As much as I love Moo Deng, I worry that many people like her for all the wrong reasons.
A lot of the memes you see of her always seem to depict Moo Deng in some sort of irritation or distress. Look up “Moo Deng mouth open” and you’ll know what I mean. One of the most famous pictures of her shows some distress over being picked up. Also, there’s been some reports of people throwing things at her, probably to get a “cute” reaction or try to be the person who makes the next meme image of her. What this boils down to is taking pleasure in a baby animal’s misery, and that’s just pure cruelty. It’s sad that some people do not recognize this.
Like if Moo Deng was simply throwing a tantrum in reaction to the care the zookeepers were trying to give her, sure that’s cute. But thinking Moo Deng being angry is cute is no different than schadenfreude.