This is like if you were just at the club minding your business just trying to hook up with somebody, and then a massive scary being plucks you up and starts torturing you for it, while you sit there confused as to what you even did wrong.
It's like torturing dogs for having the audacity to bark.
It's actually hard, at least where I live, to capture a live cicada because they are up in trees. More likely the person made a joke using a dead one that fell down. In the fall I actually have to sweep them up I have so many to avoid a driveway of dead bugs. You can't really tell in a picture of they are alive or dead.
But to your point, yes, torturing live creatures wouldn't be funny but I doubt that happened here.
