Modern Farmer magazine has an engaging roundup of the reasons why "cow tipping" is not and has never been an actual thing. There's the behavioral argument (cows are wary of strangers), the physics argument (knocking a cow over would require five or six people's worth of force), and the argument by veterinary analogy (when people really do need to tip cows over, it's a lot of work).

But the most exciting part is the epistemological argument: If cow tipping were real, it would be on YouTube.

YouTube, the largest clearinghouse of human stupidity the world has ever known — where you can watch hours of kids taking the cinnamon challenge, teens jumping off rooftops onto trampolines, or the explosive results of fireworks set off indoors — fails to deliver one single actual cow-tipping video. (The one exception is a Russian dashcam video, which shows a semitruck full of cattle overturning — and cows shaking themselves off and walking away.)

Absence of YouTube evidence is evidence of absence! (Or evidence that YouTube is enforcing its animal-cruelty ban?) If YouTube can't see a thing, does it really not exist? Let's find out: The first person to share a genuine cow-tipping video with Gawker will win a marked-up copy of Lena Dunham's book proposal.

[Detail of "Fat Cattle" by James Gillray, via Getty]