Watch Don't Fuck with Cats in quarantine

The argument

This argument holds that the best documentary to watch during quarantine is the Netflix true-crime series Don't F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer, because it is perfectly suited to the strange conditions of lockdown — gripping, bingeable, and quietly resonant with the moment. The series is built to seize a captive viewer. It tells the true story of a group of internet strangers who, scattered across the world and working only from their keyboards, band together to track down an anonymous online killer — and it unfolds with the propulsive, cliffhanger structure of a thriller across its tight run of episodes. For someone stuck at home with hours to fill and an attention frayed by anxiety, that combination of true-crime urgency and binge-friendly pacing is ideal: it is absorbing enough to hold the mind, short enough to finish in a sitting or two, and structured to keep a restless quarantined viewer hooked from one episode to the next. The deeper fit, proponents argue, is thematic. The documentary is fundamentally about ordinary people, isolated and confined to their screens, using the internet to connect, organise and accomplish something together. That is precisely the condition of a locked-down world — millions of people alone in their homes, living through their devices, reaching for connection and purpose online. Watching strangers turn solitary screen-time into collective action speaks directly to the quarantine experience, making the film not just a distraction but a strange mirror of the moment. From this standpoint, a documentary this gripping and this resonant with lockdown life is the ideal quarantine watch. Because Don't F**k with Cats is absorbing, bingeable and thematically attuned to isolation, this argument holds, it is the best thing to watch on Netflix in quarantine.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The argument's own diagnosis argues against its recommendation. It describes a viewer confined at home with attention frayed by anxiety, and then prescribes a true-crime series about the filmed torture of animals and the murder of a young man. Whatever its craft, that is content calculated to produce distress, and the case for it as the best quarantine watch has to explain why an anxious, isolated viewer should be given more anxiety — which is exactly the reasoning behind the sibling positions recommending comedy. The thematic reading is also the reverse of what the series shows. The online group at its centre misidentified an innocent man, whose life was seriously affected by their attention, before eventually contributing to the real identification. The documentary is explicit about this and closes by implicating the audience in the killer's pursuit of notoriety — its own final move is to ask whether the viewer is complicit in giving him what he wanted. Read accurately, it is a cautionary tale about the harms of collective online sleuthing rather than a heartening mirror of strangers achieving something together, which undoes the resonance the argument builds on. The binge-friendly premise proves too much. Propulsive pacing across a short run describes a large share of the platform's catalogue, so it distinguishes nothing; and the position being defended is 'watch a documentary', for which the argument offers a single title rather than a case for the form. A reader might also note that the series' ethical criticism — that it amplifies a killer who committed his crimes for an audience — is a serious mark against recommending it above all other things available.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Propulsive, cliffhanger structure across a short run describes a large share of the platform's catalogue, so the premise does not distinguish this title from the alternatives the question is choosing among. [Rejecting P2] The premise works against itself: a viewer whose attention is frayed by anxiety is an argument for the comedy the sibling positions recommend, not for a true-crime series centred on the filmed torture of animals and the murder of a young man. [Rejecting P3] The thematic reading inverts what the series shows, since the online group misidentified an innocent man before contributing to the real identification, and the documentary closes by asking whether the audience is complicit in the notoriety the killer sought — making it a cautionary account of collective online sleuthing rather than a heartening mirror of it.