NEW TAIPEI CITY, Taiwan – The more I look around at trending topics, videos gone viral and assorted social media hashtaggery, the more convinced I become the internet is robbing people of all empathy and capacity for identifying with the plight of others.

How else can we explain widespread sharing of videos in which men get struck in the testicles, or in which people wreck their bicycles, fall off ladders, or any number of other clearly painful things folks seem to find so damn funny in this diseased age of the internet?

Just when I thought the sick, uncaring “humor” of netizens couldn’t sink any lower, along comes a case of tragedy-mocking so horrific, so senseless, it robs me of what was left of my faith in humanity.

I’m speaking, of course, of Momo, the porn-collection-mauling dog.

According to Momo’s far too-lenient owner, Chung Yu-tse, his porn collection had been meticulously curated over a period of years, going all the way back to when Chung first started stockpiling erotica at the tender age of 18.

Can you imagine? Years of collecting, alphabetizing and presumably furiously masturbating to carefully archived pornography, just to have it all taken from you in the blink of a sinister Samoyed’s eye.

So, how does the internet go about its support for this poor young man, this victim of heartless smut-gnawing? It goes off on an irrelevant, compassion-free celebration of how “cute” the dog is, or even applauding Momo for his moral courage in devouring hapless Chung’s porn!

Just wait until this vicious animal targets Chung’s Bible or Quran or Mahayana Sutras, or whatever it is Chung holds sacred beyond his dearly departed porn DVDs. Does anyone really believe a dog that already has savaged a chest of drawers, a motorcycle helmet, a laptop and a hair dryer is going to show mercy to scripture of any provenance?

I don’t want to hear any excuses made for this porn-plundering pooch, either. In fact, if Momo destroyed Chung’s porn just to get attention, this only makes it worse than if he did so out of some misguided canine puritanism. At least if he chewed apart the porno due to ethical objections, Chung might be able to get Momo some sort of internship with the Taiwanese equivalent of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.

Speaking of anti-porn groups, Enough is Enough already is hard at work preparing a press release terming this attack on innocent, unsuspecting porn videos another of their “accomplishments.” Before you know it, they’ll be asking Chung to lend them Momo so they can sick him on the publishers of Cosmopolitan – or maybe they’ll anoint Momo as their in-house bestiality cop and point the snarling Samoyed in the direction of Dogster.

So much has been said of Momo, but nobody is shedding a single tear for Chung, so I’m going to pause my rant to permit us to hear from the victim himself.

“Momo is very naughty,” Chung said. “Fortunately eating all that plastic didn’t harm his body.”

I must say, Chung is far more forgiving and tolerant than I’d be in his situation.

In fact, as it turns out, the only ‘punishment’ Chung visited upon Momo was eating lamb chops in front of him without sharing any of the scraps.

As much as I sympathize with Chung and hesitate to be too tough on him in his time of loss, I think he’s made a big mistake by going too light on his dog. If Momo doesn’t suffer severe consequences for such unforgivable conduct now, when and where will it stop?

Will Chung come home someday soon to find his favorite graphix bong splintered all over the carpet in little piles of pungent plastic? Will Momo eat a box of condoms hoping to save his master from the perils of premarital sex?

Oh sure, it’s easy to laugh now – but it won’t seem so funny when Momo someday kills a Taiwanese postal carrier and buries him in the back yard on the hasty, paranoid, sex-negative-Samoyed assumption the mailman is just a rent boy in disguise.