologize to precious Tofu. He’s clearly not over it.