There’s a reason to fear cows other than just mad cow disease and the chaos of a cattle stampede. Cows are the silent jury in the trial of mankind, and there’s a whole Facebook page devoted to their surveillance.
With some 9,600 likes and steadily growing, the page doesn’t offer too much explanation about the tribunal of hoofed beasts. There’s no fleshed-out description, just two pictures, and the timeline is just full of repeated posts that say only this: “Cows are the Silent Jury in the Trial of Mankind.”
The page has been around since 2013 but has seen a spike in popularity over the past couple of months—probably thanks to a screenshot posted to Tumblr by gotitforcheap that has racked up over 156,400 notes.
Jay Brunner, the man behind the page, actually credits his friend Tyler Magill for coming up with the saying a couple of years back. Brunner thought it had a catchy ring to it and made the page to play with his friend, never thinking it might become more than a humorous stunt.
“I never really thought of it as an animal rights sort of thing, I enjoy the much more sinister notion of the cows just judging us, and their day of reckoning will come soon,” he joked in a message to the Daily Dot. “I think vegan/vegetarians caught onto it also, and it grew among their groups.”
Posting the same status over and over actually originally derived from a lack of inspiration in the page’s early days. But Brunner noticed that it caught on, with the people repeating it in the comments. He might consider himself a lazy content creator, but the repetition really struck a balance between the eeriness and eccentricity of the page.