The Internet Is for Cats: How Animal Images Shape Our Digital Lives 9781978827943

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The Internet Is for Cats

The Internet Is for Cats

•

How Animal Images Shape Our Digital Lives Jessica Maddox

Rutgers University Press New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Maddox, Jessica, author. Title: The Internet is for cats : attention, affect, and animals in digital sociality / Jessica Maddox. Description: New Brunswick, New Jersey : Rutgers University Press, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022010237 | ISBN 9781978827912 (paperback ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781978827929 (cloth ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781978827936 (epub) | ISBN 9781978827943 (pdf ) Subjects: LCSH: Social media—­Psychological aspects. | Pets—­Social aspects. | Animals in mass media. | Internet—­Social aspects. | Human-­animal relationships. Classification: LCC HM742 .M3254 2023 | DDC 302.23/1—­dc23/eng/20220404 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022010237 A British Cataloging-­in-­Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2023 by Jessica Maddox All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. References to internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Rutgers University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. ♾ The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-­1992. www​.rutgersuniversitypress​.org Manufactured in the United States of America

For Sean, Samson, and Rudy

Contents

Introduction 1 1.  Kittens in Context 2.  “I’ve Heard People on TikTok Love This”:

Attention as Materiality and Looking Relation

3.  Beyond Doomscrolling in an Internet of Cute 4.  “You Can’t Buy Happiness, but You Can Rescue It”:

Neoliberal Pets and Animals

5.  Feels Good, Man: Collisions, Collusions, and Cloaks

in Pet and Animal Social Media

6 .  Nature Is Healing, We Are the Virus: Beyond Signifiers

28 51 80 105 134 161

Appendix 167 Acknowledgments 171 Notes 173 Bibliography 207 Index 235

vii

Introduction

In 2016, a comic strip featuring a bemused dog sitting at a table amid an encroaching fire latched on as the meme of the moment. The dog declared one thing: “This is fine.” Now known as the “This Is Fine” dog or the “This Is Fine” meme, the image often circulates on social media in response to worrisome situations, political rumblings, inappropriate responses to crises, or general stress. However, the “This Is Fine” meme existed long before its 2016 popularity. The image came from strip 648 of artist K. C. Green’s comic Gunshow, which was originally titled “On Fire” and released on January 9, 2013. A few months later, the comic’s first two panels appeared on the website 4chan’s /vr/ board (the site’s community for retro gaming), and later, the image popped up on the social media site Reddit’s r/funny section with the title “Accurate representation of me dealing with University stress.”1 Over the next few years, the comic circulated on Reddit and 4chan before beginning its cultural moment in 2016. That year, internet users shared the meme in response to global events, such as the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union (or “Brexit”), the Republican nomination and eventual election of Donald Trump as the president of the United States, the Zika virus outbreak, and numerous celebrity deaths, including David Bowie, Prince, Alan Rickman, Gene Wilder, and Muhammed Ali. The New York Times described the image as “the meme [2016] deserves,”2 and in an interview with The Verge, creator K. C. Green pondered his creation’s popularity, 1

musing, “It’s a feeling we all have, apparently. It’s a feeling we all get of just like, ‘things are burning down around me, but you got to smile sometimes.’”3 Years later, the “This Is Fine” meme continues to resonate on social media. At the time of writing, the meme was often shared in response to numerous crises, including the COVID-­19 pandemic, climate change, politics, or even the poor performance of one’s favorite sports team. In a 2019 Washington Post article on the best internet reactions of the decade, digital culture critic Abby Ohlheiser tipped her hat to the “This Is Fine” meme, noting, “The Internet isn’t just for helping us connect to the world. It’s also for helping us react to it. . . . ‘This is fine’ correctly places us in the middle of the flames, acting as if everything is normal.”4 Social media provide spaces for action, interaction, and reaction, blurring the lines between the three and becoming a place to process, respond to, and challenge adversity and current events in real time. This is the effectiveness of the “This Is Fine” meme—­it accomplishes all these elements at once in the span of a singular image through performing response, grappling with circumstances, and demonstrating overall situational absurdity. The “This Is Fine” meme challenges the normalization of harmful circumstances through ironic juxtaposition—­precisely by saying things are fine, the image conveys just how not fine things are. This is one reason individuals have also adopted this meme to describe the very experience of being online.5 The “This Is Fine” meme found another use as a response to the harassment, trolling, doxing, misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, partisan politics, and other seemingly toxic aspects that are prevalent online. As such, the “This Is Fine” meme exists alongside some of the most popular discourses about digital spaces—­notably, that the internet is “garbage”6 or a “dumpster fire.”7 The idea of the internet as garbage or a dumpster fire reflects a certain type of online experience due, in no small part, to the aforementioned toxic practices. While such practices and content are so much a part of internet experiences that they seem normalized and even naturalized,8 many also refuse to accept such garbage as the status 2  The Internet Is for Cats

quo. Positioned alongside garbage and dumpster-­fire discourse, those who share the “This Is Fine” meme declare how absurd it is that these practices are even allowed to continue in the first place. However, there is an element of the “This Is Fine” meme that is often overlooked, and that is the fact it is specifically a dog at the center of this house fire of humanity. The humanized dog is key to understanding how and why this image continues to resonate. While the internet is often referred to as garbage or a dumpster fire, these remarks clash with another popular sentiment: the internet is for cats. Cat images are a popular twenty-­first-­century digital communication practice,9 and “cat photography plays a huge role in the visual economy of the Internet.”10 On social media, cat images are not just in high supply but also in high demand. However, cats are not alone in enjoying this privileged status. In their book about Instagram, Tama Leaver, Tim Highfield, and Crystal Abidin note how pets and animals of all species are hyperprevalent on the photo-­sharing platform and are incorporated into a wide variety of visual images and communication practices.11 The internet is for more than just cats—­it is also for dogs, horses, birds, fish, otters, giraffes, lemurs, chimpanzees, and bearded dragons, among many, many others. The “This Is Fine” meme exists within this digital animal kingdom. Not only does the image resonate because of its bemused and subversive response to adversity; it also taps into the popular practice of using pet and animal imagery—­even cartoons, drawings, and animations—­as mediated visual communication in digital cultures. This book explores the role pet and animal images play in digital cultures. Despite the popularity of such images, there is a startling paucity of academic literature on the subject. Here, I interrogate how popular internet practices combine with pet and animal imagery as well as how such a visual culture yields its own insights, all to show how and why the internet is for cats (and dogs, and otters, and horses). Animal and pet images play a key role in keeping internet spaces habitable, lighthearted, and fun, but they are also not immune from broader internet dynamics and problems, including negativity, toxicity, and so-­called garbage. Introduction 3

Pet and animal images are encountered in numerous different ways online. For instance, they populate sites like I Can Has Cheezburger?, home of the famous LOLCat memes. They are also on sites like BuzzFeed, which frequently posts articles with titles like “Just 22 Cute Animal Pictures You Need Right Now.”12 Animal images spread across Reddit through subforums, or subreddits, such as r/aww, r/babyelephantgifs, r/emusrunningfromstuff, and r/thecatdimensions. Some of my own existing research has explored the phenomenon and practice of pet Instagram accounts,13 which are run by humans on behalf of their pets (figure I.1). Pet and animal images are also ubiquitous on video-­sharing sites like YouTube and TikTok, they are displayed in the bourgeoning pet influencer world, they are used to promote awareness of adopted animals from rescues and shelters, and they are fodder for zoo and aquarium social media content, which may then be picked up for feel-­good news segments.14 However, there is more to unpack in the relationship between the internet’s pets and animals and its toxicity. How do we begin to reconcile statements like “the internet is garbage” and “the internet is for cats”? To be sure, people can and do use the internet for more than one reason. But there is a tension between things that are seemingly “good,” “pure,” and “cute” and practices that actively harm individuals, some of whom are already some of society’s most marginalized members. Both statements can be true at the same time, and one does not have to spend a lot of time online to know that garbage and cats (and animals, writ large) are two intersecting streams of practice underscoring contemporary digital cultures. To answer these questions, I situate pet and animal images, and their associated practices, within distinct but frequently overlapping academic disciplines—­cultural studies and internet studies. Cultural studies has long been concerned with the seemingly banal, and in studying the ordinary, the everyday, and the popular, it becomes apparent that there is nothing trivial at all about quotidian practices. These taken-­for-­granted assumptions are a part of social life, have untapped potentials, and reify power structures.15 Similarly, calls in internet studies have urged a focus on 4  The Internet Is for Cats

Fig. I.1. An example pet Instagram account Credit: Photo courtesy of the author

the everyday.16 By studying pet and animal images and practices, I answer calls from both these fields. To do this, I approach pet and animal images as distinct visual communication practices engendering their own specific modes of sociality, within and against broader cultural tenets. For instance, it is notable that internet scholar Adrienne Massanari opens her book on Reddit with the following: “If the Internet is for cats, Reddit​.com (Reddit) is its temple.”17 My guiding questions for this project push this notion further: Why are sites like Reddit, as well as the broader internet, for cats? And perhaps more interestingly, how is the internet for cats? What cultural tenets enable and sustain pet and animal imagery as lasting and key components of internet culture? And how are the internet’s cats and animals intertwined with the more harmful aspects of digital culture?

Contributions to Research This book makes three contributions to internet studies research. First, I offer insights into one of the internet’s most popular phenomena. Given the ubiquity of pet and animal images online, it is startling that this visual culture has not been theoretically and empirically interrogated. I examine pet and animal images on social media as a specific type of visual culture, rooting the phrase visual culture specifically within cultural studies to understand how “culture is not something people have, but something they do.”18 I analyze how animal and pet images produce, and are produced by, specific types of sociality and digital culture practices. I also consider visual culture as something more nuanced and encompassing than merely iconography or aesthetics. While these concepts influence visual culture, discussions of visual culture are often reduced to them, leaving little room for consideration of active, material practice and broader cultural tenets. To do so, I situate this visual culture within a particular temporal juncture. In her book A Unified Theory of Cats on the Internet, digital humanities scholar E. J. White proposes that internet cats have three distinct eras: the webcam and personal blog era 6  The Internet Is for Cats

(1995–­2004), the meme era (2005–­2011), and the celebrity cat era (2011–­present).19 While I discuss my methodology later in this introduction, my research occurred within the “celebrity cat era” of internet cats. While this temporal breakdown provides a time frame in which to specifically examine pet and animal social media, these eras do blur into one another. For instance, memes have not gone away, and technologies such as those in the webcam and personal vlog era have evolved to align with the likes of YouTube and TikTok. Furthermore, I consider more than just cats within this “celebrity era.” A second clarification is perhaps necessary here. This is not simply a book of cute cat memes, or memes in general. Often, internet culture is hailed as synonymous with meme culture, as “memes typify many of digital culture’s underlying qualities.”20 While internet culture and meme culture substantially overlap and influence each other, they do have their differences. Meme culture does not always flow from subcultural tributaries to the internet’s mainstream. Similarly, there are numerous aspects of internet culture—­such as White’s proposed “celebrity cat” shift—­that may have very little to do with memes. However, it is also impossible to address pet and animal social media without discussing memes—­specifically, the “ur-­meme,” or the meme one thinks of when this term is mentioned: LOLCats.21 Excellent scholarly attention has been given to these popular cat memes,22 and while I thread discussions of LOLCats through this work, I do so only to lay contextual foundations for discussing other iterations of pet and animal social media. For instance, much of my discussions about the visual cultures of pet and animal social media are rooted in considerations of content creator culture, a defining aspect of the “celebrity” and “celebrity cat” era of internet culture. The celebrity shift White speaks of aligns with the rise of social media entertainment, or “an emerging proto-­industry fueled by professionalizing previously amateur content creators using new entertainment and communicative formats, including vlogging, gameplay, and do-­it-­yourself (DIY), to develop potentially sustainable businesses based on significant Introduction 7

followings that can extend across multiple platforms.”23 Pet and animal social media have become one such communicative format of entertainment, in line with vlogging, DIY channels, and other forms of attempted monetization of internet content, including beauty vlogs, autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) videos, drama response channels, political entertainment, and influencer content.24 To be sure, not every internet user aspires to create or even considers creating professional, monetized content. Nor does every person who engages with pet and animal social media. However, the sociocultural logics of internet platforms perform a hegemonic function, and tenets involved in this era of celebrity content creation and social media entertainment become structuring principles for digital activities, even if one does not wish to actively participate.25 In other words, one does not have to want to be a professional content creator or influencer to engage in daily activities dominated by these guiding logics. This does not mean individuals are powerless; rather, “every relationship of hegemony is necessarily an educational relationship.”26 Considering that social media platforms encourage, but do not dictate, sociality,27 individual users constantly engage in a give-­and-­take of social practices on the internet, learning what is allowed or expected within the technical confines of platforms while still carving out spaces and practices that are their own. Content creators often drive the hegemonic way of social media’s visual cultures, be it through vernacular practice or market logic–­infused corporate sponsorship and advertisements. Pet and animal content is no exception. As such, I structure this book around three intertwining and recurring cultural tenets that guide my analysis of the visual cultures of pet and animal social media. I identified these pillars after conducting a multiyear digital ethnography into this world, and they are attention and the idea of the attention economy, cuteness and joyfulness, and neoliberalism. I will unpack each of these with due depth later, but for now, they become the defining, intertwining, and organizing strands from which I analyze this visual culture. These are by no means the only cultural ideas and practices 8  The Internet Is for Cats

present within pet and animal social media, but they are the ubiquitous ones I use to structure this work. This book’s second contribution challenges the taken-­ for-­ granted nature of pets and animals by analyzing them through the dialectical discourses of “the internet is for cats” and “the internet is garbage.” In line with my reading of the “This Is Fine” meme, pet and animal social media are a way for people to cope with, but not necessarily find a total reprieve from, the toxicity of digital spaces. However, instead of interpreting the “This Is Fine” meme as “dog versus fire” or the broader situation as “cats versus garbage,” I propose a reading considering the dog in the fire and cats and garbage together and not necessarily as malevolent opposites. This subtle shift allows me to move past pitting these two discourses against each other and instead demonstrate the complexities of trying to get out of, or make do with, present circumstances. For instance, in the “This Is Fine” meme, the flames have not yet touched the dog. Extending this thinking to these internet discourses, it is less prudent to try to reconcile “garbage versus cats” and more worthwhile to think of cats within the internet of garbage (or maybe, more optimistically, garbage within the internet of cats). Allison Page’s work on LOLCats as reprieve is useful here. In her analysis of the HBO documentary series LOLWork—­a show about the media company behind LOLCats—­Page considers LOLCats within a broader neoliberal economic framework, suggesting, “Cute animal videos operate as a form of what I term ‘cruel relief.’ I contend that the affective pull of cuteness—­and cute animals in particular—­offers a disruptive affective excess that provides a tool for coping with not just the drudgery of work and office life, but also the devastations of neoliberalism and its attendant social and political effects.”28 For Page, cute animal videos offer fleeting relief from the demands of neoliberal culture and in turn help individuals find motivation to return to work and be productive. The relief is cruel because it is fleeting. An individual may watch a cute animal video for a break and to find motivation to work, but the relief will not last. The drudgery of neoliberal capitalism will return. Introduction 9

Though Page’s argument provides a footing for my own analysis, I remain skeptical of economics as the sole precursor of and driving factor for the production and consumption of pet and animal images in digital cultures. To be sure, economics—­particularly in the neoliberal era, in which market logics have permeated the social and cultural aspects of everyday life29—­has enormous implications for content production and consumption and cannot be ignored. But I remain hesitant about Page’s argument when considering the centuries-­long relationship between animals and pets, images of animals and pets, and content production and consumption. In digital cultures, animal and pet images are a way to cope with the internet’s garbage (which sometimes may very well be neoliberally infused), but this is not a foolproof solution, nor is it monolithic or universally applicable. If pet and animal images can declare “this is fine” about digital spaces, it means that we must examine this content as always already imbricated within the internet’s broader sociocultural, technological dynamics and not separate and apart from them. This leads me to this book’s third contribution, which involves a substantial degree of problematizing. Challenging the taken-­for-­ granted nature of pet and animal social media in this way is by no means a new proposition. It does, however, align closely with what internet scholar Whitney Phillips points out in her critique of early internet nostalgia: “A lot of ‘Internet culture’ was harmless and fun and funny. But it came with a very high price of entry: To enjoy the fun and funny memes, you had to be willing—­you had to be able—­to deal with the ugly ones. When faced with this bargain, many people simply laughed at both. It was hard to take Nazi memes seriously when they were sandwiched between sassy cats and golf course enforcement bears.”30 Online, cute animal images softened the blow of the worst vitriol existing alongside it. As Phillips suggests, it was difficult to take Nazi memes seriously when they were bookended by cute cat memes. But even Phillips’s notable critique still positions the sassy cats as the opposite of the Nazi memes. When considering an image of garbage and cats, what happens when the cats are the Nazi memes? It was never 10  The Internet Is for Cats

my intention for this book to “ruin” cute pet and animal internet content, but understanding how pet and animal images are used to communicate on social media means also understanding that in dismissing this type of content as frivolous or trivial, it is easy to ignore the more insidious ways they may be used. Phillips’s work here explains how cuteness helped mask the ugly, but this still widely occurs in internet culture. I also turn to Whitney Phillips to help theorize this perspective. In her foundational work on internet trolling, she cites anthropologist Mary Douglas to explore how dirt, both literal and metaphorical, must be contextualized: “Dirt is best understood as matter out of place and is intelligible only in relation to existing systems of cleanliness: you can’t talk about or even think about dirt unless you’ve already internalized some sense of what qualifies as clean. Similarly, cultural aberration is only intelligible in the context of an existing social system. Thus by examining that which is regarded as transgressive within a particular culture or community one is able to reconstruct the values out of which problematic behaviors emerge.”31 Phillips explores how trolling is a complex phenomenon predicated upon the slippages between the transgressive and the acceptable. My aim here is to take Phillips’s perspective and flip it—­like trolls, animal and pet images also show how demarcations between the “good” and “bad” are not straightforward. We cannot talk about the cute, the wholesome, the relief, and the distractions without also talking about the bad, the ugly, the cumbersome, and what we need relief and distractions from. Cute, quotidian, and so-­called frivolous content is often not considered an object of serious scholarly inquiry. This content also serves a masking function to hide the more insidious aspects of internet culture when toxicity and garbage seep into the cats. Digital anthropologist Crystal Abidin discusses this extensively in her work on the Singaporean influencer industry, noting similar critiques that dismissed the subjects of her research as vain, frivolous, and unproductive. But as she suggests, there is a power in interrogating what individuals may underestimate, and there may be insights not readily made available through so-­called serious topics.32 There is no “good” and “bad” Introduction 11

internet culture, nor is there “cute” or “ugly” internet culture. There is only internet culture, and how it may be wielded. My framework begins in the following sections, first starting when I unpack the term “visual culture” to explain what exactly I mean in studying pet and animal images online. Far from just a heuristic maneuver, this breakdown defines my theoretical and methodological positioning for this study, and I outline the theoretical prism I use to examine these images and their practices. Then I begin to scrutinize the taken-­for-­granted nature of pet and animal images online by making the familiar strange. The goal of this section is to provide context and demonstrate how there is actually very little that is “new” about pet and animal images on social media. I conclude with an overview of the remainder of the book.

Visual Cultures in Internet Studies Discussions of visual culture on the internet often conflate the term with iconography, aesthetics, or simply anything having to do with pictures or videos. While the term visual culture can mean anything, it is worth asking if that should be the case or if scholars of visual cultures, particularly on the internet, should be using it with more specificity. Here I do just that, unpacking the term to present a road map to merge practice and the visual, and situating the phrase within broader sociocultural contexts. Specifically, my assertion of visual culture involves unpacking both terms in the phrase before reuniting them to analyze what the visual cultures of pet and animal social media look like and how I apply my three recurring tenets of this culture to the broader phenomenon. I begin with the second word in the phrase and unpack the word culture, which Raymond Williams has famously argued is one of the most complex words in the entire English language.33 To be sure, scholars familiar with this subject matter are already aware of Williams’s definitions and the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, but I only briefly unpack culture here to then marry it to the visual. Culture is always imbricated in the social practices of individuals. This was definitive to Antonio 12  The Internet Is for Cats

Gramsci’s cultural theorization, and in analyzing social life, he argued we should look in the “ensemble of the system of relations in which these activities  .  .  . have their place within the general complex of social relations.”34 In addition to always studying culture as a practice, these practices must always be historically and socially situated. Writing around the turn of the twenty-­first century, Stuart Hall and Jessica Evans opined how cultural and media studies had overlooked visual culture. They acknowledged the contentiousness of their claim because “after all, the works of Barthes, Benjamin, Lacan, and Foucault, with their clearly visual concerns—­not to mention a host of others—­form the canonical foundations on which much cultural and media studies rests.”35 Since then, with the explosion of the internet into much of everyday life, this has changed. The internet is an increasingly visual medium,36 and my intention in parsing through visual and culture is to provide analytical nuance to what the terms mean together. Nicholas Mirzoeff tackles the second part of my strategic interrogation by asking a question of his own: “What, then, is the visual in visual culture? It is not simply sight. It concerns the place of visuality. . . . In fact visual culture is interested in sight only when it becomes vision, not as physiological or neurological processes.”37 Visuality, or how vision is socially constructed, challenges the Cartesian idea of a one-­to-­one ratio between what is seen and what is known. For Mirzoeff, vision and sight are only prudent categories when they become cultural vision or cultural sight. In my media theory class, visuality is one of those topics that cause my students to look at me funny. I have to assure them that no, I’m not refuting how biology works. I’m trying to convey that it is possible for eyes, sight, and looks to do more than simply process what is in front of someone. I use this story to explain it: Say you walk into the student center to meet your friend after class. The student center is normally crowded, so even if you had an agreed-­ upon meeting place, it still may be difficult to find them. Say, as well, you just came from a class where you had an exam or got assigned a big, stressful project. You walk into the student center, Introduction 13

thinking about your friend and your class, and you don’t see them, so you pull out your phone and start scrolling while you wait. Your friend comes up and taps you on the shoulder and says, “Hey, I was right there!” You apologize. Obviously, overlooking your friend was not malicious. It just means the cultural and social things happening in your life influenced what was right in front of your eyes. That’s visuality. I include this anecdote because while personal, I hope it helps provide some scholarly clarity to a term that is often underused and misused in visual cultural studies. Mirzoeff answers his own question against this backdrop: “Visual culture involves the things that we see, the mental model we all have of how to see, and what we can do as a result. That is why we call it visual culture: a culture of the visual. . . . A visual culture is the relation between what is visible and the names that we give to what is seen.”38 This naming process sets the stage for understanding the visual in a similar way to culture—­the visual is not something we have within us; it is something we do. Looking relations and visuality are not passive processes that simply record sight in a one-­to-­one ratio but are active and contextual. However, visual culture is not just an abstract entity, even though my theorizing thus far leads it there. To bring the conversation back down to the realms of the observable and analytical, Hal Foster’s conception of visuality is useful here—­he defines visuality as “the datum of vision and its discursive determinations.”39 By thinking of the visual as a starting point and about how it manifests through discourse, Foster provides the beginnings of a road map to study what exactly one means by visual culture and shows how to ascertain details of visual culture. To analyze visual culture, I situate the term between visuality and practice. Visual culture is the study of how people create, share, consume, and respond to images or image-­based materials (such as videos). People do not passively do these tasks. Images and image-­ based materials are active constructions with their own specific modes of sociality. Pet and animal social media visual cultures are constructed and practiced in specific ways, in specific contexts. Such practice involves aesthetics and iconographies, but 14  The Internet Is for Cats

visual culture is not limited to those actions. Visual culture takes as its starting point the idea that what is seen and how it is seen are always cultural and context specific, and aesthetics, iconographies, pictures, and videos may be the result of those practices, but visual culture cannot be reduced to any one entity. Visual culture should not start with the results but instead consider how the end results were produced in the first place. This is why I identify, extrapolate, and explain three recurring cultural tenets that are ubiquitous in this specific landscape. Interrogating the visual culture of pet and animal social media means historically situating pet and animal mediations, understanding the familiar and unfamiliar ways these types of images manifest, recognizing patterns in practice regarding how they are created and shared, and discursively examining the creation and reception surrounding them.

Social Modalities, or What Influences Pet and Animal Images Online My discussion of visual culture relies on Gillian Rose’s ideas of image modalities,40 and I overlap these modalities with my identified cultural tenets of attention and the attention economy, cuteness and joyfulness, and neoliberalism. Every image has three types of modalities, or three sites in which meanings and practices of images are made: the technological, or the apparatus that helped create an image; the compositional, or the specific material qualities of a visual object; and the social, which refers to “the range of economic, social, and political relations, institutions, and practices that surround an image and through which it is seen and used.”41 Modalities are useful conceptional tools in analyzing visual culture because they help provide specific focuses on certain image aspects, but they can also be studied as interlocking components. Because I am concerned with sociality, I focus specifically on the social modalities of pet and animal images and how they contribute to communicative practices. While the social modalities of pet and animal images online are numerous, I situate them within three overlapping ones that arose during my research Introduction 15

fieldwork: attention and the attention economy, cuteness and joy, and neoliberalism. The first social modality I use to interrogate pet and animal social media is the idea of attention and the attention economy. The idea of social media as an attention economy posits that the content that attracts and retains user attention is the most valuable: “The ‘attention economy’ is now a widespread marketing strategy which implies that in a media saturated world full of information, what is valuable is that which can attract ‘eyeballs.’”42 With so much content available online, it is impossible for an individual to view it all or even consume everything within their particular interests. The phrase “attention economy” becomes a metaphor to describe competing desires and demands for viewable content in digital culture. Internet content creators, be they professionals on TikTok or YouTube or just people wanting to get a couple of likes on their tweets, are constantly competing for “eyeballs”—­or people to view their content. In digital cultures, “‘successful’ users are those whose online activity garners attention from their followers and networks.”43 Online, attention is the most valuable thing people have to give, and it is one of the things individuals who create content, be it professional or amateur, are always searching for. However, the idea of the attention economy is not an indictment of internet users in line with the often-­thrown-­around accusations of social media addiction and narcissism but is instead rooted in broader dynamics of datafication, advertising, commodification, and labor, which will be discussed more in chapter 1. The second social modality I use to situate my research is another metaphorical economy—­the cute economy. The term cute economy is often used to describe the ubiquity of heartwarming and cheeky content online, from pet and animal imagery to babies, mascots, animations, and cartoons. The cute economy posits not only that digital cute content is in high supply but that it is also in high demand. However, some take this position further and attempt to map the cuteness to economics, as Jason Potts does in applying the Alchian-­Allen theorem of product demand to Grumpy Cat memes.44 But colloquially and in academic literature, 16  The Internet Is for Cats

the cute economy is often used as a cultural metaphor to describe how and why the internet is replete with endearing and delightful content, and this often harkens back to pets and animals: “Dogs and cats are privileged in the internet economy of cuteness, but have by no means cornered the market with viral videos and other cute images routinely featuring pandas . . . as well as otters, rabbits, horses, hamsters, deer, meerkats, and numerous other animal species.”45 While the cute economy contains more than pet and animal images, these types of images are a key component of the metaphorical exchange. Like the attention economy, the cute economy considers the relationship between content and practice on the internet. While people seemingly like posting, sharing, and seeing cute pet and animal content online, this practice is not monolithic. Any notion of the social practice of cuteness in digital cultures must also consider the attention economy. If you picked up this book with the hope it would be chock-­full of cuteness, you would be right, but I am also here to disentangle and problematize cuteness and specifically the idea of a cute economy. The third social modality I use to interrogate the visual culture of pet and animal social media is less metaphorical and more literal. Neoliberalism is a defining ideological characteristic of late modernity, in which the economic logics of capitalism have permeated almost every aspect of social life.46 While neoliberal capitalism and economics involve the reduction of government interference in free markets, cultural and media scholars have long documented how the ideologies associated with such economics have profound, concrete implications for social life. Rosalind Gill refers to this as the neoliberal subjectivity, in which culture “gets inside” of us and, combined with our personal experiences and broader lived contexts, has material implications for everyday life. Neoliberal culture is a “profoundly individualistic framework that turns away from systemic or collective analyses and politics to offer instead a set of individualised tools by which to ‘cope’.”47 Under a neoliberal culture, individuals are exhorted to adopt market logics in the self-­governing of their everyday lives through autonomy, rationality, and self-­surveillance. Any shortcomings in one’s life Introduction 17

under neoliberalism are their own failings, as collective contexts are largely eschewed in favor of the individual. I previously discussed Page’s argument of how cute pet and animal images provide temporary relief from the drudgery of neoliberal capitalism. I remain skeptical of economics as a driving factor for the production and consumption of pet and animal social media, which is why I approach this third social modality of neoliberalism through Gill’s notion of subjectivities instead of economics and capitalism. To be sure, economics, profits, and business cannot be overlooked entirely in these discussions. However, the proliferation of pet and animal social media is just as much a symptom and implication of neoliberal subjectivities and market economies as it is a temporary relief from it. Examining neoliberal subjectivities of pet and animal social media does involve looking at how this visual culture has become big business for companies, advertisers, brands, influencers, and journalists, but it also involves examining the human poster behind the pet and animal images and what types of material, emotional, and precarious labor may be present. Finally, I should note a particular limitation of using three economies, metaphorical or not, as the social modalities of pet and animal imagery online. I am actually staunchly critical of using economics as a metaphor of human practice, as sociality does not map neatly, or at all, to market logics. Using economic metaphors to describe culture can flatten nuance, and culture should instead be considered within materiality and looking relations of popular culture when they are applicable and one is not discussing actual supply and demand relations. Internet scholars have long documented the problems of trying to map scientistic mentalities onto cultural processes, most often through developing a scholarship of memes apart from Richard Dawkins’s coining of the term48 and through eschewing the term viral media in favor of terms like spreadable media.49 In my discussions of the attention economy and cute economy throughout this book, I show how often what we describe in economic terms gets under our skin and has material implications for social life. 18  The Internet Is for Cats

Disrupting Pets and Animals Studying pet and animal social media means making the familiar strange. By this, I mean I want to take something that is so much a part of our digital experiences and provide so much context and history that it becomes almost unrecognizable. While LOLCats, animal memes, pet Instagram accounts, and the internet’s turn to dog language through words like doggo, pupperino, boof, bork, and blep50 are hallmarks of modern internet culture, humans have mediated animals throughout history, dating back to the earliest cave drawings.51 While a more in-­depth overview of the history of mediated animals and pets will be provided in chapter 1, I would like to share one historical anecdote in service of immediately making the familiar strange. Fashion scholar Julia Long documents the use of pets as part of women and men’s wardrobes in the nineteenth century, and she references one instance of this through an 1886 Washington Post article discussing how living Yucatan golden beetles were the summer’s hottest fashion accessory: “The devotion of women to their various pets is exemplified in the same article, in a transcribed interview between the reporter and a lady ‘who was lavishing her valuable affection on one of these pets.’ When asked if the beetle ‘knew’ his owner, this lady expressed anguish and astonishment at the thought of her beloved pet not returning her affection.”52 While today it is easy to balk at the idea of keeping a beetle as a pet, let alone wearing one, Long’s analysis shows that mediated pets and animals are always historically specific. Similarly, the nineteenth century saw a turn toward individuals writing letters to one another in their pets’ voices or taking advantage of nascent photography technologies to print out photo plates of their pets to distribute to friends.53 In the twenty-­first century, however, “it is now mainstream and apropos in many places to consider pets as subjects. . . . In this sense, the prototypical Fido who slept on the floor and ate scraps from the table has been replaced by Lucy, a companion . . . who sleeps on a bed and eats upscale foods.”54 While not everyone enjoys pets and animals, or even enjoys looking at images of pets Introduction 19

and animals, Nast’s words indicate how cultural ideas about pets shift over time. Such qualitative, cultural ideas are also reflected by quantitative study numbers. A 2018 study from the American Veterinary Medical Association noted 38.4 percent of U.S. households owned dogs, while 25.4  percent owned cats.55 Another 2018 study by the European Pet Food Industry Federation estimated 24 percent of European households had at least one dog, with 25 percent having at least one cat.56 And according to a 2018 Pet Industry Association Australia study, more than 62  percent of Australians own at least one pet, with 38 percent owning dogs and 29 percent owning cats.57 All these studies also acknowledge ownership of other pets—­such as birds, fish, and horses—­but globally, dogs and cats reign as the world’s most common pets. Perhaps more notable than the number of individuals owning pets, however, is the staggering amount of money people spend on them. The American Pet Products Association found that in 2018, Americans spent a record-­breaking $72.56  billion on their pets, which included food, supplies, over-­the-­counter medicine, veterinary care, and other services.58 The annual amount is less in Europe, with the conversion coming out to about $13.22 billion for dogs and cats, with $1.32 billion spent on fish, small animals, and birds.59 In terms of just enjoying animals outside of the home, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums reports that over 200 million people visit zoos and aquariums worldwide every year, which is more visitors than the U.S. National Football League, National Basketball Association, National Hockey League, and Major League Baseball have in attendance per year combined.60 Though with the increasing role of zoo camera livestreams, or what Andrew Burke refers to as the “ZooTube” phenomenon, individuals no longer have to leave their homes to visit the captive and protected wildlife.61 Here one need not look past 2017’s viral sensation of April the giraffe, in which livestreams of her late-­stage pregnancy were put on YouTube. Millions watched with bated breath to see when she would finally have her calf, and once April had successfully delivered, YouTube estimated April had garnered 232 million 20  The Internet Is for Cats

views.62 While it is impossible to fully quantify one’s adoration for their pet or animals, these numbers show the immense affective stock individuals have in pets and animals and the amount of time and money people are willing to spend on them. There is a rich body of scholarly literature in the field of animal studies that ponders distinctions of what I have so far lumped together—­pets and animals. Many animal studies scholars spend crucial and critical time unpacking these categories, noting distinctions of pet keeping, pet domestication, and animal agency63 as well as dismantling the processes by which a creature is a pet or an animal.64 While I am sensitive and sympathetic to this work, divvying up the distinctions is not something I am outright concerned with in this book. As noted, one of my aims in this book is to map an explored but uncharted territory, and I hope animal studies scholars in the future will be able to expand on this with their attention to differences between pets and animals, which may in turn further expand our understandings of how pets, animals, and the internet intertwine.

Methodology and Structure of the Book This work is informed by my three-­year ethnographic study into pet and animal social media. I spent these years deep within the communities of pet and animal social media, and I interviewed almost seventy-­five individuals who post, publish, share, and/or create animal and pet images and videos online. These individuals included, but were not limited to, individuals who run specific pet social media accounts for their pets and animals (such as Instagrams or TikToks), aspiring pet influencers, animal welfare and conservationist researchers and activists whose work is directly concerned with media and the internet, and people who do not have pets or animals of their own but simply enjoy engaging with such content online. Additionally, I participated in pet Facebook groups, collected tweets from virtual pet and animal Twitter accounts, attended internet pet conventions such as PetCon and CatCon, and coded and analyzed pet and animal TikTok and Introduction 21

YouTube videos. More information on my interview protocols and participants, as well as how I selected sites and texts for observation and analysis, can be found in the appendix. Taken together, my in-­person and online interviews, textual analyses, and participant observations form a digital ethnography. Ethnography is considered one of the most open and unbounded methods in the qualitative canon,65 but in actuality, a thorough and methodologically sound ethnography will have only semiflexible parameters to prevent the project from getting out of control. Identifying one’s sites for analysis is paramount in digital ethnography—­my own primary platforms for analysis were Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit. This decision was made in 2019 at the outset of my research, and I chose these platforms because, at the time, they were some of the most dominant and popular platforms on the Western, Anglophone internet.66 However, during my research, TikTok skyrocketed in popularity, particularly in 2020.67 I then made the methodological decision to include this app as well given its status as a cultural touchstone. I am aware that by focusing on these platforms in Western, Anglophone contexts, I am overlooking how these practices function around the world, be it in Asian countries or the Global South, and this is a gap I hope to fill in future work. Similarly, at times my analysis of the visual cultures of pet and animal social media may be wider than it is deep. I ventured this way in order to chart a terrain that remains relatively understudied, and this approach allowed me to identify key pillars that structure contemporary pet and animal social media. The challenges of any digital ethnography are that the internet is constantly fluid, always relational, and often ephemeral. My decision to select platforms as field sites provides a deceptively neat clarity to the project, and after two years of analyzing texts, talking to pet and animal owners and interactors, and taking copious notes during time spent in Facebook groups and subreddits, I must say I have only scratched the surface of the plethora of pet and animal content the internet has to offer. This is probably not what one wants to hear from one writing a book on this topic, but 22  The Internet Is for Cats

it is true. I constantly made strategic and purposeful choices about what to include and exclude, such as Facebook groups, subreddits, and more. When pressed, I often relied on “most populous” as a factor of inclusion, but this too presents complications by focusing only on the spots of greatest traction and overlooking smaller subcultures. However, doing so can bring seemingly disparate things together: “Weaving together networks of an ethnographic field can bring the most disparate things together, and particularly when one’s research topic is not extremely narrow, each node of the network can result in dizzying vertigos over a wealth of potential interlocutors, unexplored communities, and new categories of data.”68 Pet and animal social media is an extremely broad topic to tackle within digital ethnography, which is why embracing the ruptures and incongruencies was important. As data and words piled high and butted heads, I was reminded of what I tell my own doctoral students in our qualitative methods seminar: sometimes the most interesting findings come from the contradictions. Digital ethnography is often based just as much on disconnection as on connection,69 and digital ethnographers must grapple with this tension. My analyses of platforms within pet and animal social media were more about following objects, trends, hashtags, discourses, and practices across, within, and against other platforms than they were about treating each site like its own bounded entity. This approach aligns with suggestions that ethnographers of the internet “follow the object”70 across digital spaces, an approach that reflects the idea of the metafield in internet ethnography, or “a digital setting temporarily aggregating scattered communicative contents sharing those features . . . a field made of fields.”71 In this way, platforms themselves are not necessarily sites of fieldwork but contain more possible fields than we could ever feasibly count, and each field blurs into the other. For instance, numerous pet influencers share their pet TikTok accounts to Instagram. What, then, becomes my field site? Through the metafields approach, I follow the particular user across both platforms to get a deeper sense of their practices and communication habits. The approach of metafields is particularly useful for digital ethnography, as it reflects the Introduction 23

multifaceted, unbounded, and overlapping nature of digital publics themselves.72 Following chapter 1, which functions as my de facto literature review, I ground each of the three subsequent chapters in one of the social modalities I have outlined in this introduction: attention, cuteness, and neoliberalism. Each of these modalities functions as the guiding principle and argument for each respective chapter as I analyze how contemporary pet and animal social media engage with them. My interviews, textual analysis, and observational work form the basis of this analysis. In chapter 5, I pull back from digital ethnography and instead present a case study of one instance of pet and animal social media, showing how attention, cuteness, and neoliberalism function in tandem with one another. By blending cases and ethnographic work, I can more adroitly chart this terrain. As mentioned, cats and the internet are by no means an unexplored aspect of digital culture. But the scholarly charting of it is. As I set out to make the first map of this area, cases and ethnographic work allowed me to make careful note of common, everyday practices of materiality as well as more sweeping, overarching structures and trends ubiquitous in pet and animal social media. Combining ethnographic work and case studies that emerged from that ethnographic work allow me to chart both the micro and the macro of pet and animal social media and move back and forth between the two when appropriate. As such, my presentation of data in this book uses zoomed-­in and zoomed-­out perspectives, showing how pet and animal social media practices function on the daily, personal, and quotidian as well as within broader sociocultural environments and trends. While such a presentation of data is not commonly associated with analysis of ethnographic data, this style was particularly useful given my research questions and focus on social modalities and how they function broadly with implications for material practice. However, I cannot claim to be a neutral observer or information gatherer, and the epistemologies that form my own basis for qualitative research would never allow me to. Like Henry Jenkins in Convergence Culture,73 I am not just a consumer of this type of 24  The Internet Is for Cats

internet content. As a dog mom to two dogs myself, I am an active fan and participant in these communities even when I am not researching them. This necessarily alters my approach to this topic. Instead of shying away from that, however, I follow the research advice of Catherine Knight Steele, who argues that in internet culture research, being present in communities before even beginning your research is essential to understanding specific nuances of digital practice and to presenting data and analysis with integrity.74 As such, there are moments when explaining how I arrived at certain sites of observation or recurring refrains may involve personal anecdotes. This does not make this work an autoethnography but rather demonstrates how researchers are always already embedded in their projects and cannot be divorced from them. I am a popular, casual consumer of these sites and a researcher who is interested in them on scholarly levels, and there are moments when it is impossible to disentangle the two. This is the prerogative of the critical qualitative researcher who understands their own reflexivity but does not shy away from their crucial role in disseminating the story. A final note on ethnography: it was always particularly appropriate for this study, given that the father of modern ethnography’s own famous object of study was animals. In 1958, anthropologist Clifford Geertz arrived in a Balinese village in Indonesia, and his most influential work, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” emerged from what he studied there.75 Specifically, Geertz used animals—­or illegal cockfights and the practices surrounding them—­to examine the village’s cultural and social dynamics. Taken together, ethnography was particularly fitting given the method’s own history of using animals to analyze human social practice. Lastly, I took particular care to adequately protect my participants in writing up this research, as both humans and their pets were given pseudonyms to protect identities. The outline of the book functions as follows: Chapter  1 is a literature review, providing necessary contextual information for this book’s theoretical and empirical interventions. I historically situate pet and animal images on social media by placing them on Introduction 25

a trajectory that considers centuries of mediated pet and animal images, and I pay particular attention to the nineteenth century onward. This mediated history is intricately interwoven with technological products and innovation, and I track the usage of such visuals throughout media history, from photography, to cinema, to the first computers, to the internet, and to Silicon Valley’s techno-­ utopianism. This historical analysis shows that of course the internet is for cats, since, in parodying another phrase from Clifford Geertz, the internet’s history, development, innovation, marketing, popular adaptation, and user practices have been animals all the way down. This context sets up the next part of the chapter, which provides a brief overview of how my chosen social modalities—­attention, cuteness, and neoliberalism—­function against and within this historical trajectory. Chapter 2 analyzes pet and animal social media through the idea of the attention economy. Almost immediately, I push back on the use of economic metaphors to describe social practice by situating attention as a looking relation and a form of cultural materiality. I focus on made-­for-­social-­media pet and animal experiences, self-­representation on social media through pet and animal images, and pet influencers. Given my focus on materiality in this chapter, I consider what implications there are for pets and animals and how working with animals through attention on social media may have welfare and conservation implications. Chapter 3 discusses the visual cultures of pet and animal social media through the social modality of the cute economy. Again, I push back on the economic metaphor to discuss how cuteness is intertwined with affect—­specifically joy. I approach joy through a feminist and cultural studies perspective to focus on its collective modes of digital engagement and possibilities for resistance against broader power structures and dynamics. I present analysis of the motivations people have for sharing pet and animal images online, particularly through accounts devoted to their pets. Then I move to how this joy and cuteness is often conditional, using discussions of animal and pet image sharing on Reddit to underscore these complexities. 26  The Internet Is for Cats

Chapter 4 analyzes pet and animal social media through neoliberalism, focusing less on economics and more on how neoliberal logics permeate almost all aspects of social and cultural life. Specifically, I focus on qualities and dispositions needed to thrive and self-­regulate in neoliberal times and how pet and animal imagery are imbricated as such. I analyze the neoliberal role of institutions, such as online journalistic content and pop culture conventions, as well as the sublimation of identities within pet and animal cultures online. This problematizes the joy discussed in chapter 3, suggesting how joy has become co-­opted with neoliberalism as a disposition needed to get by. Chapter 5 brings all three social modalities together in order to present how they all function concurrently, and I specifically present this analysis through an explicit toxic case of pet and animal social media. I track these social modalities through the case of Pepe the Frog to demonstrate the complexities of attention, cuteness, and neoliberalism and how they may be harmful. This comes after analysis in previous chapters that explores the less obvious ways problematic social media practices and cultural tenets puncture pet and animal images online. The book concludes with a discussion of these complexities and contradictions and how internet aww cannot readily be disentangled from internet eww.

Introduction 27

1 Kittens in Context

In March 2014, Sir Tim Berners-­Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, participated in an AMA on Reddit. AMA (Ask Me Anything) is the term for an interactive question and answer interview format that famous individuals do with Reddit users. Berners-­Lee’s AMA coincided with the twenty-­fifth anniversary of the World Wide Web, and a user asked Berners-­L ee what people use the internet for that he wasn’t expecting. Berners-­Lee’s answer was simple: kittens.1 Berners-­Lee did not elaborate, but it would probably be safe to assume his answer was a blend of pith and sincerity. This anecdote has been repeated time and again in scholarly writings on cat memes and the internet, and while I was hesitant to invoke such an oft-­cited story, it is a prudent starting point for understanding two things: First, when looking at the relationship between kitten (and animal) images and the internet, it should not come as much of a surprise that the two evolved as almost synonymous with each other. Second, if the internet really is for kittens, cats, and animals, it is worth asking how the internet is for cats alongside why it wound up this way. When historical and contemporary sociocultural contexts are combined, it becomes apparent that of course the internet is for cats. As media and animal studies scholar Jody Berland points out, humans have long used animal images in their social practices: “Animals have served as mediators for human interaction as 28

far back as records exist. They have been conscripted as sacrifices, as symbols, items of trade, gifts, and tokens in the circulation of kinship, wealth, belief, and power. That these objects of exchange predate the mediation of money is evidenced by the inscription of animals onto the faces of coins when they first appeared.”2 Animal images have always served a mediating function in that they connect individuals, yet these connections are almost always mediated through some type of material or image exchange. In other words, humans have used animal images to connect with one another since cave drawings, and as technologies became more ubiquitous, individuals also came to interact with animals not necessarily in person but through communication technologies. Today, most people may not interact with giraffes, but they will watch a YouTube livestream of a giraffe or a video of pandas rolling around in the snow. Individuals without pets of their own may join Facebook groups devoted to funny pictures of other people’s pets or share cat memes as a form of communication. These practices form the basis of mediated and mediating functions of animal imagery today. The concept of animals as mediators in the internet era relies on the premise that while animals may not always be physically interacted with, it is possible to have a form of interaction through images. This idea of being able to see animals without actually physically interacting with them was key to visual scholar John Berger’s work Why Look at Animals? In answering his titular question, Berger argued that looking relations surrounding animals involve interrogating sociocultural trends. Looking at animals in industrialized times meant people became removed from nature but still craved experiences with animals.3 Images of animals, Berger proposed, allow for people to continue to feel close to the nature they left behind in pursuit of industrialization. While this proposal, in which animal images replace the experience of being with animals, would have surely made postmodern theorists fume, Berland’s point is key when considering the internet for cats—­humans have always used animals to communicate, and developing mediated technologies allows for changes and developments in such communication. However, whereas Kittens in Context  29

Berland theorizes this intersection as a specific and contemporary virtual menagerie rooted in colonialist urges, I am specifically concerned with the mediated and mediating function in relation to social media, the internet, and technologies. Considering it was the desire for connectivity that drove the invention of the modern social web,4 it should be no surprise that social practices preceding the internet migrated to the internet. As individuals learned how to be social online, established practices for connectivity came too, and humans adapted them and modified them within the architectures, benefits, and constraints of the digital spaces. In this chapter, I present my framework for analyzing the idea that the internet is for cats. This chapter functions as a de facto literature review, and after a brief overview of the mediated history of animals and technological innovations, I present my three social modalities—­ attention, cuteness, and neoliberalism—­ in conjunction with pet and animal social media. These modalities provide my framework for thinking about pet and animal social media as distinct communication practices and also offer a basis for understanding how this visual culture is simultaneously a way to cope and fodder for some of the internet’s most toxic practices, or garbage. As the literature review, this chapter answers why the internet is for cats; the rest of the book explores the how.

Animals All the Way Down The idea that the internet is for cats did not simply happen. E. J. White argues cats are a signifier of the “extremely internetty” and that “by now cats may be, as they say, baked into the Internet’s operations.”5 However, before they were an indicator of internet culture, they, and other animals, performed similar functions for other technologies, functioning as “extremely cinema-­y ” and “extremely computer-­y.” Cat (and animal) logic is in fact baked into all levels of the internet, but before that, they were also long baked into previous cultural understandings of technologies and innovations. Here, I follow a values-­in-­design approach to cultural technological analysis, which proposes that preexisting social and cultural 30  The Internet Is for Cats

ideas and biases influence technological progress.6 I begin with Berger’s time frame for when modern understandings of mediating and looking at pets and animals emerged: the nineteenth century and the Industrial Revolution. This moment merged changing sociality with the desire to be closer to nature,7 prompting animals and their images to be used in communicative and social ways. Perhaps the most famous historical example of this relationship is Eadweard Muybridge’s Horse in Motion project (figure 1.1). The question of whether a horse ever becomes fully airborne when it trots or gallops prompted Muybridge’s experiment in 1878. He set up twelve cameras, and as a horse ran by, it tripped a wire to take twelve photos in rapid succession. The result showed that for a moment all the horse’s hooves were off the ground—­something that would have been imperceptible to the naked human eye. Like the “This Is Fine” meme, one of the internet’s most popular images, featuring an animal at its center, it is impossible to overlook it was a horse at the center of this pivotal technological advancement. Muybridge’s experiment helped bring humans closer to nature by answering a question about the movement of

Fig. 1.1. The printout of static images collected by Eadweard Muybridge during his Horse in Motion experiment, June 15, 1878 Credit: Public domain

Kittens in Context  31

horses, and more broadly, it helped usher in a new purpose for the bourgeoning technology of photography and film: to capture life and movement, preserve it in time, and convey some sense of truth. Muybridge’s experiment was by no means the last foray into using animal images to develop and popularize new technologies. Shortly after Muybridge, Thomas Edison and Étienne-­Jules Marey became the first to create cat videos, with Edison’s featuring boxing cats.8 Later in the twentieth century, cinematic editing techniques were advanced, in part, to make zoos look more like actual wilderness for animal-­inspired movies.9 Animal studies scholar Claire Parkinson argues “nonhuman animals were central to the development of early cinema, their representations on screen organised through audiovisual systems that were at every level structured around human aesthetics and senses.”10 (The term nonhuman animal is the privileged one for animals in animal studies scholarship, but as discussed in the introduction, I do not make that distinction here.) This centrality also manifested in editing techniques and set development, bringing nature closer to humans through the magic of cinema.11 Early cinematic techniques were also essential in the development of computing technologies.12 Lev Manovich discusses the intersecting histories of cinema and computers, noting it is no accident that the universal Turing machine, an early computational device, looked like a film projector.13 He elaborates, “Cinematic ways of seeing the world, of structuring time, or narrating a story, of linking one’s experience to the next, have become the basic means which computer users access and interact with all cultural data.”14 The structuring logics of cinema beget the structuring logics of computers. Given the role of animal imagery in creating cinematic logics in the first place, said animal imagery thus played a key role in the development of modern computing systems. Computing systems are not the same as social media, even though we often use the former to access the latter. In the modern era—­as computing, technology, and social media companies emerged—­animal imagery was by no means left behind. It is no accident that Silicon Valley, or the hub of technological innovation 32  The Internet Is for Cats

and venture capitalism in the United States, is rife with animal imagery. Berland describes the relationship between technology, the internet, and animal iconography as a virtual menagerie in which “early inventors in computing software created an iconography resembling the classic menagerie to identify their products” and explains that “the menagerie’s original meanings—­spectacle, marvel, the exotic, the conquest of distance—­anticipate and survive their migration to global digital networks.”15 Animal menageries were a popular tool of colonialism in which those in power could show off their expansion and prowess through the collection of animals from faraway lands. According to Berland, Silicon Valley tycoons engage in similar ideological signification today by using a virtual menagerie, or a collection of animal imagery in digital spaces, to put their innovative prowess and power on display.16 The colonial implications are by no means absent here. As Sarah T. Roberts argues, “Although champions of ‘cyberspace’ often suggested limitless possibilities for burgeoning internet social communities, their rhetoric frequently evidenced jingoism of a new techno-­tribalism, invoking problematic metaphors of techno–­Manifest Destiny, pioneering, homesteading, and the electronic frontier.”17 Colonialist ideas are very much a part of Silicon Valley ideologies that carry over into material practice, and animal iconography aligns with the values and goals of social media’s creators. Silicon Valley’s virtual menagerie is a diverse one. Berland acknowledges the Firefox fox, the now-­defunct Gateway cows, and the Twitter bird in her research,18 but there are many more: the GNU goat, Mailchimp’s monkey, Hootsuite’s owl, Tencent QQ’s penguin, Evernote’s elephant, Bitly’s puffer fish, Github’s octopus-­ cat hybrid, Swarm’s (formerly Foursquare) bumble bee, Task­ Rabbit’s rabbit, LiveJournal’s “Frank the Goat,” HireHive’s bee, and elePHPant, the mascot of coding language PHP. Additionally, the O’Reilly computer programming books almost always feature animals on their covers, whether the language is Python, MySQL, or Java.19 These books are a virtual menagerie in and of themselves as they encourage people to conquer learning to code—the same Kittens in Context  33

way humans have conquered nature and animals. While it would be easy to dismiss Silicon Valley’s virtual menagerie of animal iconography as merely creative marketing, digital media scholar Lisa Nakamura points out the need for critical analysis of these images: “In this post-­Internet culture of simulation in which we live, it is increasingly necessary for stable, iconic images of Nature and the Other to be evoked in the world of technological advertising.”20 While images of animals and nature sometimes appear to be opposites of technology and the internet, images of the former are often used in service of the latter’s goals, either through advertising, establishing an identity congruent with ideologies, or encouraging user adoption of new products. Silicon Valley’s virtual menagerie does an immense amount of ideological legwork for technological innovation, adoption, and inventors themselves. Even when animals are adopted for the purpose of being mascots, the ideologies of animal conquests and concomitant colonialism remain. For example, the founder of GNU, Richard Stallman, was committed to liberal visions of freedom that invoked sharing and pedagogy, which became essential to the open-­source software movement.21 Stallman used what has now become known as the GNU goat to be the mascot of his project and manifesto. The image became so recognizable that zoologists at the University of Michigan actually nicknamed the takin species, which most closely resembles Stallman’s mascot, the “GNU goat.”22 The use of animal imagery like the GNU goat to promote the free and open-­source movement seems to have taken off without any serious critical reflection by the adopters; it remains staunchly ironic to simultaneously impart the idea that technologies can be mastered like animals while also adopting signifiers of free-­roaming animals to an open-­source movement. This tension is never addressed or resolved in Silicon Valley. Therefore, while Berners-­ Lee expressed his surprise at the World Wide Web being used for pictures of kittens, it should not be all that shocking that the internet is for cats. The development of modern cinematic and computing technologies has included animals all the way down, and these developments carried over 34  The Internet Is for Cats

into subsequent innovations in social media, modern communication technologies, and Silicon Valley. Animal imagery has been at the heart of technological development, be it in research, innovation, adoption, or sociality. The internet may be for cats, but so were many of the technologies that came before it.

Broadcast Your Cats: Digital Sociality The practice of incorporating pet and animal imagery into technologies, computing, and Silicon Valley meant the tendency migrated to the nascent days of social media. For instance, in a move befitting Muybridge and Edison, the first YouTube video ever uploaded to the site was called “Me at the Zoo,” followed by “Stinky Cat 1” and “Stinky Cat 2,” shared by the founders of YouTube themselves.23 I now shift from the past to the present, focusing specifically on the relationships between pet and animal images and social media. I begin by reiterating a key point: all media are social, and sociality is almost always mediated.24 This is one reason why John Hartley refers to the phrase social media as a tautology: it simply states something already known to be true about all mediated communication—­they encourage sociality.25 Despite the reiterative phrasing, it is worthwhile to think about these platforms beyond the technological and toward the social: “Many people think of platforms as simply technological tools that allow them to do things online: chatting, sharing, commenting, dating, searching, buying stuff, listening to music, watching videos, hailing a cab, and so on. But these online activities hide a system whose logic and logistics are about more than facilitating: they actually shape the way we live and how society is organized.”26 Platforms invite sociality and help shape it, but they do not determine it. Sociality is never simply rendered technological by shifting online; it becomes encouraged in specific ways that are made possible with technological environments and affordances. For instance, the fact that some of the first YouTube videos featured zoos and cats did not mean YouTube was destined to become a platform for only sharing Kittens in Context  35

animal videos. YouTube is replete with all kinds of videos, from the cute and funny to the horrifying and extreme. What YouTube did, however, was promote sociality and interaction along the lines of their original slogan to “broadcast yourself,” which promoted the site as a digital video repository.27 Eventually, the site shifted to encouraging user-­generated content that would be primarily unique to YouTube.28 The types of sociality encouraged by platforms are not static but rather change over time. Platforms often shift their goals, either in response to larger cultural and economic trends or in seeing how individuals use them. It is noteworthy that within the latter two internet cat eras that White proposes—­the meme era and the celebrity era29—­there is also substantial overlap with shifts in social media practice and platform governance. Internet scholar Jean Burgess notes, “This period—­the last 2000s and early 2010s—­has seen the emergence of what we might call a ‘platform paradigm’—­a way of organizing our thinking about the social media landscape as much it is a way of organizing the bourgeoning business of connecting users with their creative content and each other.”30 As social media platforms rose in popularity, how they defined themselves had implications for the type of social practices conducted on their sites.31 Again, this is not an argument for platform determinism but demonstrates how platforms play a hegemonic role in considering user needs, corporate interests, and broader sociocultural and economic contexts. While some social media users may physically interact with pets and animals in making content, many who encounter pet and animal images online never interact with an actual animal. Following Berger, in which animals become more distant from humans in industrialized times, social media functions as a site of mediated encounters between humans, pets, animals, and social practice. These mediated encounters are “the meeting point between the institutional, social, and industrial practices and processes that reshape nonhuman animals into commodified narrative agents, the affective dimensions and emotional appeals that are involved and the reception of such encounters by human audiences. . . . Mediation 36  The Internet Is for Cats

is an act that bring ‘the animal’ into a human world.”32 In digital cultures, the mediated encounters of humans, their pets, other peoples’ pets, and other animals influence, and are influenced by, the sociality encouraged by specific platforms and their concomitant cultural and subcultural dynamics as well as broader cultural tenets that function across the larger internet. Analyzing such mediated encounters aligns with my discussions of social modalities, in which the image or encounter is analyzed, but only through the social forces around it.

Attention and Cuteness and Neoliberalism, Oh My! Attention Studying attention as a social modality of pet and animal social media means understanding the history and contemporary context of the phenomenon as well as how attention functions as a defining cultural dynamic of the internet. Social modalities—or, as Rose proposes, the range of social, cultural, economic, historical, political, and institutional factors that shape how images are seen and used—­are particularly used in conjunction with Parkinson’s consideration of mediated encounters: the former help contextualize images more broadly, and combined with Parkinson’s approach, they become pet and animal specific. Mediated encounters are largely on the microlevel of material practice and sociality, but they are heavily influenced by or challenged in relation to macro­ forces or, for the purposes of my argument, social modalities. I approach attention not just as a commodity to give through one’s “eyeballs”—­or in the form of clicks, likes, and views—­but as a way of understanding digital cultures and existing within them. Writing on attention at the start of the twenty-­first century, Mark Andrejevic historicized attention’s role to note how it functions in tandem with digital technology. Drawing on the insights of political economists Sut Jhally, Bill Livant, and Dallas Smythe, Andrejevic elaborated on the notion that audiences work when they watch television.33 This body of work pushes back on the idea Kittens in Context  37

that people are simply passive consumers of media and that in consuming content they make choices and accept, reject, or negotiate messages or ideas. This approach grew from the political economy of communication and its concerns of power, production, and regulation, and in choosing certain television programs over others, audiences were benefiting the commercial advertisers on those particular programs. In addition to negotiating messages and ideologies of content, individuals also created material and economic implications for media power brokers and gatekeepers. In the social media era, the work of watching coexists alongside the work of being watched. Individuals continue to consume content, and they are more heavily monitored and surveilled by platforms themselves—­who then turn this human action, interaction, culture, content, and practice into quantifiable bits. As communication scholar Greg Elmer points out, Facebook, with its billions of users, is the world’s largest unpaid labor force, as the site converts image sharing, status updates, likes, and comments into data for advertisers.34 But the work of being watched is the business model for other social media platforms as well, as they continuously quantify user practice into metrics. Such datafication is a defining logic of social media platforms, specifically as data are created out of aspects of life that had not been previously quantified.35 What people pay attention to, how they pay attention to it, when they pay attention, and where they pay attention become quantifiable. Akin to how those watching television are not passive dupes, social media users are not either. Individuals constantly make choices about what to consume and what to avoid, and many harness the work of being watched to attempt to gain their own financial compensation. The top Instagram influencers, YouTube vloggers, and TikTok creators have turned attention and social media logic into lucrative careers, but such success stories carry an uneven aspirational weight.36 The success of a few occludes the realities of just how difficult it is to harness attention for social media success. Such accomplishments also do not consider preexisting advantages such as money and connections or the racist, 38  The Internet Is for Cats

ageist, ableist, and heteronormative preconditions for creator success, which show that some platforms only seem interested in boosting young White women to the forefront of their platforms.37 Attention is not universal, nor is it created equal. It is within this landscape that many individuals seek out attention online, and such techniques are not just for the most successful. As communication scholar Alice Marwick points out, “Attention getting techniques employed by consumer brands have trickled down to individual users who increasingly use them to attempt to increase online popularity.”38 As individuals try to build relationships with followers and fans they may engage in one such tactic called microcelebrity, or “a self-­presentation technique in which people view themselves as a public persona to be consumed by others, use strategic intimacy appeal to followers, and regard their audience as fans.”39 While some of the biggest names in internet content creation engage in the practice of microcelebrity to build their fame, this practice is not limited to the likes of Charli D’Amelio, Kat Blaque, and Jenna Marbles. Individuals in all types of online communities can engage in microcelebrity at varying levels, and even the most casual social media user may engage in these performance strategies to present an online persona. Here, microcelebrities engage in the work of watching and the work of being watched to promote themselves to gain followings, track metrics for what types of content are the most successful, and present consistent selves on social media. The rise of attention and viewing oneself as something to be consumed on social media also grew out of the demotic turn, or the increasing production of ordinary people into celebrities and the bleeding of celebrity practices and ideas into everyday life.40 While initially theorized against the backdrop of reality television, the demotic turn also predicted the rise of social media fame. As Stuart Cunningham and David Craig discuss, “Graeme Turner’s . . . critique of the ‘demotic turn’ within media that continues to advance the banality of global celebrity culture anticipates the vulgarity of Jake and Logan Paul and PewDiePie, the bad boys of YouTube, along with the crass commercialism and Kittens in Context  39

hypercapitalism advanced by the Kardashians and the legions of lifestyle influencers they inspire on platforms such as Instagram.”41 On social media, the turn toward celebrity is intertwined with ideas of attention. The sociality encouraged by platforms merges both technological features and cultural dynamics, and attention becomes a way to promote and internalize the logic of fame in everyday, quotidian instances. What, then, is an attention economy? The term is often used to describe the relationship between the amount of content available and the amount of time people have to devote to something—­ namely, information and content. An increase in wealth and content means a decrease of something else, or “a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”42 Taken further, “if an economy is the means and rationale through which a given society commodifies and exchanges scarce resources, then the ‘attention economy’  .  .  . defines human attention as a scarce but quantifiable commodity . . . the attention economy has been theorised as the inversion of the ‘information economy’ in which information is plentiful and attention is the scarce resource.”43 More information and content means less attention to give, and attention becomes scarce yet quantifiable. Through the work of being watched, social media platforms quantify the attention individuals do give to content, and “successful” users become those who attract attention, or eyeballs. Pets and animals on social media are not immune from the logics of celebrity, attention, or the attention economy. Most obviously, this is because pets and animals do not post themselves—­there is always a human behind them, and there are always humans on the other side of the screen to devote attention to them. As White notes in her discussion of the celebrity cat era, this period is defined by “the impulse to give one’s pet a thematic ‘hook’ (the cat is French, or grumpy, or easily startled, or impossibly fluffy), to use professional photography, to seek out visual elements that make images ‘pop.’”44 Such tendencies are intricately interwoven with attention. 40  The Internet Is for Cats

It would be easy to assume pets and animals on social media are ideal fodder for attention because, as animal studies scholar Steve Baker proposes, “people, it seems, just like looking at animals.”45 This assumption is further undergirded by one of the most popularly hailed attributes of pets and animals—­that they are cute, hence people seemingly enjoy looking at them. However, the notion of simply liking looking at animals is a fraught one, as pets and animals are always imbricated within looking relations, sociality, and mediated encounters. As such, cuteness is neither uncomplicated nor a guarantee of attention.

Cuteness The social modality of cuteness for pet and animal social media involves considerations of attention and how cuteness may function to attract it. The academic discipline of cute studies identifies how cuteness can be understood as both an affect and set of aesthetics, in which certain aesthetics prompt the affective response, and seeking the affect may lead to the creation and circulation of the aesthetic. However, the affect and the aesthetic are not reducible to each other and move within complex cultural circuits that are social, historical, and in the case of pet and animal social media, technologically mediated. While we often know cute when we see it, critically interrogating cuteness as affect and aesthetic means understanding where it comes from. In their special issue of M/C Journal on internet cats, Roman Lobato and James Meese write, “We are not the first to take cute media seriously as a site of politics, and as an industry in its own right. Cultural theory has a long, antagonistic relationship with the kitsch and the disposable. From the Frankfurt School’s withering critique of cultural commodification to revisionist feminist accounts that emphasize the importance of the everyday, critics have been conducting sporadic incursions into this space for the better part of a century.”46 To be sure, pets and animals belong less to the categories of the kitsch and the disposable, but they nevertheless overlap with the ability of these objects to say things about politics and the everyday. Kittens in Context  41

Modern discussions of cute aesthetics and affects often begin with reference to Konrad Lorenz’s foundational psychological study that found a certain set of physical and behavioral characteristics made parents more likely to nurture their young. Lorenz dubbed this “the cute response”: “These included a relatively large head, bulging cheeks, short and thick limbs, and clumsy movements, which when combined gave the human or other animal a ‘loveable’ or ‘cuddly’ appearance.”47 While I am not interested in the psychological effects of cuteness, Lorenz’s work does lay the groundwork for interrogating cute aesthetics and affects and how these two are intertwined. Certain formal properties of cute, or cute aesthetics, convey context-­specific meanings and particular ideas. For instance, Simone Ngai’s philosophical analysis of cute aesthetics defines them by what they are not: “While the avant-­garde is conventionally imagined as sharp and pointy, as hard-­or cutting-­edge, cute objects have no edge to speak of, usually being soft, round, and deeply associated with the feminine.”48 The formal properties of the cute aesthetic lack definitive borders and convey softness over rigid hardness. Given its perceived softness, cuteness therefore often comes to be associated with sentimentality, preciousness, helplessness, delicateness, and the absence of anything threatening.49 The lack of definitive boundaries in cuteness bears striking resemblance to a predominant internet aesthetic, which visual scholar Nick Douglas identifies as “Internet Ugly.” Like Ngai’s interrogation of cute, Douglas defines Internet Ugly by what it is not: “The look they create is not at all like the New Aesthetic, which uses QR codes, pixellation, and machine-­readable images to reinterpret the physical world through the eyes of computers. Internet Ugly is nearly the opposite, an imposition of messy humanity upon an online world of smooth gradients, blemish-­ correcting Photoshop, and AutoCorrect. It exploits tools meant to smooth and beautify, using them to muss and distort.”50 The examples Douglas invokes are memes such as Rage Comics, drawing people as sloths, and Pinterest fails. What these have in common is that while they may not be exclusively feminine, 42  The Internet Is for Cats

helpless, or delicate, there is a particular softness, roundness, and definitive lack of boundaries to the images and projects. This softness and the associated properties of the internet’s cute content are always juxtaposed against the more avant-­garde aesthetics of the technologies and computer systems through which they are accessed.51 However, they are not entirely opposites, as the cute aesthetic and Internet Ugly have as much in common as what differentiates them. Like cute, Internet Ugly has almost no definitive edges to speak of. Both cuteness and Internet Ugly become ways to stand out online and differentiate oneself and their content from the hard lines, smooth gradients, and sleek perfection found across things like avant-­garde technology and attempts at photographic perfection through Photoshop and editing applications. While one may not find a Rage Comic meme necessarily cute, similar aesthetic properties may also be found in images and videos of puppies—­namely, roundness and simplicity. This demonstrates how aesthetic criteria are not necessarily enough to determine cuteness, which is why a turn to affect and context-­ specific considerations are key. While affect extends beyond just cuteness, a cute affect has its own unique implications stemming from the cute aesthetic—­namely, that cuteness invites a particular form of sociality. Noting affect as “the cute response,” Kate Marx argues that “the cute response acts as a mechanism that releases sociality, that is, the desire to play with and otherwise interact with the cute entity  .  .  . attempts to touch, hold, play with, talk to, and otherwise interact with the cute entity.”52 Cute aesthetics may prompt cute affects, which in turn may prompt sociality—­making cuteness an ideal form for socially mediated communication, as desires to be more social and connected drove the development of the modern internet.53 For pets and animals in general, not just on social media, it may be easy to fall into the trap of thinking the cute aesthetic and affect are intrinsic to them. But again, I harken back to Julia Long’s historical stories of nineteenth-­century women wearing their pet beetles and admiring them as beloved companions. Popular pets and animals change over time, something also indicated Kittens in Context  43

by the internet’s corgi obsession, in which these dogs are prominently and frequently featured by outlets such as BuzzFeed and in popular Facebook groups with millions of members such as one named Disapproving Corgis.54 After Disney rereleased 101 Dalmatians in 1985, registrations of Dalmatians to the American Kennel Club increased over 500 percent, followed in subsequent years by the steepest descent of breed interest in the organization’s history.55 While cute aesthetic formal properties may remain relatively stable over time, the details and the micro are constantly shifting, meaning whatever may provoke the social cute affect is culturally and historically specific. Why, then, has the proliferation of cute content on the internet—­ be it pets, animals, or more—­been referred to as a “cute economy?” While it may be a tongue-­in-­cheek way to refer to how such cute content is always in high supply and high demand, such a metaphor flattens the cultural and historical nuances of the cute aesthetic and affect. Harkening back to attention, scholars of the attention economy posit that economics is what people do with scarce resources. While it may make sense to refer to attention in terms of an economy because it is a scarce and finite resource to give in an era oversaturated with content, there is far from a shortage of cuteness. However, when combined, the logics of the attention and the logics of cuteness may bolster each other, using the cute aesthetic and affect to attract eyeballs and promote sociality.

Neoliberalism Neoliberalism emerged as a dominant economic philosophy in the late twentieth century, building on nineteenth-­century ideals of classic economic liberalism and free-­market capitalism.56 Neoliberalism sees “the state” as oppressive, and any intervention would be catastrophic for the freedom of individuals, businesses, and economic interests. But as Stuart Hall explains, neoliberalism was never just about economics. It was also conjunctural, operating in the recounting of historical memory, geopolitics, and pop-­cultural shifts.57 It became a way for states, with their hands clean of economic market intervention, to promote a commanding self-­identity 44  The Internet Is for Cats

and assert power. Neoliberalism has always been as much of a cultural doctrine as an economic one. Under neoliberalism, economic logics come to permeate almost all aspects of social life, and cultural conditions are such that tenets of neoliberalism structure everyday lives. As Rosalind Gill explains, under this self-­governing purview of neoliberalism, individuals are called upon to self-­discipline, self-­manage, and self-­monitor, all in service of conducting their lives in efficient and successful ways.58 This manifests in discourses such as “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps,” the fallacious idea that one must have the tenacity to work hard and if they do not succeed, they did not work hard enough; the proliferation of devices meant to help optimize daily lives, be they smart watches or fitness trackers;59 mottos of “girl boss” and “lean in” that encourage women to be savvy in the workforce;60 and the datafication of workplaces for “efficiency” and “optimization,” which also doubles as consistent surveillance of employees.61 All these ideas and objects work toward the same goal—­making people efficient and productive citizens and absolving macrostructures of any responsibility for creating impediments to success. Such a position, however, staunchly ignores the role systemic ideologies and macrolevel structures have in creating a culture that is constantly an unequal playing field. Neoliberalism has historical amnesia when it is convenient; while it may use certain memories of historical events to justify its position and power,62 it fails to consider the historical implications of events that have been racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, or ableist. For instance, neoliberal cultural tenets long proceeded their economic iteration, as they were self-­governing keys to survival that Black individuals, particularly in the United States, had to rely on for decades.63 When slaves were freed in the nineteenth century in the United States, self-­help discourse first appeared as a way for White institutions to absolve themselves of responsibility for any social issues faced by these individuals.64 Gill explores how, in the twenty-­first century, these neoliberal tenets bear a striking similarity to the so-­called confident, Kittens in Context  45

individualistic subject of postfeminism and how neoliberalism is a gendered social construct.65 The proliferation of neoliberal tenets into everyday life is what led Gill to theorize this cultural shift as a neoliberal subjectivity.66 Understanding how an economic logic became a dominant cultural way of being means understanding how ideologies “get inside” of individuals and have material implications for social life. This is the “psychic life” of neoliberalism, or how these tenets become internalized.67 This is the hegemonic practice of neoliberalism at work; in operating in day-­to-­day lives such a dominant ideal is actively maintained. Many of the ideas, practices, and tenets discussed overlap with neoliberal subjectivities. The turn to an attention economy relies heavily on self-­surveillance to act in a way that will attract attention vis-­à-­vis social media content, and many savvy social media users rely on platforms’ datafication mechanisms to attract eyeballs—­be it YouTube’s watch time to viewer ratio, TikTok’s “For You Page,” or algorithms. Microcelebrity is also wholly neoliberal. In viewing oneself as a persona to be consumed by followers and fans, individuals self-­monitor to conduct themselves in a way befitting the self-­brand they have put on display. Individuals may rely on the neoliberal features of social media platforms and neoliberal cultural tenets to make an income, or they may simply conduct themselves on social media through neoliberal subjectivities. White discusses the importance of branding one’s animal in the celebrity cat era,68 and such a practice is imbricated in both attention and neoliberalism. The personal brand is a hallmark of the neoliberal era, particularly for individuals seeking professional compensation, either through jobs or the social media creative industries.69 Cuteness is also not exempt from neoliberalism. Under neoliberalism, almost everything has the potential to become labor, and people try to succeed in profoundly individualistic ways. As Nicholas-­Brie Guarriello suggests, “The stealthy and playful turn of neoliberalism targets the everyday layperson and seeks to mine him or her of their labor and creativity for monetary and human capital.”70 Corporate involvement in play, the blurring of work and 46  The Internet Is for Cats

leisure, and the increased tendency to monetize creativity are fundamentally neoliberal tenets.71 Cuteness itself has become one such form of blurred work and leisure at the juncture of neoliberalism and social media. Known as “cute labor,” this practice relies on attention, cute aesthetics, cute affects, and neoliberal logics. Crystal Abidin explores how such tenets permeate the Singaporean influencer industry,72 and Gabriella Lukacs analyzes similar tenets in Japan’s net idols of the 1990s and early 2000s: “By acting cute, net idols induce feelings of ease, comfort, and pleasure. In other words, by acting cute, net idols perform emotional labor.”73 Considering how neoliberal economics, subjectivities, and tenets produce a “care deficit” under late capitalism,74 cute labor is ideally primed for success to help ease not just workforce burdens but the challenges of daily social life as well. However, cute labor—­particularly in the forms of visual cultures like LOLCats, as Allison Page discusses in LOLWork—­is not simply straightforward. While it may provide a reprieve for the viewer, this reprieve is not absolute. As for content creators, the neoliberal logics are inescapable. To be sure, pets and animals cannot be neoliberal subjects—­but their owners, handlers, and viewers can. Why should such cultural, economic, labor, and profiting tendencies not trickle down to practices pertaining to pets and animals? Pets and animals have always played a role in human labor as well as cultural and ideological shifts related to economics. As Susan Nance argues in her history of elephants in the American circus, “Today we take for granted that animal characters—­both the purely fictional and those developed from actual animals—­are ubiquitous in mature consumer societies. But this was not inevitable. Someone had to teach people how to accept animals framed as zoo pets or movie stars or reality TV characters by seeing that one might gain power as a human in consumer capitalist society by doing so.”75 Today, neoliberal subjectivities mean that humans may labor through their pets or animals in myriad forms: pet influencers, funny pet and animal TikTok videos, or cat compilation videos on YouTube. Within neoliberal subjectivities, the pet influencer, and the use of pets Kittens in Context  47

and animals in social media content creation, are the twenty-­first-­ century equivalent of a farmer using a horse to plow the fields—­it is all human labor through the relationship between mediated technologies and the role of animals.

The Real Problem with Metaphorical Economies The visual cultures of pet and animal social media influence, and are influenced by, attention, cuteness, and neoliberalism. While all three are often thought of in terms of economic metaphors, it is cultural understandings that offer insights into how they manifest in social practice. The tendency to rely on economics to explain cultural phenomena abounds, and I remain hesitant to attribute an “ultimate” or “final” social cause to the economic. As Hartley discusses, “For a long time, since Marx in fact, social life has been supposed to be ‘powered’ (in every sense of the word) by the economy. We’re not used to thinking about communication, culture, and meaning as the drivers of human change in society. But recent discoveries, going back 1,200  years, suggest that they are primary, causing other kinds of social change, including economics and politics.”76 Hartley’s words reflect the writings of Stuart Hall, Louis Althusser, Antonio Gramsci, and Jacques Derrida, who all pushed back on the idea of one singular thing that powers social, cultural, and political life, or “the last instance.” The last instance never comes because social life and cultural practice can never be attributed to one singular thing. In coining colloquial terms like attention economy or cute economy, cultural analysis risks falling into such a reductive economic trap. While such terms may be employed as metaphors, metaphors perform immense ideological legwork in that “if the comparison sticks, it will work under the surface not only to reflect, but to influence how we think.”77 Metaphors have been extremely useful framing devices for the internet and new media technologies, as they often encourage adoption or make an abstract concept more accessible. However, metaphors always come with implications, as noted by Tarleton Gillespie in his discussion of how social media 48  The Internet Is for Cats

platforms specifically choose the term platform to describe themselves and absolve themselves of certain responsibilities.78 Similarly, Brett Frischmann points out that the metaphor of “the cloud” is used just to make people comfortable with the fact their data lives on someone else’s computer.79 Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green push back on using viral to describe the cultural proliferation and flows of immensely popular internet content, instead privileging the term spreadable to explain the ways viral content is not inevitable but always the result of human cultural practice. While in the realm of theoretical comparisons, metaphors always have concrete implications. As I have argued elsewhere with Jennifer Malson, cultural practice and sociality do not map neatly, or at all, to economic metaphors.80 The ideas of attention and cute economies undergird such reductionism and promote neoliberal sensibilities within cultural sociality. As Hall points out, “Marketing and selling metaphors now threaten to swamp public discourse. . . . Every social relation can be bought and sold, has its ‘price’ and its ‘costs.’ Everything can become a commodity. Nothing escapes the ‘discipline’ of the ‘bottom line.’”81 Hall argues such a proliferation of economic metaphors leads to pervasive economic ways of thinking, and this is a by-­product of neoliberalism. In allowing economic metaphors to seep into both attention and cuteness, academics come to perform the work of neoliberalism by inserting market-­ based logics into all corners of social analysis. Throughout the rest of this book, I consider attention and cuteness without their economic attachments and neoliberalism along the lines of Gill’s subjectivities. This is not to say economics do not occur on the internet—­in fact, much of social media platforms and practices have shifted to account for a rising degree of “shopability.”82 Similarly, economic terms may be appropriate at times when analyzing neoliberalism specifically or interrogating actual or aspirational financial compensation. I am not suggesting throwing the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to ideas of the attention or cute economy but rather that it is imperative to consider the ideological work done by the term economy Kittens in Context  49

and whether it is the most appropriate language when what is actually being discussed is social practice. Such metaphors have become taken for granted in internet studies research. In discussing the visual cultures of pet and animal social media, I adroitly move through my analysis in a way that prevents cultural practice from being reduced to solely economic drivers.

50  The Internet Is for Cats

2 “I’ve Heard People on TikTok Love This” Attention as Materiality and Looking Relation

During 2019 and 2020, TikTok took the world by storm. Originally written off as a silly lip-­synching app, it then exploded in popularity as a place to make jokes, share video-­based memes, humorously comment on social and political events, and come up with the latest dance moves. Much of the public discourse around TikTok has centered on data security and privacy concerns within geopolitical quagmires, as TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is located in China; the app’s rather spot-­on algorithmically curated home page called “For You”; and accusations that the app censors plus-­size, disabled, and noncisgender body types from its content. Pet and animal content quickly followed to TikTok. The visual cultures of pet and animal social media are always given form within a platform’s social dynamics and technical features, and users may perceive or challenge them in certain ways. There is, however, one predominant feature on TikTok that seems ideally suited for communicating vis-­à-­vis pets and animals: the ability to overlay any audio over any visual. Specifically, TikTok allows users to insert prerecorded tracks over their videos, either one of their own or one from the app’s ever-­expanding audio library. While such a feature harkens back to TikTok’s previous iteration as Musical​.ly, which 51

was a lip-­synching app, it carried over into TikTok as individuals put their own dance moves to such tracks with different music and audio. For pets and animals on the app, this feature is twofold: individuals can either use the audio to talk about their pets or use it to engage in anthropomorphizing their pets or animals by making it seem they are the one speaking or the one conveying a sentiment through song. The goal is often the same—­in actively seeking out and participating in whatever is “going viral” at the moment, individuals on TikTok merge platform dynamics with popular trends to seek out potential online visibility1 and form imitation publics, where networks are formed through replication rather than interpersonal communication.2 A popular pet and animal audio circulated on the app in 2020. The videos all functioned in the same way, meaning they followed memetic logics of allowing individual users to put their own spin on a recurring format3 as audio memes.4 The videos would feature an individual, presumably walking, and they would point the camera at the ground while they moved. At this point, the user would say, “I’ve heard people on TikTok love this. You walk in. . . .” They let their words trail off, and then they would then arrive at some form of door or opaque gate, swing it open, and on the other side would be a pet, or if the video was being made by one of the numerous animal sanctuaries, rescues, or zoos that make content on the app, it would feature a seal, zebra, alligator, or other animal. The user would then say, “Boom! Kitty.” They would conclude by saying, “Now we’re TikTok famous.” The audio, “I’ve heard people on TikTok love this” and “Now we’re TikTok famous,” combined with an ostensibly cute animal, is indicative of the way cuteness combines with attention in the visual cultures of pet and animal social media. Taken together, these bits of audio acknowledge that pet and animal content may attract human attention on the video-­making app. But as this chapter will explore, cuteness is only one strategy to attract attention. Standing out in the contemporary visual cultures of pet and animal social media requires more. As my journeys into pet conventions, YouTube pet channels, pet influencers, and pet and animal TikToks 52  The Internet Is for Cats

found, the practices used by humans to draw attention to their content through pets and animals are extraordinarily varied. This chapter explores pet and animal social media through the social modality of attention. My theses are threefold: First, I analyze pet and animal social media through the social modality of attention, and this means understanding how and why pets and animals are fodder within this ideology of attention that circulates within digital cultures. Second, I move beyond describing pet and animal images in terms of the supply-­and-­demand metaphors of the attention economy and instead focus on how broader cultural dynamics “get inside” individuals as modes of engaging with, creating, consuming, and sharing pets and animals online.5 Third, to move the conversation from one of economic metaphors to ideological interiority, I engage with scholarship on self-­representation, looking relations, and materiality to show how attention is a way of looking and being on social media. Pet and animal social media are particularly useful for pushing at these tenets because, obviously, the entity featured did not create or share itself. There is always a human behind the creation, post, or share. My question in this chapter is, How does attention as a social modality have implications for digital culture practices? To study pet and animal social media through the modality of attention means moving beyond economic metaphors of supply and demand and focusing on how people perform, curate, and respond to cultural ideas of attention in social practice. As such, this chapter largely relies on ethnographic data from my research, blending interviews, texts, and observations to chart the daily, microlevel cultures of pet and animal social media. And finally, studying pet and animal social media through attention means assessing how these cultural dynamics have real implications for pets and animals beyond the images shared online, further complicating the idea of such content as overtly wholesome but also intertwined with the complex and even harmful.

“I’ve Heard People on TikTok Love This”  53

Looking Relations and Materiality of Animals and Mediated Encounters Claire Parkinson describes the mediated encounters between humans, pets, and animals as the moment in which animals are brought into the human world, but this interaction does not simply happen. It is always influenced by a range of social forces, a dialogue between the micro and macro.6 It is also influenced by history. Attention, pets, animals, and the mediated encounter sites of social media are not new or unique phenomena. For instance, in Anglophone cultures, animals are recurring popular characters on home video shows such as America and Australia’s Funniest Home Videos and the United Kingdom’s You’ve Been Framed.7 The frequent incorporation of pets and animals into these shows demonstrates one such way attention privileges the furry and scaly. Animal studies scholar Randy Malamud elaborates, “We visually experience, and consume, a dazzling panoply of animals that surround us in our worlds: animals we fondle and animals we hunt . . . animals we tune out, erase, rather than confront the moral problem they represent; animals we fetishize (exotic animals, expensive animals, illicit animals, charismatic animals); animals we subject to ridicule (tigers jumping through hoops; spectacles in zoos; subjects of ‘stupid pet tricks,’ a regular feature in late-­night television entertainment) . . . animals who float through the ether of the television and the Internet.”8 While Malamud relegates the internet to one node in this larger landscape, much of what he describes have their own iterations on social media. TikTok, for instance, has its own panoply of pet tricks, rare animals being fetishized, and many of the other overlooked ethical, moral, and care issues Malamud describes. Similarly, the meme of “I’ve heard people on TikTok love this” encompasses many of Malamud’s descriptors, becoming an umbrella phrase that ushers together the privileging of transplanted animals, wild animals, exotic animals, illicit animals, and cuddly animals in digital contexts. In Why Look at Animals?, John Berger discusses how in the modern era, animals become co-­opted by humans into families 54  The Internet Is for Cats

and into spectacles. On the former, Berger refers to an uptick in pet ownership, and for the latter, he references how animals have become increasingly incorporated into media and entertainment.9 Spectacle is a key concept in media studies in which media culture dramatizes controversies and struggles in order to promote basic societal values.10 While I am less concerned here with media spectacles of pets and animals, I invoke Berger’s ideas to demonstrate how pets and animals are always already wrapped up in human looking relations, of which spectacle is one specific type. Berger may separate the family and the spectacle as disparate entities, but as the proliferation of internet-­famous pets turned memes and celebrities such as Grumpy Cat, Lil Bub, and Smudge Lord show, animals may become co-­opted into the family as spectacle when displayed in digital cultures. This specifically occurs in the celebrity cat era, in which pets become part of a human’s self-­brand or are presented on social media as having their own brand. Pet ownership and drawing attention to one’s pets and animals are not mutually exclusive. The complex relationship between pets, animals, humans, and attention demonstrates how looking relations are always intertwined with material practice. The idea of the attention economy on social media is a metaphor undergirded by visual assumptions, particularly within its considerations of “attracting eyeballs”11—­a similar sentiment to “I’ve heard people on TikTok love this.” However, the supply-­and-­demand assumptions of the attention economy, combined with the idea of successful content being that which attracts eyeballs, forwards a Cartesian binary bolstered by simple datafication. On the other hand, considering attention within visual culture means analyzing attention as a constant dialectic of looking relations and material practice. If visuality refers to the way culture has implications for what is seen and how it is seen, attention becomes an ideological cultural practice for how pets and animals may be seen in everyday life as well as how content may be created or shared around them online. Regarding social media, internet scholar Katrin Tiidenberg argues that the metaphor of “Instagrammable” is a useful way to “I’ve Heard People on TikTok Love This”  55

theorize cultural practice, sociality, and the technical features of social media—­an amalgamation that unites both looking relations and material practice. Tiidenberg invokes “Instagrammable as a metaphor for making sense of how social media affords different practices of looking and showing, but also for understanding what the ‘appropriate’ ways of looking and showing on social media are.”12 Importantly, Instagrammable does not just have to refer to content shared to the photo-­sharing platform Instagram. As a heuristic and critical device, Instagrammable is a way to think about lived experience and social media documentation. Tiidenberg elaborates, “Instagrammable metaphorically communicates the affordances that social media has for looking and showing. It is those aspects of platforms and apps that we perceive as making it possible, even likely, for us to be able to perfectly capture and present our life as enjoying, inspiring, and jealousy-­inducing.”13 Instagrammable is also one type of attention-­focused looking relation that provides a framework for thinking about the relationship between social practice and staging material content for social media. Instagrammable describes the imbrication of technology, culture, and ideology, and it follows the thinking outlined by art scholar John Tagg. He argues the development of the camera produced profound social, cultural, and ideological developments that impacted how people came to understand cameras and what they were capable of.14 This understanding was as much about ideological and cultural hegemony as it was about technological ability. Tagg discusses how the camera came to have “truth” associated with it, as evidenced by the popular idiom “the camera doesn’t lie.” Because people believed that the camera’s technology produced truth, the technological apparatus had immense sociocultural implications for the rise and ordering of mass society in the nineteenth century, as pictures became valid forms of identification and photographic evidence became accepted in courts of law.15 Tiidenberg’s theorization of Instagrammable provides a similar framework of sociocultural looking relations for social media technologies. Similarly, “I’ve heard people on TikTok love this” embodies the technology of the app and social beliefs about what 56  The Internet Is for Cats

humans (specifically, TikTok users) may love to see about animals. While none of these looking relations make someone create content in a specific way, the looking relations do usher in a cultural terrain in which certain types of content are privileged over others. Since the Industrial Revolution, pets and animals have been a part of looking relations, be it through “the camera doesn’t lie” or Instagrammable ideas. Even Eadweard Muybridge’s initial horse-­and-­camera experiment was embedded within nineteenth-­ century looking relations, as he believed enough cameras could reveal a “truth” about horses that was previously unknown to humans. Julia Long outlines a similar set of looking relations surrounding “camera hunting” following the proliferation of cameras into popular society in the nineteenth century. Camera hunting utilized the affordances of photography for men engaging in hunting to not only collect their dead animals for taxidermy but also show themselves at the moment of slaughter.16 By having two mementos—­the dead animal and a photo of themselves with the animal—­men were able to demonstrate prowess, power, ideas about masculinity, and domination over animals and nature.17 Whereas looking relations like “the camera doesn’t lie” and Instagrammable refer to the imbrication of culture and technologies, when animals are added to the content, they inevitably make specific claims about what animals are and what they can do for humans. These historical examples show how attention has always played a part in the mediated encounters of humans, animals, and pets. However, it emerges widely in digital cultures in the twenty-­ first century, since social practice, as well as culture, has become platformized.18 By this, David Nieborg and Thomas Poell suggest platformization is “the penetration of economic, governmental, and infrastructural extensions of digital platforms into the web and app ecosystems, fundamentally affecting the operations of the cultural industries.”19 While platformization most readily affects those who seek labor and income in the digital culture industries of influencers, vloggers, and aspiring-­to-­professional YouTubers and TikTokkers, the logics of platformization have wide-­reaching implications for swaths of social media users, including their pets “I’ve Heard People on TikTok Love This”  57

and animals. The platformization of cultural production means the digitally mediated encounters of humans, pets, and animals have also become platformized. Pet and animal content is a lucrative part of the digital culture industries—­through YouTubers who post videos of themselves feeding their dozens of pets, Instagrammers who use their pets to model products, or TikTokkers who microvlog about days in the lives of their interesting animals, such as Caitlin Doran, a California-­based TikTokker who shares daily looks into the life of Tiptoe, her 150-­pound sulcata tortoise.20 Through their humans, pets and animals become popular within the digital culture industries. This is key for both professionals and those who aspire to such status. Curating content for the digital culture industries means such content must be made and shared in certain ways. This involves consideration of material practices. Materiality serves a hegemonic function within both the professional and aspirational digital culture industries. It also does for casual social media users considering whether something is Instagrammable or in line with “I’ve heard people on TikTok love this.” Materiality serves a hegemonic function and helps explain culture and ideology. Cultural practices are worked toward by individuals making a world for themselves within certain preexisting and constantly evolving terrains. On this, John Storey explains, “Although material objects are always more than signs, more than symbolic representation of social relations, what they are for us is inconceivable outside a particular culture that entangles meaning, materiality, and social practice. They are never things in or themselves, but always objects that are articulated in relation to a particular regime of realized signification, enabling and constraining particular type of social practice.”21 Looking relations always have concomitant material practices associated with them that enable, constrain, and sustain the dialectic in question. Considering the relationships between pet and animal social media and attention, certain types of pet and animal practices for social media visual cultures may be privileged (e.g., “I’ve heard people on TikTok love this”) and create a historically specific culture and context for these images. While I know animal studies scholars will surely take 58  The Internet Is for Cats

umbrage with my discussion of object materiality, pets, and animals, I do not invoke Storey’s conception to make claims about the status of animals in nature’s hierarchies. I invoke cultural materiality to explain how people may interact with their own pets, the pets of others, and animals in conjunction with the mediated internet. A key component of materiality within pet and animal social media is self-­representation. Self-­representation on social media is an enormous concept, but most considerations harken back to sociologist Erving Goffman’s theory of impression management. Working from theater terminology, Goffman argues individuals have a “frontstage” and “backstage” self.22 The front stage is the persona individuals put on for the world, and the back stage is where one gathers themselves, prepares for their performance, and may let the mask slip off.23 Social media performances largely consider attention, be it through how certain actions, curated identities, and practices will draw clicks and likes or how social media platforms may goad users toward certain types of performances and away from others.24 Self-­representation is inescapable when considering the spectrum from casual social media users to aspiring or professional creators, as all social media users engage in some form of the practice in being online. Self-­ representation is a material practice, since individuals must act and perform in certain ways to achieve the desired outcome. Regarding pets and animals, individuals may take pictures of pets and animals that include themselves, but often, this type of content is shared without a human conveyed. In their work on social media self-­representations, Katrin Tiidenberg and Andrew Whelan argue individuals do not have to be present in a photo to make a claim about their identity, and these “not selfies” say just as much about a person as those that portray their embodied self.25 Pets are one such type of “not selfie,” for in sharing a picture of their companion, they make a claim about themselves and what matters to them. Jessica Greenebaum’s concept of the “fur baby” identity similarly reflects such a notion—­pet parents may adopt a fur baby identity to distinguish themselves from others as a loving pet owner.26 The fur baby identity is a performance rooted in “I’ve Heard People on TikTok Love This”  59

Goffman’s impression management, as it is a strategy to reinforce others’ views of oneself as a loving pet parent. “Not selfies,” or photos of one’s pet shared to social media, perform this work in digital contexts. Similar performance strategies relate to the idea that pets are part of one’s extended self. Writing from the perspective of business marketing, Russell Belk theorized the idea of the extended self as the individual plus the other people, places, things, or pets that constitute their sense of being.27 Pets are a frequently cited part of the extended self. On social media, friends, fans, and followers come to know what matters to someone based on what they share. Pictures one posts of their pet reveal more information about the human owner than the pet itself, even if the human is absent from the photo. Similarly, sharing pictures of animals from zoos, aquariums, and rescue sanctuaries may also indicate an animal-­loving identity performance or that animal welfare is a concern of one’s extended self. Self-­representations and identity performances on social media through pets and animals are a form of cultural materiality because they enmesh meaning, practice, and beliefs about technologies and culture.

No Humans Required—­Sometimes Self-­representation is a crucial aspect of sharing and interacting with pets and animals online. The term self here is fluid—­it can refer to a person sharing their own pet or animal, the pet or animal at their place of employment, or someone else’s pet or animal. Self may also refer to journalists and the branding of their outlets28; for instance, BuzzFeed frequently showcases other peoples’ animals and pets, and not just on their subsidiary BuzzFeed Animals. Humans are not necessarily required to be in the photo itself for them to convey information about themselves, their organization, or brand. This came up repeatedly when I spoke to those who share pet and animal photos online, either their own or others. For instance, Jennifer, a college student who ran an Instagram account for her dog, Marley, told me, “I just posted I had a huge test this 60  The Internet Is for Cats

week, so I took [Marley] to the coffee shop to study with me, and I took a photo with my laptop right there. And people realized, ‘oh, Jennifer has a huge test this week and Marley is her study buddy.’ And then people saw me on campus and told me, ‘Good luck on your test, I saw it on Marley’s Instagram.’” How Jennifer displayed Marley on the dog’s specific Instagram demonstrates a confluence of materiality and looking relations. Because of how Jennifer understood her relationship with Marley, as well as what she considered “Instagrammable,” she staged a picture to share in a specific way. However, Jennifer herself was absent from this photo. The display of Marley and the studying materials allowed her followers to infer that she had an exam coming up, indicating how Jennifer communicated about her own life through staging Marley and her image in specific ways. But with the ubiquity of pets and animals online, one may encounter creatures whose owners or handlers they do not know. This may be particularly prevalent in the sharing of animals through rescues, sanctuaries, or news organizations, but it can also happen with individual owners. On this, one of my participants, Sarah, who shared photos of her own dog online, told me, “There’s an added element when you know the animal or you’ve met the owner, so you can understand the connection a bit more.” My participant Jason, who had no pets of his own but enjoyed following them online, said, “I would feel weird following some random person’s dog on Instagram. . . . I don’t really want to comment on it and being like, ‘Oh, who’s a good chump boy?’ or something like that.” For Sarah and Jason, digital interactions with pets were made more enjoyable when they already knew the owner. However, both told me they did follow accounts such as the popular @WeRateDogs, a famous Twitter account that accepts dog photo submissions and crafts original narratives for the photos,29 and similar iterations related to their own occupational fields (@PoliSciDogs and @GiantMilitaryCats, respectively). Their answers indicated a very either/or situation at work in pets, looking relations, materiality, and the extended self. Pet images were either enjoyed when they were attached to an owner and something could be conveyed about the extended self, or they “I’ve Heard People on TikTok Love This”  61

were enjoyed when the pet’s image had been completely removed from its original context and repurposed with a new narrative, as is done with accounts like @WeRateDogs. For content creators like Jennifer, looking relations and materiality were important for what they can convey about themselves and their pets. For content consumers like Sarah and Jason, the focus was on what can be learned about a friend or acquaintance or the joy and the humor that come from a narrative untethered to a person. However, most internet users are simultaneously content creators and consumers. Yet the penchant for the extreme opposites does reflect broader considerations of context and content in digital cultures. Online content is rarely presented in full context,30 and what my participants divulged showed not only that this may be the norm but that it can be expected and enjoyed. Attention as looking relation and material practice bolsters previously established tenets of internet culture but also reveals new nuances within it. Attention has also shifted offline relations. Internet scholars remain hesitant to bifurcate the online and offline distinctly, and I do not mean to do that here. Rather, I turn to an anecdote from one of my participants, Kara, who had no pets of her own, that highlights the constant interplay between offline practices, online content, and the ideology of attention. She told me, One day, [my friend and I] bumped into the loveliest man with the most beautiful Labradoodle I’ve ever seen. . . . He started talking to us because the dogs really liked each other and they were playing for a while, so we had a conversation about how he started an Instagram account for his dog. . . . He told us to follow him and he urged my friend to make an Instagram account for her puppy because he’s so cute. But he kept coming back to how he had named his dog the Labradoodle of Amsterdam31 or something like that. Then we checked his page—­it was very much not like the person we had met. It was Instagram. It was a whole other world. It was people relating to this animal in a completely different way than what we did when our animals played at the park. And also, I’ve never heard this before growing 62  The Internet Is for Cats

up. This would have never been a thing like “Oh, you like my dog? Follow them on Instagram.”

Kara’s words reflect how pet owners curate an image for their animals online, and it may be entirely different from the offline experience. This was a case not of the extended self being the point of contention but of how the material practices one may engage in for social media may differ from material practices of everyday life. Pet ownership itself may become a practice of materiality within the ideology of attention. One of my participants, Jacqueline, told me that when she and her husband were thinking about getting a dog, social media was a contributing factor in their decision-­ making. She said, “We realized that if we could get free dog food or free toys because our puppy was popular online, that would be awesome.” She subsequently conceded the difficulties of achieving “Instafame,” as it was hard to break through given how many pets were on social media platforms. Simply having a cute dog was not enough to attract the attention she wanted to receive perks. Jacqueline was not an isolated case of this, nor does her sentiment only apply to the interpersonal or casual practices of social media posts. Her words reflect a larger feeling, a way of conceiving of pets in tandem with social media logics and especially the social modality of attention. Such a sentiment also emerged in my observational work as I watched and took notes on pet and animal channels on YouTube. One creator noted the sponsor for that day’s video was a website called Pets Add Life (PAL). Considering this advertisement as a metafield within digital ethnography, I went to the advertiser’s website. PAL describes itself as an “interspecies (#diversity) committee working to make the world a better place by bringing people and pets together.”32 They note on their website that “in the battle over the Internet, pets reign supreme,”33 and they offer a quiz to help potential pet owners figure out what type of animal to get. On the site, I was greeted by a screen of rolling text. The text showed PAL decreed their name, “Pets Add Life,” but also “Pets Add Cardio” (meaning walks outside with one’s dog), “Pets Add LOLZ” (meaning joy and happiness to one’s life), and finally, “I’ve Heard People on TikTok Love This”  63

Fig. 2.1. “Pets add likes”

Credit: Screenshot from petsaddlife​.org

“Pets Add Likes.” PAL presented getting a pet as a way to bolster one’s social media likes through attention, thereby also curating pet ownership and self-­representation as a material social practice enmeshed in broader cultural meanings of animals and the internet.

Look at Me Looking at Animals While PAL is merely one organization promoting animal adoption through increased social media metrics, pet owners I talked to, like Jacqueline, demonstrate how social media practices may influence pet ownership and adoption. Social media and their looking relations have material implications for pets and animals and how offline experiences may be curated for online content. Popularity and datafication are two defining social media logics that have changed the conditions for social interaction and invaded almost all areas of public life.34 “Likes” represents both popularity and datafication in that likability is considered desirable, and datafication refers to how likability is literally counted. The idea that “Pets Add Likes” enmeshes technologies, looking relations, materiality, popularity, and datafication. Pet ownership itself may be a type of materiality, not because pets or animals are objects, but because within social media they are able to be mediated by human owners or keepers. Social media 64  The Internet Is for Cats

logic influences these looking relations and how they manifest in the material. For example, social media have increased the prevalence of what is known as Black Dog Syndrome, or the phenomenon that describes how black dogs and cats are often passed over in adoption shelters in favor of lighter-­colored animals.35 While Black Dog Syndrome predates social media, shelters across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom anecdotally self-­report increases in the number of individuals coming in and requesting any animal but a black one in recent years, as they claim black cats and dogs are “not photographable for social media.”36 There are numerous looking relations to unpack in the idea that black dogs and cats are not photographable for social media. First, such a claim is indicative of how humans transfer their colorist and racial biases to animals, which sociologist Sarah Mayorga-­Gallo has discussed extensively in her writing about how dogs may be used to uphold racial boundaries in social interactions.37 In contemporary settings, pets and animals are often treated as separate and apart from human racism and colorism, but this is an ahistorical fallacy. Following legacies of colonialism and slavery, certain images of animals have often been used as offensive stereotypes, and this is by no means a phenomenon of the past. For instance, during the U.S. presidency of Barack Obama, former first lady Michelle Obama was often referred to in dehumanizing terms as an “ape” or “gorilla,”38 which drew on long-­standing racist comparisons of Black individuals to primates.39 Throughout history, how people look at animals has had material implications for how people look at other people, thereby demonstrating the need to interrogate Whiteness, at least in Western and Anglophone environments, as a founding lens of pet and animal looking relations, both historical and contemporary. Racism and colorism are the first looking relation to unpack in Black Dog Syndrome. By refusing to adopt dogs or cats that “aren’t photographable for social media,” individuals practice colorist assumptions and social media looking relations. Such a sentiment reinforces PAL’s claim that “pets add likes” and that a main reason to adopt a pet is for social media clout. To be sure, not “I’ve Heard People on TikTok Love This”  65

everyone adopts a pet for increased likes on social media, but pets being in conjunction with one’s self-­representation and extended self means that they can become fodder for digital content. Social media looking relations have implications for the material practice of pet adoption, particularly when one seeks out a pet that is Instagrammable.

Business versus Fun: Interrogating Pet Influencers Influencers are a defining feature of the contemporary internet, and their practices are a site where aesthetics, commercial activity, social media logics, materiality, and looking relations converge. When thinking of the internet as a literal attention economy, influencers curate social media presences to garner attention and bolster commercial activity. Influencers are part of a practice known as internet celebrity, but the two are not synonymous with each other, as they may differ in terms of scale, financial compensation, and content type.40 Pets and animals are not exempt from considerations of influence and varying types of internet celebrity. In discussions with pet owners and animal lovers, analysis of pet influencer accounts, and ethnographic work at events like PetCon, the official “pet influencer and Internet pet” convention, it is apparent that nonhumans have become a central part of the digital influence and celebrity landscape. Influence and types of internet celebrity are hegemonic; they trickle down to have material implications for how people may conceive of their own social media practices, but they are also influenced (no pun intended) by vernacular, popular trends across social media. Pet influencers function mostly the same as their human counterparts, but they feature pets instead of their humans. Pet influencers are the epitome of how the extended self can be commodified and turned into a business arm. While the neoliberal tenets of pet influencers will be discussed in chapter 4, I focus here on pet influencers within the social modality of attention and how this hegemonic practice has become a way for pet owners to view their pets and curate social media content. 66  The Internet Is for Cats

For several pet owners I spoke to, presenting their pets on social media was swayed by considerations of influence and celebrity, indicating how they become part of the looking relation of attention. Jennifer, who ran an Instagram account for her dog, told me, “I bought preset editing packages for her Instagram. I don’t even use them on my own Instagram. . . . They cost fifty dollars to buy. I downloaded the Lightroom app for it.” Jennifer explained that she wanted her dog Marley’s Instagram to be indicative of the dog’s “diva” personality, and to do this, she tapped into available tools to privilege certain types of content and aesthetics. Presenting her dog in a certain way was key. In terms of account privacy, Hillary disclosed that she wanted her cat, Boots, “to get internet famous, and you can’t do that with a private account.” As such, Hillary kept her Instagram account public in order to circumvent privacy and “attract eyeballs.” Jacqueline’s discussions of wanting free pet gear with a popular dog account are again noteworthy here, as she considered the broader influencer landscape in deciding whether or not to make an Instagram account exclusively for her pet. My participants’ words here echo Brooke Erin Duffy’s considerations of aspirational labor: “Aspirational labor is a mode of (mostly) uncompensated, independent work that is propelled by the much-­ venerated ideal of getting paid to do what you love. . . . Aspirational labor shifts content creators’ focus from the present to the future, dangling the prospect of a career where labor and leisure coexist.”41 Duffy discusses aspirational labor through the work of fashion bloggers, and others have adapted her theorizations to analyze vloggers, musicians, artists, and more within digital cultures.42 Pets have become another such way of performing aspirational labor, as individuals perform social media presences for their animals in hopes of future financial compensation. To do so, accounts must be curated in such a way to be interesting and attract attention. Aspirational labor functions through lenses of influence and internet celebrity, as one works through a future-­focused temporality to believe financial success can be earned from one’s hobbies or interests or, in this case, their pets. Aspirational labor is another form of cultural materiality with implications for pets and pet ownership. “I’ve Heard People on TikTok Love This”  67

Pets and aspirational labor function in tandem with another material attention practice: microcelebrity. Microcelebrity is “a self-­ presentation technique in which people view themselves as a public persona to be consumed by others, use strategic intimacy to appeal to followers, and regard their audiences as fans.”43 Microcelebrity may be a type of aspirational labor as individuals harness social media platforms and practices to hopefully make a career out of doing what they love, but microcelebrity also may also outlast aspirational labor. If one succeeds in aspirational labor, they must continue to perform microcelebrity to keep followers and fans engaged. One can also perform microcelebrity within everyday social media practice without the hopes of financial compensation. It is a mindset, not necessarily a static thing. Those practicing microcelebrity view themselves as consumable by audiences, fans, and followers, and pets and animals are not exempt here. Pets form part of one’s extended self, and in practicing microcelebrity vis-­à-­vis one’s pet, individuals turn their extended selves into something to be consumed by publics. Through microcelebrity of the extended self, my pet owner participants viewed their pets as parts of themselves to be consumed by others. For instance, Maddie told me the following about sharing photos of her dog, Pepper: “If I post one a month on her Instagram, it will do really well. But if I post two photos in a row, right after each other, neither do really well. I’ve learned to time my Pepper photos. If I go on a hike, and I share multiple photos, I’ll make the one of her the front photo if I haven’t posted one of her in a while. But if I’ve posted one of her recently, I’ll put that photo towards the end of the set in the post.” Maddie only had a couple hundred followers on Pepper’s Instagram, so this was very “low stakes” or “amateur” compared to the hundreds of thousands or millions of followers professional pet influencers may have. But as she told me, she had learned over time how to curate and calibrate her posts to optimize the number of likes. Her anecdote further highlights the intertwined nature of datafication and likeability and how both are part of the microcelebrity practice and mindset. Maddie was concerned with how people consumed images of Pepper, and therefore, she presented Pepper in a way that she felt was ideally consumable. 68  The Internet Is for Cats

Instagram is particularly rife with pet influencers, following the cultural lines and technical affordances that define the influencer industry more broadly.44 On Instagram, business and the looking relation of attention merge, with pet influencers engaging in sponsored partnerships with brands, be they animal-­related or not. For instance, one popular pet account, @KeepingFinn, partnered with Titos Vodka in 2020,45 but other accounts, such as @TunaMeltsMyHeart, partnered with pet supply providers for a holiday gift guide.46 Both of these accounts predominantly feature dogs in their posts, with the required #sponsored and #ad hashtags in the captions. Pet influencers do not have to simply promote pet-­specific products. But achieving influencer status was not the goal for all my participants. Some actively refused to get involved with such practices and looking relations. One of my participants, Vicki, who ran an Instagram page for her bearded dragon, Charlie, told me, “I had somebody contact me through their messaging system and tell me, ‘We love your account. We would love you to be an ambassador for our brand.’ So I wrote back and asked what it entailed. Basically, what it was, they were going to give me a 50 percent discount on anything, and they wanted me to post pictures. And I said no. I only have something like 100 followers, I’m not a big account. This is just something I do for fun.” Vicki was just one of the people who I spoke to who demonstrated that the looking relation of attention is not monolithic. For Vicki, “fun” was at odds with the looking relations that dominate pet and animal social media, particularly on Instagram.

More Than Just Cute: Continued Success in Pet Influence Vicki, however, may be in the minority when it comes to attention, pets, animals, and social media. In 2020, I attended PetCon (virtually, due to the COVID-­19 pandemic) because of its prominence in the pet and animal social media landscape. I first discovered PetCon on Instagram after speaking to pet owners who shared photos of their animals and following pet influencers like “I’ve Heard People on TikTok Love This”  69

@KeepingFinn and @TunaMeltsMyHeart. I immediately bought a virtual ticket. At 2020 PetCon, I sat in on two noteworthy panels: “Standing Out on Social” and “Conquering TikTok.” While I attended others, these two were the most notable and relatable to my research questions and the themes I was beginning to chart in my notes on this project. The first one, “Standing Out on Social,” featured the founder of PetCon speaking to Syd Robinson, a staff writer at BuzzFeed, and Steph Wasser, a talent relations manager at the Dog Agency, the world’s first pet influencer talent agency. During the question-­and-­answer session, one audience member asked what someone had to do to get their pet to stand out on social media, and the answers were striking. BuzzFeed ’s Syd Robinson answered, “There’s just so much pet content now. You really have to stand out. It can’t just be run-­of-­the-­mill anymore. You can’t just post a cute picture. You need a cause, a mission, a funny voice.” She later elaborated, “If you want to get featured in BuzzFeed, raw, authentic, and honest is the way to go.” Authenticity is a contested concept in internet studies scholarship—­ particularly within influencers, microcelebrity, and internet celebrity—­and it is almost always a contradiction. Authenticity claims emerge out of strategic self-­representation and performances, in which individuals appear to be “transparent, without artifice, open to others.”47 Such traits are associated with success among content creators. But despite BuzzFeed reporters’ claims that authenticity may guarantee visibility, this is not always the case. Becoming visible is key to success on social media,48 but it can quickly become a form of labor as individuals navigate platform features and broader media ecologies to find accomplishments.49 Curating pet and animal content that is authentic falls into many of these binds, but there may be an added element of potential authenticity complications. As BuzzFeed ’s suggestion shows, when discussing social media authenticity through pets, humans may ignore their role in curating said content. Pets and animals may be seen as more authentic than their human counterparts because they cannot make the frontstage/backstage 70  The Internet Is for Cats

distinctions that Goffman delineates, yet pet content is just as curated as anything else. In addition to using authenticity to stand out, PetCon participants on the panel “Conquering TikTok” also suggested “finding a cause, a mission, [or] a funny voice” as a strategy. The panelists, who all had TikTok-­famous dogs, discussed how to stand out in conjunction with TikTok’s unique features. The owner of the TikTok-­ famous Tatum (@TatumTalks) said, “You have to find out what makes you unique and what stands out against others. Tatum is the voice. Kelly is the tricks. Coco does her standing up thing. The app is so big that you have to find a niche for your pet to stand out.” Simply posting a cute picture or video of a pet or animal is not enough to stand out within attention looking relations. Cuteness and attention are both necessary, but they also cannot guarantee pet fame. Contrary to what the opening anecdote to this chapter suggested, simply showing a puppy or kitten to achieve TikTok fame will not actually guarantee status. It involves curating a specific presence for one’s animal around their habits or tricks and trying to figure out how that fits in with TikTok’s highly curated algorithm and touted “For You Page.” Digital anthropologist Crystal Abidin argues, “The platform logics of TikTok force Internet celebrity aspirants to actively seek out, learn, participate in, and engage in . . . what is ‘going viral’ at the moment in order to remain visible to others on the app, unlike earlier platforms that may accommodate esoteric subcultures and communities who can find their footing and niche regardless.”50 For those in pet and animal social media, this means finding their specific attributes and subsequently curating content that combines that uniqueness with whatever is popular on TikTok at the moment. Given that TikTok encourages imitation publics,51 niche must be constantly intertwined with the app’s popular trends. While imitation occurs through trends on TikTok, one can stand out given how their niche puts a unique spin on the popular song, action, dance, or practice. Once one has established themselves as a pet influencer or pet internet celebrity, they may have positioned themselves on a potentially lucrative long-­term business trajectory that combines attention, “I’ve Heard People on TikTok Love This”  71

social media, and business. Internet scholar Sophie Bishop discusses the lifestyle and life spans of influencers, noting how a successful younger influencer can continue their business over the years through life’s big events: The fun, hip, young influencer can seamlessly transition to a married influencer, promoting registries and wedding planning apps, and from there, the pregnancy influencer and the baby and children influencer are the next logical steps.52 Of course, these influencers are almost always young, White, cisgender women who all adhere to a similar look and aesthetic.53 The pet influencer is another potential node on the influencer life span, one that may occur before weddings, babies, and growing families. Popular Instagram pets may fold in marriages and babies over time, as was the case with Mochi the pug. Mochi’s Instagram always documented his life through his owner’s cartoon drawings, and Mochi’s sometimes-­antagonistic relationship with his human owner’s partner was always a source of comedy in the posts. When Mochi’s human got pregnant and had a baby, the content shifted to feature the husband, dog, and baby in a comedic yet highly curated life documentation, culminating in the 2021 book Life with Mochi.54 Similarly, on PetCon’s “Standing Out on Social” panel, BuzzFeed reporters also suggested, “If you have more pets you can open up more opportunities. Dog deals, cat deals. Give a connection to your family and life and world. Put your baby in there. Use what you have to stand out.” Pets can specifically augment the life span of an influencer, or they can be used in conjunction with children and other pets as a way to curate content that stands out. The pets of pet influencers can be conceived as what Abidin refers to as micro-­microcelebrities, but with some species-­specific caveats. Abidin defines micro-­microcelebrities as “the children of influencers who have themselves become proximate micro-­ celebrities, having derived exposure and fame from their prominent influencer mothers, usually through a more prolific, deliberate and commercial form of . . . sharenting: the act of parents sharing images and stores [sic] about their children in digital spaces such as social networking sites and blogs.”55 Oftentimes, micro-­ microcelebrities become social media famous through content 72  The Internet Is for Cats

on their parents’ accounts. Sometimes the parents’ accounts begin with the intent of incorporating children; other times, they follow the influencer life span Bishop outlines. The pets of pet influencers can be thought of as micro-­microcelebrities due to the extended self and self-­representation tactics. Just like the micro-­ microcelebrities Abidin discusses, pets and animals are always proximate to a human, even if that human is primarily absent from the content. Humans perform microcelebrity by conceiving of their pet, part of their extended self, as something to be consumed by others. Because the pet or animal obviously cannot post themselves, they are reliant on a human performing microcelebrity, just like how the micro-­microcelebrity babies and children of influencers do. In turn, pets and animals become micro-­microcelebrities through attention, materiality, looking relations, and the commercialization of pethood and animal experiences.

Made for Attention: How Social Media Took Over Pet and Animal Experiences Attention as a looking relation and materiality means understanding how there are tangible actions that are taken to make the person, object, or animal in question photographable for the internet. By this, I refer to an increasing trend of turning the world into something always already ready to be photographed for social media. In their book about Instagram, Tama Leaver, Tim Highfield, and Crystal Abidin refer to this as “the increasingly ubiquitous ‘bleed’ of Instagram from the internet into ‘real life.’”56 While there is no definitive bifurcation between online and offline, what Leaver, Highfield, and Abidin reference is the proliferation of experiences created specifically with social media in mind. For instance, they discuss museum exhibitions (such as Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror), foods (such as marshmallow flowers that bloom in hot chocolate, crazy milkshakes, or shot glasses made of cookie dough), homes (be it architectural ingenuity or fashionable home decor), and places in general (a visit to something like Iceland’s Blue Lagoon or the Potato Head Beach Club in Bali, Indonesia, “I’ve Heard People on TikTok Love This”  73

will be rife with crowds searching for that perfect shot). Place, it should be noted, is not made for social media but instead presupposes that individuals may cannibalize locations in pursuit of the perfect social media post: “[Instagram popularity] can be detrimental to the environments that are not always constructed to handle high human traffic, and takes away from the serenity and sacredness of the place.”57 These places, products, and experiences demonstrate the fundamentally material nature of social media, in that social media content and practices are always predicated on interactions with surroundings. While it is tempting to describe these practices as novelties of the social media age, photography-­ worthy spaces and products predate the internet. For instance, at the beginning of this chapter, I discussed camera hunting, or how photography became an instrumental part of hunting during the nineteenth century. Such a practice demonstrates the materiality of animals, looking relations, and changing experiences with documentation technologies. Regarding animals, in recent years, popular phenomena such as goat yoga and cat cafés have been on the rise, and many of these experiences are billed as being worthy of one’s social media page (though cat cafés have long predated their Western iterations by being immensely popular across many Asian countries before becoming co-­opted in Anglophone environments). While in my observational work I had encountered Instagram-­ worthy cat cafés, only after reading literature on media, animals, welfare, and conservation did I seek out experts in these areas to interview. In essence, my literature review prompted additional interview and observational sites for my research, and here, I tread cautiously in terms of participant protections, as it was often the authors of articles I sought out to interview. My participants who were experts in these areas pointed me toward other types of made-­for-­social-­media pet and animal events, which I discuss below. For instance, one such “Instagrammable” experience emerged when I talked to Meredith, an expert in lemur conservation. She directed me toward the bourgeoning practice of lemur yoga: “It started a couple of years ago where this—­I guess it’s sort of like 74  The Internet Is for Cats

a resort that’s next to this park where they have a zoo. It’s somewhere in England, and they’re advertising, ‘Come and do lemur yoga, snap a picture for Facebook.’ They have lemurs running around everywhere.” The resort she spoke of was the Armathwaite Hall Hotel and Spa, near the Lake District Wildlife Park in Keswick, England. Organizers advertise these “lemoga” classes by saying, “When you watch lemurs, they do some form of the poses naturally—­that typical pose warming their bellies in the sunshine. It seemed to be a really good combination to encourage people to have a go and spend time with a lemur. . . . We know how it makes us feel and if we can give a little piece of that to people, then great.”58 Meredith was critical of the practice, discussing how experiences and images of these experiences have concrete implications for lemur welfare and conservation efforts: “People will send me viral videos [of lemurs] and be like, ‘Oh my God, I thought of you. . . . It got so many views and was on the morning shows and all that sort of stuff.’ What we try to do is get out the information behind the viral videos. Where did that animal come from? What’s going on and what does that animal’s life probably look like, was it in the pet trade? Those sorts of things.” Meredith noted how lemurs are some of the most endangered animals in the world, and the decontextualized nature of cute viral videos or seemingly interesting “lemoga” experiences may obscure this fact. Additionally, she mentioned the pet trade, or the illegal trafficking of wildlife, through social media59 and how general misunderstandings about animals may encourage subsequent Instagrammable experiences through attempting to own wild animals that are not appropriate as household pets. Meredith directed me toward similar practices such as goat yoga, which became highly touted by public relations firms for viral marketing endeavors. One went so far as to say, “Let goat yoga enlighten your viral content strategy,” and discussed how the original goat yoga founder made six figures within one year from the viral media attention that came from the practice.60 Businesses of all kinds have latched on to the viral pet and animal marketing strategy, knowing that sometimes, pets and animals are quite “I’ve Heard People on TikTok Love This”  75

good for attention. For instance, one hotel in Denver, Colorado, in the United States offers “puppy room service,” in which puppies are delivered to one’s room with a quick phone call.61 One West Palm Beach, Florida, restaurant, also in the United States, adapted the cat café mentality to be “Puppies and Prosecco” for a themed brunch.62 More so than just being a viral marketing strategy, these events and experiences tap into what Storey refers to as a regime of realized signification,63 in which meaning, materiality, and practice enmesh to produce privileged cultural items and actions. As fun, cute, and Instagrammable as these experiences may be, there are material implications for the animals themselves. For instance, Adam, a shelter advocate in Great Britain, told me, “Everyone wants a puppy. But what happens when that puppy grows up? Note that it’s not adult animals being delivered to one’s hotel room. What’s the hotel’s plan when the puppies grow up?” Abandoned pets and overcrowded shelters are an immense problem in the United States and Great Britain, and many of these made-­for-­social-­media pet experiences can exacerbate this preexisting problem. Akin to how people cannibalize place in pursuit of the perfect social media photo, pets and animals face tangible implications and consequences for human actions. Pet and animal experiences have become cannibalized in the Instagrammable era, in which the creature’s welfare is second to a visual culture bolstered by social media logics of likability and datafication. In addition to made-­for-­social-­media experiences, the ubiquitous and overlooked viral video also has material implications for pets and animals. These videos are a recurring staple of the social media landscape, often featuring koalas munching on leaves or pandas rolling in the snow. At the start of the COVID-­19 pandemic, the U.S.-­based Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, Illinois, achieved some temporary media fame when images and videos of them letting their penguins roam the then empty space spread rapidly online.64 The images bore a striking similarity to a famous picture from the Miami Zoo in 1992, when flamingos were sheltered in a bathroom during Hurricane Andrew.65 76  The Internet Is for Cats

While these viral videos may be heartwarming or cause a smile or chuckle as one scrolls through their news feeds, they have just as stark implications as pet and animal experiences made for social media. Anthony, an expert in chimpanzee conservation, told me that when people see images of animals outside their normal habitats, there are real implications for welfare and conservation: “When you show chimpanzees in a very human setting, like in an office building, or sitting on someone’s lap, that tends to make people think that they might be a viable pet option for them. The presence of a human in these images also matters. So you can take that exact same picture and simply Photoshop a human next to [the chimp], and that can change perceptions of chimps, both from a conservation and welfare standpoint. . . . It’s all about value. People value animals differently depending on how they’re portrayed.” Anthony’s expertise reflects a similar finding of a study conducted by Anna Nekaris. Nekaris and her team analyzed viral videos of slow lorises in which the animals were being tickled. Comments on the videos were full of cute admonitions and joy. But what was so powerful and horrifying in Nekaris’s study is that hardly anyone enjoying these viral videos realized these animals were in excruciating pain from being tickled.66 There is a tension between popular and theoretical writing on this subject and welfare experts. For instance, Parkinson suggests “the circulation of animal images has widened human sympathies and attuned public understanding. . . . While we might ache with discomfort and bemoan the public desire for charismatic megafauna, cute cat videos, and humans voicing the imagined interior monologues of such species, such representations have been active in raising public awareness and concern for other animals.”67 While this might be the case sometimes, the expertise of my participants like Adam, Anthony, and Meredith suggests the opposite. Far from raising awareness, made-­for-­social-­media experiences, as well as viral videos, add to how the reality of pets and animals may be obscured, with actual welfare and conservation implications for wildlife.

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Not All Attention Is Good Attention In March 2021, YouTube banned fake animal rescue videos.68 This sentence may be puzzling—­if someone is saving animals, how could that be a bad thing? It can be such a bad thing when there is no real danger in the first place. In seeking out attention, content creators put these animals in harm’s way to make videos of themselves saving the animals. Here, materiality is quite literally dangerous—­life and death. In these videos, rabbits were suffocated by snakes, cats were buried alive, and puppies were tied to railroad tracks. Rescues were then filmed and placed on YouTube. After an investigation by an animal welfare group found that YouTube was running ads on these videos (meaning creators were making money off them), the site finally stepped in.69 Allegedly, real animal torture videos have long been prohibited on the site, but content moderation and the community standards guidelines are always fraught with complications and, if enacted at all, enacted unequally, unfairly, and with an often ignorant eye.70 It would be easy to dismiss creators of fake animal rescue videos as sociopaths or foolish kids trying to achieve viral fame, but as this chapter has explored, the relationship between pets, animals, social media, attention as looking relation, and materiality is much more complex than that. The same social media landscape that gives us these fake animal rescues also gives us made-­for-­social-­media pet and animal experiences, pet influencers, pet aspirational labor, and microcelebrity of the extended self. Pathologizing social media practice does not explain the ubiquity and variances in this cultural phenomenon of curating pets and animals for visual social media content. Instead, attention as a hegemonic looking relation that enmeshes culture, materiality of objects and experiences, and platforms offers insight into how the internet is for cats. While pet and animal social media aligns with many well-­established tenets of internet studies research, it also pushes the boundaries on others, allowing us to quite literally consider living, nonhuman, actors in digital cultures. Here, pets and animals, one of the most popular phenomena on the 78  The Internet Is for Cats

contemporary internet, become intertwined with some of its more troubling aspects—­what’s seemingly known as influencer perfection and harmful materiality in exchange for clicks, likes, and views. However, this is not to say all attention is troubling, and I refute any claims to pathologize it as such. Instead, attention as a looking relation demonstrates how social media influences us and, importantly, how we influence social media. Individuals create with these tenets in mind, and these tenets also change and evolve over time. Like with most things, there is nothing inherently troubling or harmful about attention, and the material practice of visuality is up to the individual person acting within and against it. So “I’ve heard people on TikTok love this”—­why wouldn’t they? While the meme is not a guarantee of viral fame, it is an indicator of the importance of attention in pet and animal social media. Cuteness might not be enough for success in pet and animal social media, but the sentiment of the meme rings true: attention as a looking relation in pet and animal social media persists because we want it to.

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3 Beyond Doomscrolling in an Internet of Cute

In November 2019, a “unicorn puppy” took the internet by storm. The puppy was rescued by a U.S. special needs animal rescue, Mac’s Mission, and he was named Narwhal in honor of the tail sticking out of his forehead. Popular response, however, favored a unicorn comparison, and Narwhal became known as the “unicorn puppy.” While Narwhal’s forehead tail may have looked like a unicorn horn or a narwhal tusk, his veterinary team reported there was nothing magical here—­the extra tail was a birth defect, likely from Narwhal absorbing his twin in utero.1 Mass media and social media attention poured in: from stories on CNN and in the New York Times and Washington Post to celebrities such as actor Zach Braff tweeting, “Can he wag it?!?!?! Answer me immediately!!!! I need him!!!!”2 The rescue was flooded with hundreds of people who were interested in adopting him.3 Narwhal, it seemed, was the epitome of how people typically think of cute animal pictures online—­adorable, squeal worthy, and a bringer of happiness. Shortly after Narwhal’s rescue, the Mac’s Mission Instagram account posted a less than squeal-­worthy update, breaking from the account’s traditional writing style of posting in the voice of the rescue’s founding dog, Mac: “ATTENTION! This is the only official Narwhal puppy Instagram account. Instagram will not remove

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these fake accounts that are stealing our photos and pretending to be us to gain followers or donations.”4 Increased popularity meant the rescue now found themselves facing many of the problems that persist on the photo-­sharing platform: hesitance on Instagram’s part to remove fake accounts or moderate content, deceptive moves by individuals to gain followers, and photo theft.5 A week later, though, there was a happier update, back in the voice of Mac himself: “BIG ANNOUNCEMENT  .  .  . is we are keeping the unicorn. Mom and me had a little talk and we have fallen in love with the little dude and can’t imagine seeing him leave. I am also very protective of him as a big brother in that I have heard mom talk about the ugly things people have said and I know I can keep him safe.”6 While Mac’s Mission took in Narwhal as part of the special needs dog pack guarding the rescue, the happy announcement also revealed the hate and trolling hurled at the “unicorn puppy.” Today, Narwhal has a happy home, and for the most part, hateful comments are a thing of the past. Narwhal’s story, media blitz and all, reflects the popular discourse surrounding animals and pets on the internet. Such words and sentiments coalesce around cuteness and its concomitant affect of joy in that seeing pictures of animals and pets online may prompt happiness. However, while joy and cuteness are interrogated within affect studies and the emerging field of cute studies, there is a disconnect in using these concepts to critically examine pet and animal images. Simply because this visual culture is described as cute and joyful is one of the main reasons these types of images are taken for granted. As Narwhal’s case shows, something cute that brings joy to one can be weaponized or responded to with hate by another. On the internet, cuteness and joy very rarely manifest in wholehearted absolutes. That being said, this chapter is probably the reason you picked up this book. You probably thought, “A book on the internet’s cats! How cute!” If you’ve made it this far, then you know there’s much more to the internet’s cats (and dogs, and reptiles, and lemurs) than that. But now that I have sufficiently shattered this notion, let me give you what you want: a chapter on

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cute animals, why we love them, and why and how we love to communicate with them on the internet. The previous chapter explored the social modality of attention as a looking relation and how it manifests in material practice. When it comes to curating pet and animal social media content, cuteness is often used in tandem with attention. An incorrect assumption by many pet influencers and aspiring pet owners is that simply having a cute animal is enough to garner relative internet fame. This is simply not the case. Cuteness could be a factor in the success of pet and animal social media, but cuteness alone is not enough for sustained internet fame—­something also demonstrated by this chapter’s opening anecdote. After the initial blitz, interest in Narwhal subsided. Like attention, cuteness alone is not sufficient to explain why and how pet and animal content continues to proliferate on social media, but it is nevertheless an important pillar of this visual culture. Building on attention as a social modality, this chapter situates pet and animal social media within the social modality of cuteness as well as within the growing field of cute studies. Cute studies scholar Joshua Paul Dale explains one of the foundational premises of cute as both aesthetic and affect: “As an affect, cuteness comprises a set of visual and/or behavioral characteristics capable of triggering a physical and emotional response in the body of the subject: What we may term the ‘aww’ factor. As an aesthetic category, this response is manipulated for a variety of purposes: commercial, to be sure, but also artistic and self-­expressive.”7 Existing networked structures and sentiments help create a terrain for these cute affects and aesthetics to thrive online. Because digital spaces are hyperdiscursive8 and highly affective,9 that which tugs at culture and emotions can move with immense speed and popularity through social media. Additionally, that which can be shared in small snippets moves just as quickly, as it only requires limited attention—­and may be more successful when that mix of culture and affect is present.

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Digitally Mediated Cuteness Dale’s “‘aww’ factor” is a useful place to begin defining cute. As discussed in chapter 1, cute is often dismissed as something one knows when they see it, but there are formal properties to cute that have become popularized over time, becoming imbricated with the cute affect. The cute affect and cute aesthetic have a dialectical relationship, and it is impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends. While the internet is often considered to be replete with cute content,10 this content can be understood as both aesthetics and affects or, in other words, practices and the culturally specific sentiment attached to such practices. As discussed in chapter  1, discussions of what makes something cute are often rooted in psychology, harkening back to discussions of why humans find infants or small animals cute and thus feel compelled to take care of them. However, I am less concerned with the psychological reasons behind why we find things cute and more interested in cute aesthetics, how they inform and are informed by cute affects, and the practices surrounding them all. Cute aesthetics begin from psychologist Konrad Lorenz’s discussion of the cute response. There are certain characteristics most humans find cute, spurred by a biological response to care for the young. Simone Ngai notes this recurrence as “the formal properties associated with cuteness—­smallness, compactness, softness, simplicity, and pliancy.”11 In other words, the cute aesthetic, or the recurring properties associated with something one may find cute, typically consists of that which is round, small, and able to be held, interacted with, or fondled and lacks edges or definitive borders. Cute aesthetics may prompt cute affects, but this relationship is not only unidirectional; the desire for a cute affect may prompt one to create or seek out content of the aesthetic. Cute affects may be joy and happiness,12 like in the case of Narwhal the “unicorn puppy.” On the internet, cute aesthetics and affects are imbricated in networked technologies and publics, individual platform cultures and affordances, and subcultural dynamics. Because cute aesthetics and affects are ubiquitous in digital cultures, this proliferation of Beyond Doomscrolling in an Internet of Cute  83

aww is what has led many to describe the internet in terms of a “cute economy.”13 Akin to the attention economy discussed in chapter 2, the cute economy is a metaphor to describe the ubiquity of a certain type of content. In the case of the attention economy, supply outpaces demand, as there is more available content than any one user could ever possibly consume. In the cute economy, however, supply and demand are both at all-­time highs. Internet users tap into cute affects (demand) to seek out cute aesthetics (supply). While I have presented attention and cute in terms of their colloquial economies, I remain steadfast in that economic metaphors are not fully capable of describing the range of cultural contexts and human practices at work in digital cultures. Attention is not just an economy but a range of material practices and looking relations upholding and challenging ideologies of individuals, cultures, and platforms. Cuteness, as intertwined with culture online, becomes digitally mediated, interconnecting meaning, materiality, and social practice on the internet. Digitally mediated or not, cuteness is always a social practice. It instigates a particular relationship between the viewer and the cute person, object, image, or animal they look at.14 This relationship may always be asymmetrical, but cute scholars cannot agree on the direction of the power imbalance. For some, cuteness between object and viewer is predicated on “a specific type of relationship between consumer subject and the (weak) cute object predicated on feelings of care and empathy.”15 Daniel Harris takes this one step further, arguing that the human cute response is inherently sadistic,16 which Ngai elaborates on to suggest that human reaction to the cute aesthetic is imbued with aggression and violence toward the cute object.17 Under this purview, power lies with the observer, as the cute object is inherently weak. Viewers of cute objects have the power because they have the choice to look or act on the care and empathy they feel. However, others, such as Simon May, contend that cuteness may function more as subversive trickery: “What if Cute isn’t just about powerlessness and innocence but also plays with, mocks, ironizes the value we attach to power—­as well as our assumptions 84  The Internet Is for Cats

about who has power and who doesn’t?”18 Crystal Abidin adopts a similar perspective on cuteness in her work on Singaporean influences, noting how the women strategically and purposefully perform cute tropes and, in doing so, highlight their own agency in enacting the social relationship between cute image and viewer.19 Since my present work is concerned with pets and animals, it is important to note that while pets and animals cannot purposefully act or perform cuteness the way influencers might, their human owners can, which is why discussions on cuteness and power on the internet must consider attention practices as well. While power is contested in cuteness, it is undisputed that cuteness is a form of sociality. The idea of cuteness as sociality also assists us in getting out of just thinking of cuteness in psychological terms: “The cute response acts as a mechanism that releases sociality, that is, the desire to play with and otherwise interact with the cute entity.  .  .  . [The cute response] is demonstrated by the kinds of behaviors people exhibit when they perceive cuteness in an other—­attempts to touch, hold, play with, talk to, and otherwise interact with the cute entity.”20 The cute response—­and its concomitant affects, aesthetics, and digital practices—­prompts sociality. Even if a cute object or image is consumed in isolation, social practice may be provoked because one wants to interact with the cute thing in question. This means cuteness has an inherent potential to appeal to others as an invitation to engage in sociality.21 Cuteness is fundamentally social, and considering that the desire for connectivity is what spurred the development of the social web,22 cuteness is an ideal form of sociality in digital cultures. When it comes to the internet of cats, preexisting drives for connection merged with cute objects that invite sociality, making such cute objects, images, and videos an ideal type of content to foster connectivity and the goals of the early web and social media. A cute cat video on YouTube or TikTok invites a relationship between the viewer and the cute object but also numerous others within the multifaceted dimensions of social media: relationships between the viewer and the human poster, the viewer and other platform users to engage in the likes and comments, and also the Beyond Doomscrolling in an Internet of Cute  85

viewer and their own social circles, for wanting to share the sociality and cute affects they receive from such a cute aesthetic. Networked technologies make such sharing facile, and such sociality may increase exponentially. Therefore, the aesthetics, affects, and practices of cuteness are well suited for social media as individuals extend invitations to be social and spread the feelings they have for the cute object. Most often, such a feeling manifests in joy.

Cuteness, Joy, and Affect Cuteness is intertwined with joy, as seeing cute aesthetics may prompt cute affects of joy. Here I tread carefully, speaking of the relation of images, objects, and feelings regarding affect and avoiding postpositivist, media effects, and sentiment analysis frameworks. Simple exposure to a cute object or image is not enough to explain the ubiquity of cute images or their variance in cultural practice, particularly within pet and animal social media. On joy, feminist scholar Lynne Segal argues, “While nowadays we are encouraged to see happiness as something embedded within us, the type of euphoric happiness we call ‘joy’ takes us beyond or outside ourselves.”23 Joy is less a response to external stimuli and more a result that comes from actively practicing happiness and existing in specific ways. This approach is grounded in the Aristotelian writings on happiness, in which “happiness (or eudaimonia) is not so much an emotion, a psychic state or inner disposition, but rather, a way of acting in the world.”24 While Aristotle’s words have formed the basis of philosophical discussions across centuries, his conception of happiness and joy-­as-­practice ultimately comes back to culture, context, and community. One cannot simply be provoked into happiness; they must act in certain ways. Animals and affects such as joy are intertwined. Oftentimes, animal images are curated in such ways that they respond to human troubles by prompting certain affects. John Berger notes this in Why Look at Animals?: “We live in a world of suffering, in which evil is rampant, a world whose events do not conform to our Being, a world that has to be resisted. . . . That we find a crystal or poppy 86  The Internet Is for Cats

beautiful means that we are less alone, that we are more deeply inserted into existence.”25 The aesthetic Berger speaks of is the animal aesthetic, for in looking at animals one finds a beauty—­or cuteness—­that temporarily removes them from the world’s pressures. Berger’s Why Look at Animals? is a response to the changing role of animals post–­Industrial Revolution, and a return to nature in the form of animals and beauty provided an escapist fulfillment. Joy and cuteness therefore have a dialectical, dialogical relationship. One does not simply cause the other; both are actively worked toward. For instance, in harkening back to my discussions on attention, this joy may come from staging a photo in a certain way or sharing it with another. This is performative work, but this does not negate joy-­as-­practice. Instead, joy is always imbricated in larger, situational contexts. Working toward collective joy is also a material practice, as individuals work with objects, people, and sociality to produce specific images or endeavors. In Berger’s context, cultivating or finding joy through this materiality is a social, moral, and philosophical act. Finding joy is also political. Jessica Lu and Catherine Knight Steele write on joy and resistance on social media, noting joy’s specific connections to Black communities in the United States.26 They argue that joy is a purposeful practice, and on platforms like Twitter, individuals use curated hashtags to respond to media stereotypes—­in this case, hashtags like #carefreeblackkids promote joy despite mediated and systemic racism.27 Furthermore, Sara Ahmed discusses how denying someone their joy is also political, specifically through her discussion of the “feminist killjoy” trope.28 In pointing out a topic’s complications, the feminist may prompt one to think more deeply and critically, thus problematizing the joy. Segal expands this, pointing out that “the desire to move outside and beyond oneself, the search for some sort of shared laughter or joy with another, that ‘we-­mode,’ is certainly one way of overcoming the gloom that can threaten to engulf us.”29 Like Berger, Segal discusses how joy is actively worked toward when there are less-­than-­ideal circumstances, and individuals often do this work with others. However, just because joy helps one resist Beyond Doomscrolling in an Internet of Cute  87

less-­than-­ideal circumstances, it can never fully be divorced from said conditions. This theorization of joy as resistance is largely rooted within cultural studies. Following this, my intent in invoking Ahmed, Lu, and Steele is to understand joy as an active practice and certainly not render invisible the nuances of joy in communities that face serious marginalization. Cultural studies has been largely influenced by feminist studies and issues of race, and Stuart Hall often used a rather colorful, imaginary anecdote to describe what issues (or “interruptions”) feminism and race brought to cultural studies and how they could not be ignored: “As a thief in the night, it broke in; interrupted, made an unseemly noise, seized the time, crapped on the table of Cultural Studies.”30 These ruptures reorganized the field of cultural studies in substantial ways, particularly in noting how gendered and racialized power functions. By situating pet and animal social media at the intersection of cultural studies, cuteness, and joy, I recognize this visual culture’s own ruptures as well as all the ways power influences these everyday practices. Power is not necessarily synonymous with toxic internet practices, but it does harken back to the broader social, cultural, political, and technological factors at work in digital practice. Individuals may post and share with a keen awareness as to this broader landscape of cute and ugly, aww and eww.

Cute and Joyful Tactics People do not simply mindlessly share and consume internet content; rather, they engage in the work of watching to make active choices. This is one reason internet scholars often eschew the phrase going viral, and even the term viral, to describe the popular circulation of media content, as the scientistic underpinnings of the term diminish human agency, and cultural practice cannot be reduced to biological metaphors.31 Going viral implies the content itself is somehow responsible for its own success, or if it does consider humans, it likens them to cogs in a machine, simply churning out popular content by mindlessly clicking. In actuality, people 88  The Internet Is for Cats

make active and conscious decisions about what to create or share. Pet and animal social media may be particularly susceptible to the “going viral” mythos due to the extended self, microcelebrity, and the absence of the human poster, especially since the latter may provide the inaccurate anthropomorphized view that the animal curated the content itself. Human agency—­through creating, posting, sharing, liking, or commenting—­remains paramount in understanding pet and animal social media. Social media users are often savvy and agentic, carving out spaces and forming practices to make areas their own. In doing so, individuals refute broader social media dynamics that may be toxic, restrictive, or harmful. For instance, Emily van der Nagel examines the ways social media users actively find ways to circumvent forced algorithmic connections or friendships,32 and Victoria O’Meara discusses how Instagram influencers often curate their own “engagement pods,” or small collectives of similar users that will reliably interact with one another’s content to manipulate the recommendation algorithm.33 Such strategic engagement with social media harkens back to Michel de  Certeau’s concept of tactics, as individuals work to resist the very social media platforms they inhabit. Such a resistance can be against a social media site’s technical infrastructure, as van der Nagel and O’Meara explore, but this opposition can also be against cultural dynamics.34 Tactics, as defined by de Certeau, are “calculated action[s] determined by the absence of a proper locus. . . . The space of a tactic is the space of another. . . . It must play on and within a terrain imposed on it.”35 Tactics emerge within the confines of their preexisting environment, but they are always shrewd ways in which users work to make their environments “habitable.” They are necessarily the political dimension of everyday practices, as they may work to resist dominant power structures. The resistance Berger speaks of parallels the calculated actions discussed by de Certeau. Finding beauty where it may not be readily available is an act of resistance, and animal images have a history of serving such a purpose of joy. Pet and animal social media are never divorced from their broader contexts, and certain practices Beyond Doomscrolling in an Internet of Cute  89

associated with their visual culture work to make internet spaces habitable for certain users.

Imparting Joy and Cuteness When I spoke to people who enjoyed sharing their pets online, be it in the form of an occasional photo or a dedicated account, almost everyone discussed the importance of putting joy and cuteness in their social media feeds. Whether they owned a pet or worked with animals or not, my participants could not think of sharing pet images without conceiving of how they fit into the broader social media and sociocultural landscape. Jill, who had pets of her own and enjoyed sharing pictures of them and others online, told me, My close circle of friends, a lot of ways we communicate is we forward Instagram posts or memes to each other. . . . I would say a lot, a good percentage of the ones I contribute to the conversation are cute animal things. Like to break up the sadness of the world. Like, “here’s a list of all the people who died in Afghanistan this week, but also, here’s a French bulldog all tucked in for bed.” I guess my pets’ Instagram falls into that category. You want to make sure there’s stuff getting into people’s heads and minds, that it’s not just all doom and gloom and capitalism. I don’t know, those seem to be the two things everything on the internet is these days. Everyone is trying to sell you something or the world is falling apart.

Jill noted how a seemingly endless barrage of depressing news got to her, and she also contrasted pet images on social media to something she personally viewed as toxic—­attention and influencer culture and how it populated Instagram with advertisements. For her, the fact that cultural production on social media was platformized—­or heavily influenced by “the penetration of economic, governmental, and infrastructural extensions of digital platforms into the web and app ecosystems”36—­was a form of internet toxicity that she worked against with the creation and sharing of pet photos. 90  The Internet Is for Cats

On a similar note, Lindsey, who ran an Instagram for her dog, told me, “Social media used to be this fun thing, and now it can come with a lot of negativity and stress. So I have followed certain cute animal accounts as just a way to have a burst of positivity in my feeds as I’m scrolling. Being able to add to that is nice too.” Lindsey’s words echoed Jill’s in that they both viewed creating and sharing pet images as something antithetical to the broader cultural climate of many social media platforms. Taken together, both women’s words demonstrate a key point about cuteness, sociality, and joy: it was not just their own pets they liked sharing to spread joy, though that was an important part of it too; sharing any particular pet or animal image, whether that image was theirs or not, could impart joy. Both women’s words provide a foundation for visual cultures, pet and animal social media, and tactics. The desire to spread joy and cultivate a habitable place on platforms like Instagram or Facebook was key, and this often seeped into the material practices of pet photo sharing. How people staged their photos and videos, or how they were shared, was instrumental in making sure joy and cuteness were shared. For instance, Maddie, who co-­ran an Instagram for her dog with her boyfriend, told me, “We just hope people smile. Every once in a while, we’ll post, you know, ‘I hope you have a great day filled with puppy kisses!’ and it’s a photo of Pepper licking the camera.” For Maddie, taking an image and sharing it with a certain caption was essential for providing joy through her dog’s cute aesthetics. However, by staging an image to account for her dog’s cuteness, Maddie engaged in material practices that were imbricated in the larger looking relations of pet and animal social media. As such, sometimes the very tenets individuals think they are rebuking are necessary for the cultivation of joy and the spread of cute animal images on social media. The looking relation and materiality of attention are so deeply interwoven into social media practice that while such practices are often rebuked, they are also used to spread joy. However, for some of my participants, pet and animal social media were intertwined with not just broader platform dynamics Beyond Doomscrolling in an Internet of Cute  91

but the sociopolitical landscape writ large. When I spoke to Shannon, who ran an Instagram account for her family’s goldendoodle (golden retriever / poodle mix), she told me sharing pet images online was important because “it’s just a nice break from CNN and the New York Times. I would also like to say that [my daughter] is now a law student, and I feel like if she sees a picture of [our dog], and she likes it, that’s good for her, good for her mental state.” On a similar point, Hillary, who loved sharing photos of her cat Boots, thought out loud in front of me, “The stuff that is reported on social media is usually, like, it increases depression, we waste too much time on it. . . . I guess that’s contrasted with the idea that you go on the internet to look at funny animal pictures and it makes everything better. . . . I think it has real emotional implications, like psychological implications, that we can look at pictures of animals online. . . . It’s like a self-­care thing. I’m going to look at pictures of animals to make myself feel better.” When it comes to pet and animal social media, individuals work within their own meanings and circumstances to make their own joy. Cute aesthetics may prompt cute affects, including joy. In this way, my participants’ words begin to push back on Steve Baker’s assertion that “people, it seems, just like looking at animals.”37 Why do people like looking at animals? How do people like looking at animals? The dialectical relationship between cuteness and joy is an immense part of the why, and de Certeau’s tactics are just one way to explain the how. How people like to look at animals online is also reiterated by a popular idea in the broader internet lexicon—­particularly within the relationship between “doomscrolling” and the “timeline cleanse.” The term doomscrolling directly relates to the negativity of social media, “when you keep scrolling through all of your social media feeds, looking for the most recent upsetting news about the latest catastrophe.”38 Annette Markham likens doomscrolling to an endless consumption of “tragedy porn,” or upsetting content on social media that one just cannot look away from.39 While the term and practice predated the COVID-­19 pandemic, researchers found that both the term’s use and the practice increased during the global health crisis, as individuals were stuck in lockdown 92  The Internet Is for Cats

restrictions, tethered to the outside world mainly through social media.40 While doomscrolling may seem antithetical to the idea of de  Certeau’s tactics, it can be understood as one, given that individuals were doing what they needed to do to cope and make spaces habitable, even if it may, paradoxically, have had the opposite impact. Doomscrolling is not necessarily a uniquely pet and animal social media practice, but the latter are often used to break up the former. Concomitant to the idea of doomscrolling is the idea of the “timeline cleanse,” which gets its name from a “frequently used caption for social media posts that showcase positive, cute or wholesome photographs, usually of animals, celebrities or people smiling.”41 The timeline cleanse caption is often used to mitigate doomscrolling, and social media users may also call for a timeline cleanse, particularly on a platform like Twitter or Instagram. In response, their followers will share wholesome and cute pictures to help the user feel better.42 Doomscrolling, the timeline cleanse, and tactics show that joy does “not simply mean frivolous distraction or giddy disengagement, but rather, a deep embodied awareness and connection to moments of challenge, pain, grief, or oppression.”43 While they did not explicitly reference the terms, many of my participants’ sentiments underscore the ideas and aims of doomscrolling and the timeline cleanse. As expressions of the desire to break up negative, depressing, annoying, and harmful content on their timelines, each sharing of a pet image functioned as a timeline cleanse. Sharing of pet and animal images helps break up doomscrolling. While poster intent does not always translate to viewer reception, the hope my participants spoke of underscored something rather optimistic about the everyday use of social media and digital cultures: sometimes we are willing to try to take care of one another online.

Conditions and Complications of Joy and Cuteness The previous section was everything you probably hoped for when picking up this book. It explored why and how we like and engage Beyond Doomscrolling in an Internet of Cute  93

with cute pet and animal photos online. Similarly, it theorized pet and animal social media as active practices that sometimes resist broader toxic dimensions of the internet or even the sociopolitical landscape. In sum, pet and animal social media can serve as a reprieve. This reprieve is not just from neoliberalism, the internet, or the political landscape but from an amalgamation of it all. This section, however, begins to probe the qualifiers and limitations that may be present in cuteness, joy, and tactics on pet and animal social media. Cuteness and joy are not absolutes, and they are unique to individuals, subcultures, and platform dynamics and interests. Returning to the idea of the “This Is Fine” meme, with the glib dog and its impinging fire, individuals may be able to carve out their own spaces to make experiences habitable, but the complex dialectical relationships in which this terrain is theorized are paramount in not falling into reductionist takes. In this resonant meme, it is not just the dog versus the fire but the dog in the fire. Such a simple linguistic notation makes all the difference in reading the image, for in declaring “this is fine” when things are clearly not fine, the dog exhibits either denial or a reluctant acceptance of less-­than-­ideal circumstances. For my participants, the metaphorical flames are the toxicity and negativity they described, and while they may not be as resigned as the “This Is Fine” dog, they understand that their spaces are circled by social and economic contexts that may get close, heat things up, and even eventually burn the individual. Cuteness and joy are not blankets—­they are active and conditional struggles. In chapter 2, I discussed pets and the extended self, noting how people who engage with the visual cultures of pet and animal social media constantly work within a give-­and-­take: Sometimes the friend’s pet or the animal a person may know is more joyful because they can imagine the owner or caretaker in the context vis-­à-­vis the extended self. Other times, however, the joy comes from not knowing the owner. One of my participants, Darren, elaborated: “Look, the internet is for cats. But, it’s like, people want to see pictures of animals online, but when it’s constantly associated with you, they don’t necessarily want to see your animal all of the 94  The Internet Is for Cats

time.” Darren had his own pet he enjoyed sharing photos of, but his words demonstrated his awareness of when and how he should share that content. I pressed him on this point, and he explained, “Like, I’m thinking of pictures of animals on, like, Reddit or Tumblr, and how they aren’t always associated with a particular person. If I go on Reddit and look at pictures of a cat or follow a stranger’s cat on Instagram, it could be anyone’s. It doesn’t belong to my neighbor or my ex. Certain people want to keep up specifically with your pet, but I guess it’s better to not know who the pet belongs to when it’s shared with the whole internet. It’s more fun. . . . It could mean anything.” Sometimes joy came precisely because there was no context or when my participants didn’t know the person who owned the pet or posted the photo. This taps into a larger ethos of internet culture in which internet content is rarely presented in full cultural, social, or historical context.44 Here, the decontextualized pet is more interesting than the contextualized one. It is not just that internet content is rarely presented in full context; sometimes people find joy when the object is specifically contextless. Quantity may also weaken joy. Sharing too many pet or animal pictures, particularly if they are of one’s own pet, can have diminishing returns. Laurel, who loved sharing pictures of her cat online through a dedicated pet Instagram account, said, “Why are people annoyed with too many pictures of cute puppies? I guess there’s a tipping point somewhere. I don’t know what it is about seeing the same animal over and over again, but it can get people’s gears grinding. It can get my gears grinding.” While Darren’s previous explanations help offer insight into Laurel’s comments, this sentiment continues to challenge the idea that the internet is wholeheartedly for cats. The relationship between personalization and decontextualization is an always-­moving undercurrent that flows through pet and animal social media, making the joy one receives from cuteness also dependent on context and quantity. While individuals make their own joy on pet and animal social media, subcultural dynamics of groups and online communities may play a role in these meaning-­making practices. Nowhere was this more apparent in my digital ethnography than on Reddit. In Beyond Doomscrolling in an Internet of Cute  95

analyzing Reddit as a node of pet and animal social media in the digital culture landscape, I zoom out from individual and online interviews to a more macro level, incorporating textual and observational work to further ground findings from my interviews. More information on how I selected, categorized, and coded platform-­ specific data can be found in the book’s appendix. Hailed as “the front page of the internet,” Reddit blends social news, information, entertainment, and message boards.45 Content on the site is divided into subreddits, or specific subcommunities devoted to certain topics. However, Reddit is also a notable epicenter for internet vitriol, as trolling, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, White supremacy, and harassment run rampant on the site. While the platform has taken steps in recent years to curtail these problems and has shut down some of the most problematic subreddits (the great “Reddit purge” of 2020, in which numerous subreddits were banned, occurred while I was writing this book),46 the toxicity does remain.47 However, Reddit is also rife with cute animal and pet photos. At the time of writing, there were forty-­two subreddits regarding specifically pet and animal images, but overall, there were almost eight hundred subreddits in the site’s self-­described “Animal Kingdom.” These include everything from r/wildlifeconservation, r/animalsbeingjerks, r/catsandguns, r/meowIRL, r/skatedog, r/goatparkour, r/bitchImaMoose, and r/fatraccoonhate, among many others. There are currently subreddits devoted to animal GIF sharing, information gathering, and joke making and to breed-­and species-­ specific conversations. One extremely popular subreddit, r/aww, is devoted to all things cute, and while animals are not required here, they do dominate. The subreddit r/aww is also one of the places automatically suggested to new members when they first create a Reddit account, as the platform pushes cute and aww-­ worthy content toward new users—­potentially to mask the seedy eww that dominates much of the site. While cuteness and joy populate other social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, Reddit has its own formulations of the concepts, indicating how cuteness and joy are platform and subcultural specific. 96  The Internet Is for Cats

At first glance, pet and animal images on Reddit appear to align with the larger considerations of cuteness and joy. The subreddit r/aww, perhaps the most obvious nexus for cuteness and joy, describes itself as “a subreddit for cute and cuddly pictures” with “things that make you go AWW! Like puppies, bunnies, babies, and so on  .  .  . a place for really cute pictures and videos.”48 On r/bigboye, a subreddit for pictures of large animals (e.g., cows, wolves, stingrays, and cheetahs) behaving like domesticated pets, one of the rules dictated, “Please be kind!! This is a sub for giant warm fuzzies. Please treat each other with respect.”49 On a post of a newborn puppy laying on a parrot in r/unlikelyfriends, one commenter said, “Reddit can be a vile place. Then I see things like this. I send the pics and videos to my kiddo and we have a good squeeee.”50 Posts like this in these subreddits fulfill a similar function of tactics—­carving out a habitable space amid broader toxicities. But while both this rule and comment underscore Reddit’s penchant for cute content, there are also notable points of tension, particularly in conjunction with Reddit’s broader dynamics. Reddit has long been noted as a platform where harmfulness, cruelty, and toxicity thrive while hiding behind ideas of play.51 The study of pet and animal images on Reddit cannot be divorced from this broader culture. While the r/bigboye rules and r/unlikelyfriends post seem to view this joyful content as separate from Reddit’s larger issues, top posts and comments in other animal subreddits reveal this was not always the case. While many rules on pet and animal subreddits encourage users to be kind, many also dictate how images should be shared and what types are allowed. While it is not uncommon for online communities and subreddits to have rules, rules in conjunction with pet and animal imagery show the contingency of such imagery as well as its fraught relationship with context. For instance, r/Natureisbrutal hails itself as a place for “the darker side of nature,” with most rules centering around sharing only cringe and violence. While r/Natureisbrutal does prohibit illegal activities such as organized animal fighting and cruelty, the main rule is the following: “Gore only. If it’s not brutal, don’t bother. Do Beyond Doomscrolling in an Internet of Cute  97

not submit safe for work content. Significantly NSFW, gorey [sic], and/or violent content only. If there is no blood, consider if what you’re posting is cringe-­worthy enough for this subreddit.”52 On r/Natureisbrutal, joy comes from gore, which is a seemingly far move from cute pets doing cute things. However, cute does occasionally intermingle with gore, and one of the subreddit’s top posts of all time features five yellow Labrador puppies tearing apart a pig carcass with its head still intact.53 Comments on the photo declare “Awwwww they are so cute though” and “I didn’t know how something could be so cute and horrifying at the same time.”54 On r/Natureisbrutal, cute and joy intertwine with violent carnage, indicating that the misfortune of certain animals may be a joyful practice for some. While it would be easy to balk at the idea of individuals finding joy in animal desecration, there is immense decontextualizing at work in discussing nature’s brutality. Akin to whether one is seeing other people’s pet pictures or their own, whether something is decontextualized plays a role in whether the cute aesthetic or object prompts joy. In this way, decontextualizing visual content is a practice intertwined with ambivalence. Ambivalence is a defining quality of contemporary internet practice, and it is “simultaneously antagonistic and social, creative and disruptive, humorous and barbed” and “too variable across specific cases to be essentialized as this as opposed to that.”55 This polysemy means that in digitally mediated online expression, it can be difficult to ascertain one’s true meaning or intention. For cuteness and joy, this means the visual cultures of pet and animal social media are so variable that something one finds shocking or abhorrent may be cute for or shared in jest by another. Regarding r/Natureisbrutal, this is not to say that all content on this subreddit is outright ambivalent but rather to encourage a pause before assuming a subreddit devoted to images of violence and animal carnage is at best problematic and at worst sadistic. On r/Natureisbrutal, ambivalence may make enjoyment opaque, but decontextualizing also plays a role in reception. For instance, other top posts in this subreddit include a skeleton of a deer 98  The Internet Is for Cats

stuck between two giant boulders56 and a bloodied duck sticking its beak into the empty eye socket of a walrus.57 While the comment sections of these images often turn to context speculation, it is only that. These images have been decontextualized, with no information as to how they came to be. While Berger posits that post–­Industrial Revolution, animal images bring people closer to nature, in the internet era, pet and animal images may actually take us further away from nature due to decontextualization and ambivalence. Internet users do not know anything for sure when an image is shared outside of its original context, so they engage in conjecture about what could have happened and why. Images of nature may bring animals and the outside world into homes via screens, but actually understanding and engaging with nature is further removed. Lack of context and polysemy populate other animal image subreddits as well, and these concepts complicate joy even in subreddits devoted to the aww-­inducing. On r/aww, the most popular and populous animal image subreddit with over twenty-­three million members, the subreddit rules decree, “No ‘sad’ content, such as pics of animals that have passed away (try r/petloss), animals that have been injured/abused, or sob stories (e.g., found him in a dumpster, finding abandoned animals, sick/survived cancer).”58 While these rules may be understandable for a community devoted to cute content, they also tap into a previously discussed theme—­they obscure the realities of animals and owning pets. While r/aww does have a public service announcement encouraging people to spay and neuter their animals, this is where acknowledging the challenges ends. Overall, r/aww obscures the realities of being a pet owner, as pet owners frequently face so-­called sad issues such as rescuing abandoned animals and having sick pets. Joy comes from this obscurement. Considering r/aww is a subreddit pushed to new users, Reddit’s platform dynamics and infrastructure substantially contribute to the complicated situation of having pets in the social media age—­falling much more into a “pets add likes” category for problematic joy and bolstered likes rather than educating individuals about pets and animals. This has Beyond Doomscrolling in an Internet of Cute  99

material implications for those considering adopting pets. Here, I consider the “pets add likes” ethos and r/aww’s problematic joy in tandem with something one of my participants, Jacqueline, who ran an Instagram account for her corgi, told me: But I also do post about when he’s difficult. Because that was something I didn’t know before having a dog. I didn’t have a dog growing up, and I only heard people on the internet talk about how wonderful it is to have a dog. And then we got one, and I’m home with him all day, and I’m like, uh, this is way harder than I thought it was going to be. Why doesn’t anybody talk about that? So I’ll post when he’s laying down during a walk and refusing to walk, or when he’s chewed something up, or how he doesn’t really snuggle. I thought all dogs loved to snuggle, but he keeps his distance.

Jacqueline admitted her knowledge before adopting a dog was limited and skewed, and she attributed this to social media discussions of corgis. She and her husband specifically adopted a corgi because she found them cute and lovable after browsing subreddits and Facebook groups devoted to the breed. While some of her struggles are inevitable puppy troubles (e.g., excessive chewing), the way corgis are portrayed on social media is sometimes the opposite of what their temperaments actually are. Animal welfare scientists note that corgis are notoriously stubborn dogs,59 and social media portrayals of animals, combined with complications of cuteness and joy, may obscure the reality of what pet ownership is like. Causing problems similar to that of attention and viral pet videos, Reddit obscures pet ownership and animal experiences through subculture-­specific cuteness and joy.

Whose Joy? Reddit is a major, popular node in the pet and animal social media landscape. Not only is it a place for people to share pet and animal

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images and videos; reporters for online platforms such as BuzzFeed mine Reddit for content. This is a problematic content-­gathering strategy, particularly when considering Reddit through what Adrienne Massanari calls “toxic technocultures” or how Reddit’s platform-­specific culture comes from content, account creation, governance, technological structure, and policies. On Reddit, toxic technocultures “demonstrate retrograde ideas of gender, sexual identity, sexuality, and race and push against issues of diversity, multiculturalism, and progressivism” and “reflect a geek sensibility.”60 This results in Reddit privileging a specific type of user and user experience and content that reflects a White, cisgender, heterosexual, and male typology. Therefore, when sites like BuzzFeed mine Reddit content for their articles, they spread Reddit’s toxic technocultures around the internet. Reddit’s Animal Kingdom is a part of such toxic technocultures. Considering joy in tandem with Reddit shows how joy is often imbricated within affective modes of identity expression. However, such identity expression is often rendered the most apparent through perceived lack of identity. On r/natureisf-­ckinglit and r/Natureisbrutal, identifiers and discussions thereof are explicitly banned. The subreddits share the same rule: “No topics of human conceit. No politics, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or similar topics. We are here for the awesomeness of nature: these topics will be removed.”61 These two subreddits take joy’s decontextualization further by attempting to remove humans from the discussions of animals—­a common internet practice taken to its extreme on Reddit—­even though humans do the discussing, posting, and sharing of these images. These subreddits define identity markers as human conceit, implying individuals who engage in such topics are performing a narcissistic maneuver to make the conversation about themselves, not the animals. These subreddit rules reflect the idea of identity as something other people have, particularly in tandem with Reddit’s ideal typical user sensibility. The identity characteristics Massanari identifies as being part of Reddit’s overall sensibility—­W hite, male,

Beyond Doomscrolling in an Internet of Cute  101

heterosexual, and cisgender—­are often viewed as default presets and not as constructed facets of identity.62 In other words, White individuals rarely understand themselves as having a racial identity, instead viewing it as something other people have. Because of this, Whiteness is “considered normal and neutral, the yardstick against which other races are measured,”63 and “white participation in online activities is rarely understood as constitutive of white identity; instead we are trained to understand their online activities as stuff ‘people’ do.”64 In order to claim that identities and identity-­related topics are “human conceit,” one must view identity as something other people have and believe it is something that can be discarded. The idea of identity as conceit also reflects broader social media discourses surrounding narcissism, which has been critiqued as being a racist and misogynistic tool for pathologizing and controlling marginalized groups and is never actually a psychological diagnosis.65 Organizing the sharing and discussing of animal images in tandem with bans on human identity reflects a common sentiment in misogynistic and toxically masculine spheres. Bridgett Blodgett and Anastasia Salter discuss the relationship between identity and misogyny and note how in such circumstances, there is “a blindness to sexism and aversion to any political discussions.”66 Expanding on this, they argue “any person who brings up politically-­related identity issues are instigators of trouble in an otherwise apolitical world of entertainment.”67 The rules of r/Natureisbrutal and r/natureisf-­ckinglit epitomize this sentiment, as any discussion of identity would ruin the otherwise supposedly harmonious animal spaces. Joy on Reddit largely comes from its own “we-­mode,” a collective that reinforces certain identities and cultural tenets in tandem with affect. In these instances, identity becomes a threat to joy and a violation of the toxically masculine we-­mode that dominates the site. Ahmed’s feminist killjoy is again noteworthy here. According to Ahmed, the feminist “kills someone’s joy” by pointing out a topic’s problematic elements. The rules of r/Natureisbrutal and r/natureisf-­ckinglit imply if one engages in “human conceit” they 102  The Internet Is for Cats

risk “killing the joy” others find in the subreddit. This subtlety underscores the clashing dynamics between so-­called feminist identities and supposedly masculine-­coded but identity-­less spaces, particularly on Reddit where feminism as a whole is largely viewed as negative.68 For those in pet and animal image subreddits, joy is curated from a paradoxical lack of human intervention, even though humans share the content in the first place. Reddit’s Animal Kingdom underscores the role of identities in de  Certeau’s tactics. Similarly, it also shows how a group’s perceived lack of identity may be essential in constructing the collective of joy to make spaces habitable for its members. Pet and animal social media may function as tactics to make digital spaces habitable against the internet’s broader toxicity, but just like joy, tactics and perceived toxicity are conditional for individual users and subgroups. By declaring pet and animal subreddits to be identity-­free spaces, subreddit moderators engage in what they believe are tactics to keep what they perceive as toxicity out of their spaces. This nuance is needed for discussion of de Certeau in internet subcultures and online communities, as terms like habitable and calculated action do not always operate from places of well-­intentioned benevolence. They are always conditional, and Reddit’s Animal Kingdom shows we must ask, “Habitable for whom?” How something is to be made habitable will always depend on what a subculture values. Pets and animals have always been used by humans to uphold humans’ identity markers and boundaries. As Sarah Mayorga-­ Gallo argues, White individuals often view pets as facilitating relatively positive sociality, but this is almost always between same-­race individuals.69 Across racial lines, dogs-­as-­sociality uphold racist boundaries and hierarchies. In other words, in Mayorga-­Gallo’s study, when White individuals interacted with their neighbors with dogs, they performed differently and rated the encounter more positively than when they encountered their Black, Latino, and Latina neighbors. When it comes to joy and pets, this is also constructed down racial lines, further underscoring how context and identity are never disentangled from these interactions. Beyond Doomscrolling in an Internet of Cute  103

Cuteness and joy are not monoliths. They are different meaning-­ making practices for everyone, and they are influenced by human identity. By decontextualizing pet and animal images and videos and privileging content that may not be tethered to an individual owner, human users mask their own role in the perpetuation of this culture. Pet and animal social media are the products of human meaning-­making practices, and this can never be overlooked in understanding the nuances of this visual culture.

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4 “You Can’t Buy Happiness, but You Can Rescue It” Neoliberal Pets and Animals

In the realm of famous internet pets, Tuna, or @TunaMeltsMyHeart, is quite well known. Tuna is a ten-­year-­old “Chiweenie” (a Chihuahua/dachshund mix) with an exaggerated overbite, a recessed jaw, and an extremely wrinkly neck. His owner originally created his account as a fun page for her friends, but after Instagram featured a picture of Tuna on their personal account, Tuna’s internet fame skyrocketed.1 His image was taken to Reddit, where users created a meme called “Steven with a Ph” or “Phteven,” as if Tuna was speaking the name Stephen with his overbite. Shortly thereafter, BuzzFeed and the Daily Mail featured Tuna, and he and his owner also enjoyed an appearance on the Today Show, a popular morning show in the United States. Today, Tuna has over 2.1  million followers across his Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter profiles, and his owner has admirably used his platform to raise money for animal rescues and welfare organizations.2 In addition to attending his PetCon appearances, fans can also support Tuna and his owner by buying merchandise from the official Tuna Melts My Heart website. For ten dollars, one can buy a Tuna calendar, which features the dog in a variety of costumes. One can also purchase their very own plush stuffed 105

animal that looks like Tuna, or for fifty dollars, one can get their very own video of Tuna on Cameo, the video-­sharing site featuring personalized messages from celebrities.3 Tuna’s continued fame highlights all three of the social modalities I examine. Attention, cuteness, and neoliberalism are all present in his story. Tuna is an internet pet celebrity, meaning his social media presences are curated to make him consumable by others (and, with the Tuna plush stuffed animal, material practice means that one could actually own a fake Tuna). Tuna brings fans and followers joy,4 and it is precisely because he is not conventionally cute that individuals find him endearing. And lastly, Tuna represents the remaining social modality of pet and animal social media that I have yet to discuss—­neoliberalism. As discussed in chapter 1, neoliberalism is an economic philosophy dominated by the belief in little to no government regulation in free markets. But neoliberalism is a pervasive logic, and over time, it shifted from economics and into the sociocultural governing of everyday life. Rosalind Gill identifies this as neoliberal subjectivity, in which the same logics that govern economic neoliberalism are translated to human cultural practice.5 Like economic neoliberalism, neoliberal subjectivities involve a focus on the individual over the structural and the belief that if one is to be successful, they must be responsible for their own actions and self-­monitor, self-­discipline, and self-­regulate. This often manifests in explicitly political ways, such as the lack of government intervention through social welfare programs, or in the consumer-­cultural realm through entities like fitness trackers, smart watches and smart homes, and video doorbells (to be sure, though, this is by no means an exhaustive list of all the ways consumer culture and neoliberal subjectivities are intertwined). Neoliberal subjectivities also occur across social media, for when people view themselves—­or their pets and animals—­as something to be consumed by others, they self-­monitor and act in certain ways that allow them to be ideally consumed. Neoliberal subjectivities undergird the relationship between attention and materiality. While this is not a reductionist slip back into the realm of economic metaphors and considerations, it does show how such 106  The Internet Is for Cats

neoliberal subjectivities influence, and are influenced by, attention and materiality. In pet and social media, such neoliberalism also influences, and is influenced by, cuteness. Tuna’s internet success story is a neoliberal one, predicated on social media logics, looking relations, and affect. While Instagram used Tuna’s image on their own page to promote themselves as a platform, they inadvertently promoted Tuna as well, catapulting him and his owner into a success fueled by attention, cuteness, and joy. From there, neoliberal tenets were required to continue the successful practice of internet celebrity and promotion. This involved the perpetuation of viewing Tuna as something to be consumed by others, increased datafication by being attuned to metrics, and ultimately, even the actual exchange of money for Tuna merchandise or Cameo appearances. While Tuna is among a handful of internet-­famous pets practicing neoliberal cultural tenets in their own ways, neoliberalism in pet and animal social media often occurs in more quotidian, and perhaps less obvious, ways. This chapter explores pet and animal social media through the social modality of neoliberalism, in which I focus less on economic considerations and instead privilege subjectivities, cultural tenets, and material practices. Such ideas and practices may, in turn, prompt economic and financial considerations. I approach this chapter a bit differently than the last two. This chapter uses less interview data and more insights from my textual and observational work to show how neoliberalism underscores this digital culture, oftentimes through subtle threads and small nuances. While I organized previous chapters around recurring findings and themes related to that chapter’s social modality, I instead organize this chapter around the two entities that are often at odds with each other in neoliberalism: institutions and individuals. While neoliberalism often eschews the former in favor of the latter, both are constantly at play to craft neoliberal subjectivities. Neoliberalism’s successful sleight of hand is putting the onus on individuals, yet institutions still shape social practice in myriad ways. While I focus on institutions and individuals in distinct parts of this chapter, I make connections across both to show how they “You Can’t Buy Happiness, but You Can Rescue It”  107

are not actually separate in practice. The recurring, thematic institutions I focus on first are social media news sites like BuzzFeed and the bourgeoning pet influencer talent sphere. Regarding individuals, I focus specifically on the commodification of affects and identities, including “dog mom,” “pet parent,” “cat dad,” and more.

Pets and Animals in Neoliberal Times Neoliberalism dominates social and cultural life through its affective and psychic registers, what Gill refers to as a sensibility and Christina Scharff examines as neoliberalism’s “psychic life.”6 Catherine Rottenberg explores this further, noting not just how cultural and social practices are rife with neoliberal tenets but rather that neoliberalism upends understandings of the self through its political rationality and “recast[s] individuals as human capital and thus capital-­enhancing agents.”7 Neoliberalism’s cultural tenets and practices promote ways of being in which individuals should be hyperconcerned with productivity and capital-­producing activities. This manifests in contemporary ideas and practices such as the gig or platform economy, in which people work for apps like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and more;8 the “side hustle” economy, in which individuals attempt to convert hobbies, leisure, or play into forms of labor, or “playbour”;9 and problematic gender ideals of work, including the idea of the confidant career woman or girl boss10 as well as Sheryl Sandberg’s exhortation to “lean in.”11 Within these ideas and practices, failing to succeed is staunchly the individual’s fault and not the result of any systemic or structural inequalities, such as the exploitation and lack of worker protections in the gig economy,12 meritocratic myths of success and participatory culture,13 and long-­standing systemic inequalities and inequities in the workforce.14 As discussed throughout this book, pets and animals are not exempt from these ideas and practices. Smartphone apps like Rover and Wag! connect pet owners with pet sitters and dog walkers, be it those who work with pets full-­time or those seeking a bit of extra income on the side in the gig-­and side-­hustle economies. Owners of all species of pets may follow similar practices of sharenting, 108  The Internet Is for Cats

or the sharing of near-­constant documentation of their children’s (or pets’) lives online.15 They may also follow similar practices of mommy blogging, in which parents share their caretaking struggles, tips, stories, and advice in hopes of garnering fame.16 Such a practice also blurs the lines of family, work, leisure, and play, turning pet ownership into a form of “playbour.” When animal rescues, sanctuaries, and shelters engage in similar practices, they turn animal caretaking into a similar iteration of work and leisure. Affect is key to neoliberalism’s continued presence in social life, as it blurs the lines between work and play and eschews the systemic.17 There are specific dispositions needed to be successful under neoliberalism, including, but not limited to, confidence, resilience, and a positive mental attitude.18 Such qualities help mask the inequalities perpetuated by “correct” ways of being under neoliberalism and make the structural opaque—­if one is upset or insecure, the fault is their own. Such ideals percolate below the surface of social life19 and become ways of governing the self and “getting by.”20 I return here to Allison Page’s discussions of LOLWork, first raised in the introduction, in which she proposes that cute cat images are a way for individuals to cope with the drudgery of neoliberal capitalism.21 Now that I have unpacked Page’s idea and demonstrated that people seek out images of cute cats to escape not just the drudgery of neoliberalism but also broader aspects of internet toxicity and general harmful or depressing situations, I return to her idea to demonstrate that sometimes, that internet toxicity is precisely neoliberal, and cute cat images do provide temporary relief. In this way, cuteness—­as aesthetic and affect—­and joy are tactics to cope with neoliberalism and curate one’s own habitable moments. Furthermore, when content creators of pet and animal social media create images and videos through the lens of attention, they provide fodder to be ultimately used for such tactics to cope with neoliberalism. That being said, in curating such content, sometimes, individuals use the very neoliberal tenets they rebuke to provide a form of relief from it. The bind of neoliberalism is difficult to escape because within it, everything has the potential to be commodified or marketed for “You Can’t Buy Happiness, but You Can Rescue It”  109

human consumption. Under neoliberalism, affect itself may be commodified, as can the qualities needed to survive this political, cultural moment.22 Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad adroitly chart this relationship in their analysis of “love your body” discourse and the idea of “confidence culture” and how bourgeoning discourses encouraging self-­confidence are imbricated within ideas of labor, value, bodies, and feminism.23 Confidence as a neoliberal affective ideal performs ideological work, undergirding the power of neoliberalism and reifying its broader messages. Such considerations set the stage for considering how affects and aesthetics, including cuteness and joy, are intertwined with neoliberalism. Online, the commodification of affect is aided by the technical architectures of social media, which quantify human interaction and turn it into bite-­size snippets and numbers to be analyzed. Datafication is one of the defining logics of social media,24 and it is inherently neoliberal, for in focusing on analytics, individuals surveil themselves through numbers. They may also monitor and discipline themselves to produce future content that yields additionally high metrics. Metrics in online communities that share and create content assist in the commodification of aesthetics and affects, as Jordan Schonig notes in his discussion of how increased likes of memes on Reddit encourage analogous styles of future production.25 Similarly, social media platforms such as Instagram have blurred the lines between communication and commerce,26 making it difficult to disentangle cultural practice from market dynamics. On YouTube, creators, professional or aspiring, must be keenly aware of their metrics, such as their watch time ratios, or the number of people who click to begin their videos versus the number who actually finish watching. If the ratio is skewed, they may face consequences from the video-­sharing site, such as less algorithmic promotion or revenue.27 Alongside increased datafication and the commodification of affect, identity is a key component of neoliberalism. For many cultural studies scholars, identity is where the cultural, social, and political converge. Identities are deeply imbricated with market dynamics online, especially as platforms commodify expressions. 110  The Internet Is for Cats

A core characteristic of the neoliberal era is how deeply representations have converged with market dynamics and logics—­namely, in how people view themselves, including their extended selves, as something to be consumed by others. While Jodi Dean argues that neoliberalism may foreclose possibilities of expression,28 the vernacular ways individuals find to showcase themselves and what matters to them indicate otherwise.29 When individuals push the boundaries of self-­representation online by finding novel ways to show themselves or their extended selves, they also extend the possibilities of what could ultimately be commodified. This is not to say that every facet of human expression and self-­ representation immediately becomes neoliberal fodder; rather, self-­representation online exists at a tumultuous intersection of platform architectures, mechanisms of sociality, tactics, ideologies, and market dynamics. Pets, animals, social media, and neoliberalism involve Rottenberg’s theorization of neoliberalism as a political rationality that recasts everything as human capital,30 However, pets and animals have always been used in conjunction with human labor as such forms of capital. From needing animals for food and work to their being necessary mechanisms within the agricultural revolution, animals have always been a part of human survival, economics, labor, and market considerations.31 Even during the Industrial Revolution, as factory work outpaced agriculture, farming was still needed for food, and animals themselves were recast as transportation within factory systems.32 Pet influencers and pet internet celebrities like Tuna may seem eons away from these types of labor, but this is the historical trajectory that has led to pet and animal labor within neoliberal digital economies. Pets and animals have always played various roles in human labor throughout history, and neoliberal social media economies are not exempt from this tendency to incorporate animals into human work and market dynamics. Showcasing animals for labor and profit is also by no means a new phenomenon, existing within a historical lineage of menageries, zoos, and circuses.33 As Susan Nance explains in her historical analysis on elephants in the American circuses, “You Can’t Buy Happiness, but You Can Rescue It”  111

Animal exhibitions, menageries, and circuses reshaped American markets for experience by employing the jovial circus elephant icon to show Americans how to become modern consumers of animal celebrity. Appearing on the cultural landscape in the 1810s, animal celebrity constituted an abstract way of conceiving wild animals as public, named, and commercially engaged individuals. The resulting animal figure was a product of people who decided they could make a living by creating and selling portrayals of noted animals that flattered audience humor, visual interest, or morality. . . . Americans employed animal celebrity to complicate or clearly mark out the imagined lines distinguishing humans from nonhumans.34

The latter half of Nance’s words could easily apply to pet influencers, microcelebrity, or internet celebrity. Menageries begot circus animals, which begot the pet and animal celebrities and influencers of the twenty-­first century. All iterations involve the human desire to showcase animals, with the contemporary iteration merging human and animal labor, social media dynamics and architecture, cuteness and joy, and attention.

You’ll Never Guess How Pets and Animals Found a Home in Online Journalism! Such a dialectical history of pets, animals, images, labor, and neoliberalism helps explain how pet and animal imagery moved from early fodder existing on the fringes of the internet in the form of LOLCats and I Can Has Cheezburger? to the explosive proliferation of such content all across the internet. Neoliberal undercurrents helped push pet and animal imagery from the relative fringe of digital cultures and into a hegemonic mode of cultural production shot through with popular culture dynamics and neoliberal market commodification. Upon realizing the benefits of pet and animal visual sociality and the market potential for profits, social media begot institutions in the realm of pet and animal social media—­most notably in the industries of journalism and talent. 112  The Internet Is for Cats

New outlets were a key nodal point in charting the landscape of pet and animal social media. Sites like BuzzFeed and The Dodo are hailed as digital epicenters for cute pet and animal stories, images, and videos. On BuzzFeed, pets and animals are not just found on their subsection BuzzFeed Animals but proliferate across the company; headlines like “15 Dog Posts from This Week That You Should Look at Instead of Doomscrolling”35 and “21 Tweets about Animals That Prove How Ridiculous They Are” are common.36 Similarly The Dodo posts stories such as “Man Who Vowed He’d Never Give up on His Lost Dog Reunited with Him 4 Years Later”37 and “Watch This Adorable Baby Bobcat Step Out to Bravely Explore the World.”38 However, BuzzFeed, The Dodo, and the like are aggregators more than they are epicenters of originality. Particularly on BuzzFeed, reporters pull content from other sources on the internet, such as Reddit, and amplify the images with the BuzzFeed branded name. The shift from platform-­independent news that focused less on advertising revenue, data, and site governance to platform-­ dependent aggregators whose entire business models are contingent on user engagement is indicative of broader neoliberal shifts and social media proliferation.39 Specifically, within this aggregator model, “online publishers start the content production cycle by identifying trending social media topics and popular search terms, as well as by calculating production costs, traffic, and advertising or sponsorship revenue potential.”40 Within this model of using the networked strategies of social media platforms themselves, it should be no surprise pet and animal content regularly appears as fodder given the relationship between cuteness, sociality, and the connectivity of platforms. Cuteness and attention alone are not enough to guarantee online success, but in general, pet and animal images are a reliably stable form of content for this business model, predicated on the historical imbrication of animals, labor, and technologies. Journalism’s aggregating ethos of platform-­networked effects spills over into other forms of pet and animal social media, particularly when accounts take over others’ content—­with attribution—­and “You Can’t Buy Happiness, but You Can Rescue It”  113

share it widely. This is particularly common on Instagram, as accounts like @thedogist, @thecatist, or pet “takeover” accounts show off other people’s pets as fodder for larger accounts. On these “takeover” accounts, an individual is granted access to the account for a day and shows their own content. The active sourcing of content from those outside of the media industries is a by-­product of larger shifts in the news sector, including neoliberal economics and logics, staff cuts and newsroom closures, and bourgeoning citizen journalism. These outlets, accounts, and platforms “represent the full flowering of the participatory ethos insofar as their entire operational model depends on users voluntarily producing and sharing media content about themselves, their personal lives, and their beliefs.”41 Social media logics intertwine with the news and media industries to form this aggregating model. Such a business model was a predominant focus when I attended 2020 PetCon. BuzzFeed reporters discussed this practice on one panel at the convention, and an audience member posed the question “How can we get content in front of you to be featured on BuzzFeed?” A reporter answered, “Definitely post to r/aww. It’s where I look for work and for my own personal joy.” Another mentioned, “We take our content from Reddit, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to look good. I know it feels less genuine for our readers with bad lighting.” Having one’s pet be featured on BuzzFeed has become a goal of aspiring pet content creators—­so much so that the topic deserved its own PetCon panel. However, this discussion demonstrates the contradictions of neoliberalism within pet and animal social media and its concomitant industries. If the neoliberal content creator economies were as democratic as they are often touted to be, such advice and material strategies would not be necessary. Additionally, as discussed in chapter 3, such an aggregating business model amplifies some of the internet’s most toxic attributes and practices. Even decontextualized, which BuzzFeed collections of Reddit posts often are, the dynamics of Reddit’s toxic technocultures are so engrained in the logics of curating, posting, sharing, and liking on Reddit that the fact that context has been severed does not mean underlying values are. 114  The Internet Is for Cats

When journalism aggregators mine content from sites, they do not agnostically poach. Platform dynamics and values come too, which in turn normalizes and valorizes the sociotechnical collectives of a particular image or video’s origin. Pet and animal content as fodder for journalistic outlets is by no means a product of the digital age. Like all pet and animal images, this practice predates the modern web. However, nuances of social media, including their neoliberal values, have tweaked such tendencies for the internet era. As Claire Parkinson notes, “Due to their brevity, use as clickbait, and as entertaining digression from ‘serious’ news, animal filler stories often employ species stereotypes and perpetuate perception that animals, their lives, and experiences are not to be taken seriously.”42 Akin to how individuals use pet and animal content as joyful reprieves from broader toxicity, negativity, and harmful content, news outlets and social media content aggregators do the same. Such a notion underscores the long-­standing relationship between journalism and internet culture, which has often been fraught with tension, trolling, and misunderstandings. Online content plays “an increasingly important role in social, political, and cultural agenda-­setting,”43 and since many media outlets “are so eager to present the latest, weirdest, and most sensationalist story,”44 social media content and the press as a legacy media institution become intertwined. Pet and animal social media are part and parcel of this relationship. As previously discussed, the journalistic tendency to present pet and animal images and stories as heartwarming reprieves became a tactic of individual internet users and subcultures to cope with the onslaught of broader toxicity on the web. Journalists and aggregators continue to rely on content produced in such an environment for easy, lighthearted fodder. At the messy nexus of this dialectic is the idea of clickbait. Clickbait is an often bemoaned but frequently used strategy of digital content creators, including professional journalists, aspiring amateurs, and vloggers and video stars. Clickbait is content—­most often a headline—­designed to make readers want to know more when in actuality, the story is of little or dubious interest.45 The cute “You Can’t Buy Happiness, but You Can Rescue It”  115

aesthetic is often a strategy of clickbait, luring potential viewers in with the promise of something related to cute affect and joy. On social media, clickbait becomes a market logic and practice to bolster the neoliberal tenet of increasing datafication—­more clicks and views. The very term clickbait also underscores just how deep animal logics and values go in social media dynamics and infrastructure; the term itself implies baiting humans in digital infrastructure the way one would bait and trap an animal.

PetCon: A Pet Lover’s Dream In neoliberal times, a second institution concomitant to pet and animal social media is the convention. Some of the abovementioned quotes came from PetCon, the annual convention for pet influencers, pet internet celebrities, and fans of both. PetCon hails itself as “a pet lover’s dream” and as “an action-­packed event of insightful panels, fun activations and can’t miss meet + greets with your favorite celebrity pets.”46 Held twice a year in Chicago and Los Angeles in the United States, PetCon has become the essential convention for creators and fans of all things internet pets and animals. It is not alone, however, and CatCon—­“the biggest cat-­centric, pop culture event in the world dedicated to all things feline”—­coalesces around the digital in an iteration devoted to cats.47 Both nascent conventions spun off of the most popular internet video convention, VidCon, and adopted similar social and business models. Originally created by vlogbrothers John and Hank Green in 2011, VidCon was eventually purchased by the American media conglomerate Viacom and transformed from a relatively grassroots internet video meetup into a multiday convention with sites in Anaheim, London, Amsterdam, and Melbourne.48 VidCon created the model for the successful internet video convention by highlighting digital celebrity and trendy social media practices, a format subsequently adopted by both PetCon and CatCon. Common panels at PetCon and CatCon include things like “What It Means to Be a Cat Lady in 2021” (CatCon, 2021), “Kitty Acoustic: A PURRformance” (CatCon, 2021), “Going beyond 116  The Internet Is for Cats

Catnip: Ensuring Out Cats Are Happy (and Making Sure We’re OK Too)” (CatCon, 2021), “The Changing Nature of Influence” (PetCon, 2020), “Conquering TikTok” (PetCon, 2020), and “Stand Out on Social” (PetCon, 2020).49 Featured across these panels and other events are a litany of internet-­famous pets, including Tuna, Crusoe Dachshund, Smudge Lord (from the famous “woman yelling at cat meme”), and Nala Cat.50 Partnerships and copanelists include BuzzFeed writers, the handlers of such internet-­ famous pets, the humans behind @CatsofInstagram, and the cohosts of the cat podcast Purrcast, among others. Taken together, these events, pets, handlers, and other humans show that conventions have become the meeting ground for the immense breadth of practices within pet and animal social media. No convention would be complete without merchandise. As figures 4.1 and 4.2 show, both PetCon and CatCon offer numerous types of pet convention “swag,” turning this epicenter of pet and animal social media into a literal convergence of pet and animal internet celebrity, attention and influence, cute aesthetics and joy, and commodification. A recurring theme in convention merchandise is the idea that one privileges animals over other humans, as noted by CatCon’s signature “don’t bother meow” or PetCon’s “dogs are my favorite people.” Such merchandise is key for content creators at convention sites like VidCon (or in this case, PetCon and CatCon), and merchandise sales substantially add to creators’ revenue streams.51 Even when individual creators’ merchandise is not featured in the official convention store, panelists of pet influencers and celebrities often offer their own discount codes to fans at the ticketed event, just as they would in YouTube videos or Instagram posts. During the “Changing Nature of Influence” panel at 2020 PetCon such was the case of Crusoe Dachshund, who offered a special discount code for pet mobility ramps (to help aging, injured, or disabled animals up and down sofas and beds). Scholarship within the field of fan studies has long addressed how conventions are a sublimation of identity, cultural material practices, interests, and market dynamics. Even during the virtual pet and animal conventions I attended during the COVID-­19 “You Can’t Buy Happiness, but You Can Rescue It”  117

Fig. 4.1. 2020 Virtual PetCon merchandise Credit: Screenshot from petcon.com

Fig. 4.2. 2020 Virtual CatCon merchandise

Credit: Screenshot from catcon.threadless.com

pandemic, the events still represented what Anne Gilbert refers to as a pilgrimage of fans into “media worlds,” where nonfamous individuals are subject to the social influence of stars, creatives, producers, and distributors.52 Pet and animal social media conventions are sites where fans encounter the media world of internet celebrities, creators, and their pets, becoming modern-­day menageries. Instead of conveying the power and domination of colonial expansion, the convention menagerie highlights the power and prowess of the social media industries through seemingly innocuous and innocent images of cute pets. Just like the traditional menageries, the events convey specific ideologies at work in cultural practice. A few of the most successful social media stars are put on display, tapping into the ideas of attention and aspirational labor as well as the idea that simply being cute is enough to achieve pet internet celebrity status. In addition to upholding the asymmetrical power imbalances of conventions, pet and animal social media conventions obscure the inherently undemocratic nature of the content-­ creation industries and platforms. By being granted access to the (social) media world, the famed pet and animal creators on display provide the illusion that anyone can achieve such status. Conventions, including pet and animal ones, are sites where industry trends and logics are displayed, as creators and those in positions of media power tout “inside access” to the media world. This was noteworthy during PetCon’s “Changing Nature of Influence” panel, when PetCon founder and Dog Talent Agency founder Loni Edwards said the following: “Pets have taken center stage in influence. You get all of the benefits of the human influencer with the cuteness of pets. Everyone loves pets. They’re joyful, they’re cute, they make us happy. But they’re not going to get drunk at a party and hurt your brand like a human influencer.” While Edwards spoke of why pet influencers had seemingly been on the rise in recent years, her comments also reflected larger issues in the influencer industry, be it with humans or not. Human influencers are imperfect because people are imperfect, and there is always the risk that a person could damage the brand they are representing. In recruiting influencers, brands engage in “You Can’t Buy Happiness, but You Can Rescue It”  119

a “safety dance” that uses automated tools to gauge the potential risk of a prospective influencer and whether or not they could damage a particular brand.53 Pet influencers are the epitome of the extended self and attention looking relations, using cute aesthetics and affects to promote products that, in Edwards’s words, no longer even have to be pet or animal related. Pet influencers have promoted books, liquor, mattresses, and more. By using cute aesthetics and affects, and attention looking relations through the extended self, pet influencers become the most joyful—­and some of the safest—­influencers out there. If the human behind the pet engages in behavior that could damage the brand, the extended self has made it so that there is appropriate self-­representational distance between the depicted pet and the one who curates the posts. As Edwards’s words suggest, however, humans themselves appear to be left behind, or are at least getting pushed further behind the scenes. In this view, pet and animal influencers are the most brand-­safe influencers of all because they are not subject to human whims and follies. Such a trend is the commodification of the extended self, in which one’s peripheral self becomes the ideal influencer. Turning toward pets is indicative of the larger nonhuman turn in influence, as virtual influencers are also on the rise.54 The latter are fictional computer-­generated images of people who perform tasks similar to those of human influencers. But like pet influencers, the human owner—­or in this case, designer—­provides distance that functions as a safety net for the brand. The turn past humans in influence is indicative of larger neoliberal sensibilities, in which humans cannot be trusted to successfully self-­monitor, self-­regulate, and self-­discipline to not harm a company’s image. While it would be easy to laugh at or dismiss virtual influencers as dystopian logics run amuck, situating the turn away from humans in influence in conversation with pets shows that this practice is not just about pushing the boundaries of technological innovation—­it is a confluence of attention, cuteness, joy, and neoliberalism, in which risky humans can no longer necessarily be trusted.

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Creating the Modern Pet Parenthood Now that I have discussed two prominent ways neoliberalism percolates within pet and animal social media, I turn to individuals and the way neoliberalism functions within and around them. Throughout this book, I have discussed some of the most explicit ways this manifests, be it through influencers, microcelebrity, or datafication. However, as mentioned previously, a key component of neoliberalism is the sublimation and commodification of identity, and the identities of “pet parent” and “animal lover” (and any specific iterations under them, including “dog parent,” “cat parent,” and “cat lover”) are no exception. Versions of pet parent, animal lover, dog mom, and cat dad were recurring refrains in my research, either as participants identified themselves as such or as the labels were slapped all over merchandise or celebrated in Instagram hashtags. Sarah Banet-­Weiser’s research on neoliberal brand culture has been essential to cultural studies and neoliberal considerations.55 Specifically, she focuses on the ways popular feminism intertwines with neoliberalism, noting that feminism is “‘popular’ in at least three senses: One, feminism manifests in discourses and practices that are circulated in popular and commercial media. . . . Two, the ‘popular’ of feminism signifies the condition of being liked or admired by like-­minded people and groups, as popularity. And three, for me, the ‘popular’ is, as cultural theorist Stuart Hall (1998) argued, a terrain of struggle, a space where competing demands for power battle it out.”56 I have not lost the focus of my argument. Rather, Banet-­Weiser’s conception of the way “popular feminism” becomes popular is useful for grounding my analysis of how the proliferation of pet and animal social media, practices, and identities has exploded in contemporary discourse and materiality—­in essence, how they became popular. As Banet-­Weiser goes on to note, popular feminism is not necessarily commodity feminism, but the turn toward proliferating commodities is a component of the neoliberal ethos that underscores both; pet and animal social media, in their popularity, are similar sites of convergence in which “You Can’t Buy Happiness, but You Can Rescue It”  121

the increased focus on affects and identities runs asymptotically to ubiquitous commodities. An entire market for pet and animal social media, for their owners and lovers of them, has cropped up, and conventions are merely one such node, demonstrating the imbrication of all three notions of popular—­products and ideas in this market are well-­ liked by many people, they circulate in media, and they are all sites of ideological struggle. In addition to existing at the intersection of fandom and the convention practices of the social media industries, the merchandise discussed above and depicted in figures 4.1 and 4.2 shows that identity and identity claims are crucial to this popularity. “Don’t bother me right meow” and “dogs are my favorite people” do not just convey pithy statements; they say specific things about the person wearing the shirt or displaying the print on their office wall. Like the bourgeoning trend of products with the phrase “this is what a feminist looks like,”57 pet and animal social media practice have contributed to an intertwining of the popular and the commodity, and we must ask questions similar to what Banet-­Weiser asks of popular feminism: “What does popular feminism look like? How does it circulate? Who are its ideal constituents? What are its goals?”58 What popular pet and animal social media looks like, as well as how it circulates, has been the focus of this book thus far, coalescing around the idea that the internet is for cats. The rest of this chapter turns toward the last two questions—­“ Who are its ideal constituents?” and “What are its goals?” Throughout my digital ethnography, there were similar recurring themes and messages plastered across social media captions, shirts, hats, tumblers, wineglasses, and more. This popular commodification coalesces around identity, further demonstrating the neoliberal turn toward promoting specific attributes and dispositions as well as conflating identity with market logics. The first form of neoliberal identification within popular pet and animal social media is a contested one: the idea of the “pet parent.” This broad identifier is not necessarily tied to a specific animal, and it is a hotly contested as parents of human children often bemoan the adoption of this term to describe animal caretaking.59 122  The Internet Is for Cats

For those adopting this moniker, pet parent often intertwines with the fur baby sentiment, allowing individuals to specify their relationship with their pet and distinguish themselves as loving pet owners.60 Oftentimes, those who consider themselves pet parents notate themselves in species-­specific ways, through labels like “dog mom,” “dog dad,” “cat mom,” and “cat dad.” While other iterations of this identifier exist for other pets, I focus primarily on the dog and cat versions here. Notably, those adopting any iteration of the pet parent identity most likely adhere to a humanistic pet orientation, or the idea that pets are beloved persons.61 “Pet parenting”—­and its species-­specific iterations—­represents a shift in pet ownership. While not all adhere to these levels of love and commitment, the turn toward the pet parent identity exists at the nexus of changing social demographics, neoliberalism, and social media. While those who adopt the pet parent identity may have human children, there is also a marked social demographic shift at work. As I have discussed elsewhere in the practice of divorce selfies, visual cultures of social media practice are indeed “popular” in Stuart Hall’s sense—­they are the ground on which cultural transformations are worked and hegemonies shift.62 While divorce selfies were often decried as a sign that the “millennial generation was killing marriage,”63 they were actually cultural practices showing how a younger generation of individuals viewed institutions as less authoritative, all-­fulfilling, or immutable.64 An uptake of the pet parent identity reflects a similar sentiment, as more and more in younger generations across the globe put off having human children for a while, or permanently.65 There is no shortage of businesses that have arisen to cater to this market, and there are myriad products available to promote this social and demographic shift. For instance, over the course of my digital ethnography, I encountered social media–­ heavy businesses like Wags & Weights and Grounds & Hounds, which offer pet parent products in tandem with weight-­lifting gear and attire (the former) or coffee (the latter). But if one wants numerous options or recurring, seasonal shirts, bandanas, toys, and more, they can turn toward an extremely popular iteration of this identity “You Can’t Buy Happiness, but You Can Rescue It”  123

commodification—­the subscription box. Subscription boxes are recurring deliveries of niche products, and they have been a large part of “subcom,” or subscription-­based ecommerce that has proliferated in the internet era.66 Extant research on subscription boxes examines them from marketing or advertising perspectives, but they are also imbricated in popular discourse, neoliberalism, and specifically, pet and animal social media. Subscription boxes are also asymptotic to the larger social media video “unboxing” phenomenon, in which vloggers film themselves opening and examining products—­a trend that has been particularly popular among child YouTubers and beauty vloggers.67 Unboxing videos do not necessarily always feature subscription boxes, but both trends demonstrate the turn toward niche products in an affectively charged, identity-­rich digital environment. Like pet and animal social media, subscription boxes and their relationship to social media rely on both attention and neoliberalism. In viewing oneself as something consumable by others, the logic of the attention economy and the materiality of attention looking relations recasts individuals as human capital. I repeatedly encountered subscription boxes in my digital ethnography, often through sponsored or targeted ads. In turn, I followed them as metafields and incorporated them into my analysis. There are numerous pet subscription boxes available to the pet parent—­BarkBox, the Cat Lady Box, Dog Mom Box, and Pup Mom Crate. These companies offer monthly subscription boxes featuring gear and attire for the human while also including toys and treats for the dog or cat. Figure 4.3 shows a sampling of products featured in the May 2021 Dog Mom Box: dog treats and toys as well as a tie-­dyed shirt and scrunchie for the mom with a matching tie-­dyed bandana for the dog. Figure 4.4 shows the items in the May 2021 Cat Lady Box, which featured a cat mom shirt, toys for the cat, a silver bracelet with cats etched on it, and a vase in the shape of a cat. Even though the boxes are species specific, they both promote the fur baby and pet parent identity through numerous products. There are items to spoil one’s pet, and there are also items for one to distinguish themselves from other pet owners and establish pet parenthood as a key facet of their affective identity. 124  The Internet Is for Cats

Fig. 4.3. Dog Mom Box containing dog treats and toys, a tie-­dyed shirt and scrunchie, and matching tie-­dyed dog bandanas, May 2021 Credit: Photo courtesy of the author

Fig. 4.4. Cat Lady Box containing a shirt with the phrase “cat mom,” cat toys, a cat bracelet, and a vase in the shape of a cat, May 2021 Credit: Photo courtesy of the author

Pets have always been a part of consumer culture, as owners from all levels of devotion must navigate food, toys, and veterinary visits.68 Beginning in the 1980s, as the Anglophone world turned toward popular neoliberalism, the consumer culture of pet ownership exploded, ramping up the commodification while also transforming affection and affect for pets and animals. Such a shift into the twenty-­first century mirrors what Banet-­Weiser discusses about the market in feminism: “The market in feminism is not simply about commodification of slogans, political messages, and feminist products; it is also about validating an economic subject and an economic context, this version of feminism isn’t necessarily committed to interrogating sexist and racist structural ground. . . . Popular feminism rarely critiques neoliberalism and its values; on the contrary, these values—­economic success, new market growth, self-­entrepreneurship—­are all part and parcel of popular feminism.”69 Pet and animal social media practices and popularity may be less overtly political than the commodification within popular feminism, but the marketing of identity and identity claims is complicated within both. By promoting pet and animal social media practices as a form of identity, the respective pet parent is validated as an economic subject with the larger economic context reaffirmed. Specifically, self-­representations of the fur baby identity—­and the humanistic pet orientation, in which pets are viewed as beloved companions70—­are validated in an economic context. Subscription boxes like the Cat Lady Box and the Dog Mom Box are ideal forms of neoliberal consumption, existing at the intersection of heightened identity and hyperconsumerism. The turn toward products marketed to adoring pet parents does not just represent a hegemonic shift in what “love” and “parenthood” mean to a specific subset of people; it also shows how such meanings and identities have shifted from derogatory to embraced. Pets are no longer necessarily constructed through binaries of human/animal, subject/object, or indoors/outdoors but rather have become commodified, valuable, and highly affective parts of families.71 Identity shifts, the commodification of affect, and the collapse of binaries are symptomatic of late capitalism, particularly late “You Can’t Buy Happiness, but You Can Rescue It”  127

neoliberal capitalism. These cultural changes do not happen accidentally or in isolation, nor is it possible to delineate which one came first. Rather, collapsing binaries make it easier for identities to shift, yet at the same time, shifting identities can also collapse binaries. The shift to “cat mom” from the stereotypical “crazy cat lady” is a shift of particular note.72 The “crazy cat lady” is a long-­standing cultural and media trope, and Will McKeithen discusses this in his analysis of the recurring image: “The first entry on urbandictionary​ .com defines the ‘crazy cat lady’ as ‘an elderly suburban widow who lives alone and keeps a dozen or more pet cats . . . in a small house.’ Other entries on the crowd-­sourced lexicon pity her as a ‘lonely’ animal lover ‘with no husband or boyfriend’ who ‘loves her cats more than people.’ Still others pathologize her as an ‘insane,’ ‘addicted,’ ‘white trash,’ pet hoarder who lives in a ‘very stinky house,’ filling ‘the empty void in her life with as many cats as she can collect.’”73 The recurring ideas McKeithen picks out are striking—­a woman without a man who is therefore alone and may partake in less than desirable or socially acceptable practices. This is not to say the “crazy cat lady” trope has vanished from the cultural lexicon, but this trope is staunchly different from the cat-­loving persona promoted via the Cat Lady Box. Here, cat love is not mocked but celebrated. While celebrating cat love is not new, with even spaces on the early internet devoted to such,74 the shift from cat love in marginal spaces to popular promotion shot through with contemporary cultural and market dynamics is more nascent. In the Middle Ages, women who appeared to love cats too much were accused of witchcraft,75 and as McKeithen notes above, this contemporary criticism of cat love manifests as the “crazy cat lady” trope. Such a trope was an affective one, or rather, a trope predicated on criticism of another’s “inappropriate” affect. McKeithen elaborates, “The crazy cat lady not only loves cats too much, she loves them ‘more than people,’ instead of a husband, and quite literally, in place of heteronormative domesticity.”76 Like Sara Ahmed’s discussion of the feminist killjoy, the affect is misplaced, which is what spurs criticism. The Cat Mom Box, however, celebrates the idea of loving cats more 128  The Internet Is for Cats

than people and encourages subsequent and potential future consumption through the sharing of the box to social media: You, too, could become a social media pet celebrity through the posting of the right products, and the presenting of the right affect, by performing loving cats more than people. In the early days of the internet, cat lovers also faced ridicule from those who believed they were using the technology for feminine frivolity—­one of the first recorded instances of mass trolling was an attack on a cat lovers’ forum for women.77 At the same time, cats were often celebrated by early technological innovators and Silicon Valley’s hacker ethos. As E. J. White argues, “Cats can be a symbol of the repulsive, in part because of their association with women. But the countercultural, anti-­establishment ethos of the grassroots Internet resonated with symbols that aimed to repel. Nowhere was this ethos more evident than in the underground hacker communities, whose members—­then as now—­portrayed themselves, and were portrayed, as the white-­hot center of high tech.”78 Cats resonated with hackers and those in the open-­source movement who, as Alice Marwick notes, often viewed themselves as alienated, elusive, snarky, and outside the mainstream.79 The development of the internet and technologies are intertwined with cat-­based identities, but cats and their representations also serve as a boundary-­maintaining device. Cats only belonged to certain types of people online and in the concomitant technology communities, and they were not to be discussed in such frivolous, feminine ways.80 The tumultuous history of the internet, cats, and identity claims is a highly gendered one. While dog and cat dad merchandise exists and a gender nonbinary “pet parent” alternative is also common, the dog and cat mom moniker is the most ubiquitous. Such terms indicate a shift in heteronormative, gendered, and even feminist discourse, in which the once-­maligned, inappropriate love for a pet is now celebrated. To be sure, however, this does not mean a utopian sensibility has been achieved. Rather, dog and cat “momhood” must be balanced against long-­standing heteronormative ideals, perhaps only existing as an acceptable identity and affective form for a certain period of one’s life. “You Can’t Buy Happiness, but You Can Rescue It”  129

Items in both the Dog Mom Box and Cat Mom Box are indicative of a larger pet and animal neoliberal sensibility. They also tap into joy as affect. In chapter 3, I discussed joy as a tactic for sharing pet photos on social media to carve out a habitable space among internet toxicity, but discourses of joy and happiness are also imbricated within neoliberal ideologies. Such slogans of pets and joy populate merchandise across social media: “Choose happy; choose dogs.” “Choose happy; choose cats.” And one harkening back to the larger #AdoptDontShop movement,81 in which individuals promote rescuing shelter animals over buying purebred designer dogs for a hefty price: “Happiness can’t be bought, but it can be rescued” (figure 4.5). Here, pets are presented as being “beyond” capitalism, and such a discursive maneuver is given form through the distancing made possible by self-­representations of the extended self. The joyful tactics and affective love of pet owners used in sharing images to social media become fodder for identity commodification. Joy is not absolute, and it may be part and parcel of the very toxicity individuals seek to rebuke.

Conclusion When writing this very chapter, a new account followed me on Insta­gram: @HappyDogMomCo. Presumably, they found me since I had recently posted a video of my dogs to the image-­sharing site that I captioned with hashtags #DogsofInstagram, #MuttsofInstagram, and #AdoptDontShop. @HappyDogMomCo describes itself as “the perfect place for Dog Moms & Dog Lovers”82 and has featured apparel for both women and pets boasting sayings like “my dog is my soulmate,” “dog vibes only,” and “I would rather be with my dog.”83 I could not help but wonder, however: What other type of dog mom would there be? Not everyone who owns a pet obsessively loves them.84 Even outside of pet love, there are individuals who are ambivalent, or outright cruel, to animals. But for the @HappyDogMomCo, whose target audience is those most interpellated as pet moms as a neoliberal subject of interest, those identifying as women and moms in their audiences would most 130  The Internet Is for Cats

Fig. 4.5. A tank top with the message “Happiness can’t be bought, but it can be rescued” Credit: Photo courtesy of the author

likely be “happy.” While my participants did discuss with me how sometimes social media pet presentation occluded the reality and made them unaware of the more difficult aspects of pet ownership, overall, they would also largely be described as “happy,” at least in terms of their pets. Gill and Orgad excellently unpack the qualities and dispositions needed to be a successful neoliberal subject, and they identify confidence as one such ideal, particularly for women. Confidence, be it in body-­positive discourse or corporate feminism along the “You Can’t Buy Happiness, but You Can Rescue It”  131

lines of “lean in,” has become a technology of the self, in which women and girls are invited to constantly improve themselves via neoliberal self-­monitoring and self-­discipline.85 Through technologies of the self, individuals constitute themselves in active, material practices, and confidence-­as-­neoliberal-­disposition was no exception: “Confidence has emerged as a gendered technology of the self in the second decade of the twenty-­first century. It is organised through a multiplicity of techniques, knowledges, and affective apparatuses designed to measure, assess, market, inspire, and inculcate self-­confidence. A range of experts, programs, and discourses are invested in establishing women’s lack of confidence as the fundamental obstacle to women’s success, achievement and happiness, and in promoting the acquisition or development of self-­confidence as its ultimate solution.”86 Exhortations to confidence as a technology of the self rely on the fundamentally neoliberal premise that it is the individual who is responsible for any shortcomings in affect or psychic registers. The idea of the “happy dog mom,” in tandem with the joy I’ve discussed throughout this book, harkens back to individualistic, neoliberal adoptions that reconfigure said joy as a technology of the self. Considering joy within pet and animal social media as well as the bourgeoning discourse of happiness and joy presented across this chapter leads me to theorize joy as one such disposition. Like the idea that one is not confident simply because they are not acting or being correctly, the idea of choosing joy follows a similar trajectory. Unhappy? Simply choose to be happy. As my analysis of Lynn Segal’s theorization of joy in chapter 3 shows, such an assertion is not simply that straightforward. Joy is active and communal and something that must be constantly worked toward.87 It is not a simple decision. It is an ongoing, active practice that requires multiplicity. Collectives are antithetical to the individualistic nature of neoliberalism, though the affect is co-­opted into a contradictory discourse that suggests otherwise. Like the LOLCats before them, myriad pet and animal social media practices become shot through with market dynamics and become fodder for larger neoliberal projects. This is why in 132  The Internet Is for Cats

examining the relationships between pets, animals, social media, neoliberal, and markets, we cannot reductively claim that one provides a reprieve from the other. While enjoyment may be there, pet and animal social media are so wrapped up in neoliberalism, be it through resistance or commodification, that there is no simple, unidirectional “reprieve.”

“You Can’t Buy Happiness, but You Can Rescue It”  133

5 Feels Good, Man Collisions, Collusions, and Cloaks in Pet and Animal Social Media

In 2020, outrage spilled out from pet and animal social media to the broader populace when articles in newspapers such as the Washington Post, Business Insider, and the Independent shone a spotlight on the internet subculture of “animal crush” videos. These videos—­which do not just live on the dark web but on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok—­feature young women who “are often paid large sums of money to dress in lingerie and step on and kill small animals.”1 Described as a type of “violent porn,”2 these videos often gain immense views and shares, as social media sites like Instagram are slow to shut them down despite animal cruelty being a supposedly clear violation of their community standards documents.3 After the Netflix documentary Don’t F-ck with Cats highlighted a case of internet animal crush videos that ultimately led to human murder, morbid curiosity on the subject piqued.4 Similarly, once individuals realized social media sites were allowing these videos to go unchecked, curiosity morphed into collective outage.5 But crush videos are not unique to social media. Rather, they exist on a spectrum of animal spectacle that predates social media, one that, Randy Malamud writes, indicates “a continuum of integrity, 134

or respect, that audiences and cultural creators accord to nonhuman animals in visual culture. At the bottom of this continuum are dancing bears, piano-­playing chickens, rabbits pulled out of hats, chimps in human clothing on parade, elephants with paint brushes taped to their trunks, and so forth. . . . Even further down the spectrum at this endpoint of the continuum are ‘crush films,’ amateur sadistic/fetishistic/pseudo-­pornographic footage of erotically costumed women stepping on insects, mice, cats, and crushing them in stiletto heels.”6 Filmed and photographed animal cruelty, as well as crush videos, predate social media, though the technical affordances and cultural dynamics of social media platforms may accelerate content spread. They are, however, not the sole cause or outlet for such practices. It is extremely easy to point at social media and scapegoat it for bad behavior—­“look at these sadists, torturing animals for likes on social media.” However, technologies are not responsible for bad actors, though they may provide new outlets and forms for malevolence. Image theorist W. J. T. Mitchell long acknowledged that images are popular antagonists because people can take a bombastic stance against them, but at the end of the day, everything will remain relatively the same. Social media, and images shared to it, are the same.7 For instance, a February 2021 headline in People magazine decried, “2 Men Arrested after Tiktok Video Shows Allegedly Illegal Surgery Performed on Pregnant Dog.” The headline, however, was incongruous with the details of the story, initially goading readers to believe surgery performed on the pregnant dog was filmed for TikTok views. The abuse was actually recorded by one of the alleged perpetrators’ daughters and posted to TikTok as a cry for help.8 The relationship between social media, animals, and their treatment should be straightforward, but platforms, users, pundits, and content creators often enmesh internet technologies and animal cruelty by either ignoring it altogether or decrying the wrong things. TikTok is not responsible for animal abuse and cruelty, though the platform has a duty to remove content and sanction users who partake in such practices. People are responsible, and the cultural dynamics of social media help explain Feels Good, Man  135

the rapid spread and increased frequency of these images and videos. Animal abuse and cruelty are perhaps the most obvious way the visual cultures of pet and animal social media may be toxic. While abhorrent, harmful pet and animal image-­based practices may circulate on social media in less obvious ways, and it is such a focus I turn to in this chapter. In examining harmful pet and animal social media practices, I dial back from extreme instances like animal crush videos and focus more on colloquial instances. In doing so, I examine how attention, cuteness and its concomitant joy, and neoliberalism are intertwined in more toxic aspects of pet and animal social media. In this way, pet and animal images become tools for one’s ideological ends, which, again, is by no means a new phenomenon. Pet and animal images may be weaponized to fight broader culture and identity wars. Pets and animals on social media are not simplistically “good” or “bad”; sometimes, pet and animal images become the bad, the toxic, and the cumbersome. Animal crush videos may be the extreme of this, but like the spectrum Malamud identifies, there is a range of complicated and problematic pet and animal images online before ever arriving at explicit cruelty. Interrogating pet and animal images on social media as toxic means pushing back on an idea that thrives in public and academic discourse alike: the idea that there are the toxic parts of the internet, and then there are the cat videos. For instance, in their analysis of 4chan’s /pol/ board, arguably one of the most toxic epicenters on the contemporary internet, Marc Tuters and Sal Hagan argue, “4chan has been viewed as a source of subcultural innovation on broader mainstream Web culture.  .  .  . While this alleged influence was of relatively narrow significance so long as it pertained to LOLCat memes, this changed with the recent rise in popularity of 4chan’s /pol/ ‘Politically Incorrect’ board, which has been described as the source of the ‘the real creative energy behind the new right-­wing sensibility online today.’”9 A false binary continues to persist: On one side, there are LOLCat memes, cat videos, and pet and animal social media. On the other, there is White nationalism, racism, and harassment. My goal in this chapter is to dismantle 136  The Internet Is for Cats

this false binary by showing the ways animal imagery may be harnessed for things like White nationalism, racism, and harassment using the very same social modalities of attention, cuteness and joy, and neoliberalism that undergird pet and animal social media writ large. The contemporary internet does not get LOLCats without also getting crush videos or animal memes espousing racist human ideas. The same attention, affect, cuteness, and neoliberalism that populate more quotidian daily practices and shifting cultural industries also function within the more overtly harmful forms of pet and animal social media. To present this argument, I focus specifically on one animal meme—­Pepe the Frog. While Pepe is one such example, analyses of other animal memes such as Harambe the Gorilla yield similar tangled themes.10 To be sure, discussions of animal memes require specific nuance, as memes are different visual forms from the animal influencer videos and pet Instagram accounts discussed thus far. I situate Pepe within analyses of animal memes in digital cultures to highlight the malleability of animal images and, more specifically, the hypermalleability of animal memes. Some methodological notes are also needed for this chapter. While the initial circumstances of Pepe predate the bulk of my digital ethnography, his image remains popular in digital cultures and on pet and animal social media. This meme and its circulation function as metafields within my ethnographic work. Its initial explosion into the cultural populace continues to have ripple effects with implications for animal memes and images today as well as how central dynamics of pet and animal social media may be complicated or weaponized. Instead of describing swaths of practices associated with one social modality, I approach Pepe as a case study, in which the memetic practices surrounding this image serve as an instance of combined attention, cuteness and joyfulness, neoliberalism, and overt internet toxicity.11 As such, my analysis of Pepe uses the case as a theoretical construct12 to push back on the idea that attention, cuteness, and neoliberalism in pet and animal social media only populate the “good” or the “wholesome.”

Feels Good, Man  137

The Internet Is a Dumpster Fire I began this book by proclaiming something that is commonly used to describe the experience of being online: the internet is a dumpster fire.13 However, this is a sweeping statement, and while I briefly invoked it to describe the ubiquity of harmful and toxic practices that thrive in digital spaces, more specificity is required. Describing the internet as a dumpster fire can refer to a wide range of practices that interlock and overlap with one another: algorithmic bias and racism;14 social media platform monopolies whose policies actively harm democracy;15 hate speech and targeted harassment campaigns;16 platformed racism, or how racism is baked into the architecture of social media platforms;17 violence, be it verbal or image-­based;18 networked misogyny, racism, classism, ableism, and xenophobia;19 and political polarization, rampant mis-­and disinformation, and conspiracy theories.20 This is by no means an exhaustive list. Animal imagery often appears in tandem with many of these practices, and this imagery can also be used to propagate such toxicity. To narrow the focus on such a broad range of practices and tenets, I situate this chapter at a specific cultural and historical juncture and focus specifically on what animal images and toxicity may do on social media in conjunction with identity. For cultural studies scholars, identity is the site where the social, cultural, and political converge, and as discussed so far, pet and animal social media are intricately interwoven with human identities. This does not just manifest in the neoliberal market commodification of “dog dads” or “cat ladies”; individuals will also take on identities of loving pet parents, joyful pet owners, aspiring pet influencers, or celebrities. Animal and pet images, and the visual cultures enacted through and around them, are necessarily proprietorial,21 asserting claims about one’s self and the animal in question. Much of the toxicity at this contemporary juncture—­be it online, offline, or in any of the blurred liminal spaces in between—­can be situated within identity contestations. This is simultaneously part and parcel of the hyperimplications of neoliberalism as well as the 138  The Internet Is for Cats

broader sociopolitical landscape. Not all identities are toxic, but as Laurie Ouellette and Sarah Banet-­Weiser address in contextualizing this current moment, “As free market neoliberalism has intensified, public resources have been further privatized, and economic inequalities have sharpened. During the past few years, we have also witnessed the increased visibility of misogyny, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, nativism, and white nationalism through the world. These movements, sometimes generalized as the ‘alt-­right,’ are not only spectacularly visible, but have been folded into policy, law, and infrastructure such as the rise of ultra-­ conservative political parties across Europe and the U.K.’s decision to leave the European Union (Brexit).”22 Far from attributing the rise in extremism, nationalism, and racism to the oft-­mocked “economic anxiety” that was used by many White news pundits to explain Brexit and Donald Trump’s presidential victory,23 Ouellette and Banet-­Weiser posit that this moment is “a rage-­filled counterpunch animating and animated by a fragmented, deregulated, interactive, and increasingly factionalized media landscape.”24 In other words, many who have often enjoyed unchecked privileged positions find themselves now aggressively pushing back against a changing world. The identities of these individuals no longer enjoy an unchecked place in public discourse. Ouellette and Banet-­ Weiser further elaborate: “One of the primary characteristics of the extreme right is a nostalgia for a particular kind of identity: the white, heterosexual man . . . in many ways, the extreme right is reacting to what is an allegedly threatened patriarchy, marshalling conspiracy theories to point to women . . . immigrants, and people of color as groups that are stealing the ‘natural’ rights of white masculinity.”25 Brexit and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential victory are by no means the only iterations of these identity wars. Before both Brexit and Donald Trump, there was GamerGate, a backlash in video games that “became a convenient way for a loose coalition of frustrated geeks, misogynists, alt-­righters, and trolls to coalesce around a common idea—­that popular culture was ‘overly concerned’ with a particular kind of identity politics.”26 GamerGate was a war and a Feels Good, Man  139

warning shot that indicated more harmful and toxic battles were to come, all in service of pushing certain types of identities out of certain spaces. Such a sentiment continues to linger on sites like Reddit, which I found in my analyses of the r/Natureisbrutal and r/natureisf-­ckinglit subreddits, where discussions of human identity issues or “human conceit” were eschewed. GamerGate also brings considerations of digital culture and the internet into this moment, particularly since much of its toxic practices and targeted campaigns occurred across social media. As I discussed in the opening of this section, there are numerous ways toxic practices persist online, but often ones coalescing around identity crosscut various iterations. As Jesse Daniels acknowledges, it is impossible to understand toxicity in the form of extremism and nationalism without considering both the internet and identity: There are two strands of conventional wisdom unfolding in popular accounts of the rise of the alt-­right. One says that what’s really happening can be attributed to a crisis in white identity: the alt-­right is simply a manifestation of the angry white male who has status anxiety about his declining social power. Others contend that the alt-­right is an unfortunate eddy in the vast ocean of Internet culture. . . . While the first explanation tends to ignore the influence of the Internet, the second dismisses the importance of White nationalism. I contend that we have to understand both at the same time.27

Extremists, White nationalists, and those on the alt-­right have been extremely savvy with the internet as a means to recruit, spread messages, and accomplish their goals.28 They have been aided by the fact that racism is largely coded into the design process and technological structures of the internet.29 Far from a technologically deterministic position accounting for the alt-­right, racism as baked into the internet helps explain how bias and harmful practices persist and go unchecked. From there, toxicity trickles through the entirety of platforms, becoming engrained in how they are governed and moderated. 140  The Internet Is for Cats

The problem and imperative of content moderation is key in understanding the internet as a dumpster fire, and it is one of the facets of how identity wars can go unchecked. Content moderation harkens back to each social media platform’s community standards, or guidelines, which dictate what types of content they will allow. However, far from being straightforward, these front-­ facing documents serve more as ideological treatises on how platforms view themselves than as rules about what they will or will not allow.30 Content moderation is a process fraught with confusion, inequalities, and contradictions. Often called “the custodians of the Internet,”31 the individuals performing this labor attempt to enforce vaguely written platform policies and remove offensive material, often in the thousands per day.32 Adding to this complicated thicket are the respective free speech laws of the myriad countries in which social media platforms operate as well as, for the purposes of this chapter, the ambivalent notion of humor in digitally mediated expression set against the backdrop of a proverbial dumpster fire. Humor has been a complex node in the digital landscape, and it’s intertwined with the seemingly lighthearted nature of pet and animal social media. Humor also harkens back to the idea of the ambivalent internet, or the fact that one’s true meaning can rarely be ascertained online.33 When combined within pet and animal social media, humor’s stealthy lightheartedness and the ambivalent polysemy of “I was just joking” mean the already highly malleable nature of pet and animal imagery34 becomes a lightning rod for toxicity. Animal imagery is therefore ideal for trolls, who seek to preserve ambiguity and accomplish their goals while their intent remains questionable.35 Propelled by the fact social media platforms often protect humor even when it is overtly racist, sexist, or harmful,36 the content that is often overlooked in its quotidian and lighthearted iterations also gets overlooked by social media platforms when it is more explicitly harmful. Because of “a common view that almost anything to do with animals is somehow funny, or at least likely to be funny,”37 problematic pet and animal content may be more likely to be overlooked, even if it is rife with toxicity. Feels Good, Man  141

How harmful, toxic practices and ideas get overlooked when combined with seemingly lighthearted frivolity is a pressing issue for social media users, platforms, and scholars alike. Too often, the latter is used to overlook the former or justify its ambivalence.

Animal Memes Memes are “a group of digital items sharing common characteristics . . . that were created with awareness of each other; and  .  .  . were circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via the Internet by many users.”38 Memes share similar content, form, and stance, serving as a lingua franca that becomes a common tongue for myriad users.39 Memes are also a way for members of a subculture or community to define themselves, both in terms of identity and as boundary-­making—­something found by internet scholar Kate Miltner in her analysis of users who engage with LOLCat memes.40 Memes often operate as a form of collective identity, using in-­group humor to become a shared social phenomenon,41 which underscores the group’s “intricate social dynamics: they operate in a decentralized and seemingly chaotic sphere, yet are often associated with intense coordinated work and mimicry.”42 Memes and memetic practices can be both scattered and haphazard as well as purposeful, deliberate, and organized. The LOLCat memes are the images most likely to be referenced in conversations on memes and pet and animal social media. They are the “ur-­meme,”43 or what one thinks of when they think of a meme. Like the LOLCats, however, there is another popular iteration of animal memes from the early days of the internet—­Advice Animals. The Advice Animals follow the typical meme format of having both an image and a caption, featuring “an animal . . . (a drawing or a photograph) on the backdrop of multicolored triangles of chosen colors.”44 Popular iterations of this meme include Confession Bear, Foul Bachelorette Frog, Insanity Wolf, Paranoid Parrot, and Anti-­joke Chicken. Each animal-­based version follows a specific theme—­for example, Foul Bachelorette Frog focuses on confessions and observations of women’s sometimes gross behavior, 142  The Internet Is for Cats

and Anti-­joke Chicken promotes jokes that are funny precisely because of how bad they are. However, as internet scholar Marta Dynel points out, the categorical term Advice Animals is a misnomer, since the format does have human iterations, such as the Dos Equis beer Most Interesting Man in the World meme, in which one proclaims something they do not often do,45 and Scumbag Steve, who is a freeloader and constantly wreaking havoc.46 Advice Animals are anthropomorphized images in which humans express their ideas through animals. Such a memetic practice taps into the distancing work of anthropomorphism.47 The distancing work of anthropomorphism is a similar distancing function to that of the extended self, in which one is able to say or do things through animals that they might not have said or done otherwise. This can be exacerbated by internet dynamics, technologies, and affordances, as Jacqueline Vickery discusses in her analysis of the Advice Animal iteration the Confession Bear. Confession Bear features a sad-­ looking Malayan bear, and the caption “confesses” to something silly, shameful, taboo, or embarrassing.48 But as Vickery notes, as the meme circulated within the subreddit devoted to Advice Animals (r/adviceanimals), individuals began using the humorous image to confess more serious things, such as rape, abuse, addiction, deviance, and violent fantasies.49 Here, the distancing enacted through anthropomorphism was twofold: one, the confessions were removed from the individual as they were seemingly proclaimed through the animal, and two, distance was augmented given the anonymity and pseudonymity of Reddit itself. Memes are a common way for a group to establish their collective identity, and tensions emerge when such images are used in ways not sanctioned by the dominant group. Therefore, memes become a “discursively constructed border fence meant to keep the uninitiated out.”50 They are a “shared social phenomenon”51 for specific groups and “a reflection of the cultural spaces in which they emerge.”52 Given this, and considering how most memes feature a presumed “white, male centrality,”53 memes and memetic practices are inextricably bound up in White male identity as well as online spaces for such identity performances. Similarly, they Feels Good, Man  143

serve as a form of boundary policing for those who have, or can perform, White male identity.54 As discussed throughout this book, the practices associated with the visual cultures of pet and animal social media are often imbricated in more complicated, contradictory, and harmful ideas. On one hand, it is difficult to assess the degree of harm or toxicity with absolute certainty, as these practices, images, and videos are highly contingent on individuals, context, and one’s own social media experiences. On the other hand, there are often times in which the toxicity within pet and animal images online is overt. In addition to the fake animal rescue videos and animal crush films, memes that are based in animal imagery can also be wielded in explicitly harmful ways. This is not to say all animal memes are inherently toxic; rather, there are specific antagonisms that emerge when considering memes, and specifically animal memes, in conjunction with attention, cuteness, and neoliberalism. These antagonisms are specifically beneficial to the identity wars of the alt-­right. As such, memes have been a key tactic for extremists, harassers, White nationalists, and those on the alt-­right.55 The presumed White, male centrality of memes; the baked-­in toxicity of digital spaces; and the desires for gatekeeping create a perfect storm. As Julia DeCook suggests, “Memes have become a means of spreading propaganda, [and] are bite-­sized nuggets of political ideology and culture that are easily digestible and spread by netizens.”56 This bite-­sized ideology—­combined with memes’ White, male centrality and broader exclusionary tenets of digital cultures57—­means that memes have been essential for alt-­right recruitment and collective identity. Memes for extremist recruitment and boundary maintenance rely heavily on affect. As Jenni Hokka and Matti Nelimarkka argue, “Images amplify and modify affect, as audiences and users convert their affective judgments and understandings of their identities into images and associate dispositions, expressions, and connections.”58 They subsequently argue regarding the digital practices of White nationalists, the alt-­right, and extremism, “Affect becomes more powerful through circulation. . . . Images help tie together 144  The Internet Is for Cats

the national-­populist social network: through image sharing, commenting, and reacting, supports are able to create and sustain connection with each other, to feel united and express their political identity, political emotions, and belonging.”59 Given the hyperdiscursive nature of digital spaces,60 affect becomes exponentially amplified the more an image or meme is spread. This reinforces group identity and boundary formation while forming a culturally specific attachment to the meme in question. Nationalism, identity, and animal symbolism are by no means new concepts. Countries have long employed animal imagery to wield symbolic power and make identity claims; the animal image comes to be seen as an expression of national characteristics.61 However, there is a key difference between nations using animal symbolism and groups using memes to promote their ideological agendas and establish boundaries. In animal symbolism used to display national power and identity, there is no anthropomorphism.62 The rhetoric of the image performs all the ideological work. In animal memes, however, anthropomorphism is key, as the group or user stakes their claims in speaking through the animal. Anthropomorphism is a rather necessary component of animal memes, given the fact that memes constantly employ images and text in tandem with each other to make a claim. By speaking through anthropomorphized memes instead of relying on the rhetoric of an image, the messages are clearer and more deliberate. They also protect the creator, given the ambivalence of digital culture and the distancing of anthropomorphism. Because “ours is a culture in which animal references can be employed in any context, and in which animals can apparently be used to mean anything and everything,”63 the distancing of anthropomorphism combines with the hypermalleability of animal images in digital spaces to create potent, powerful images. When this occurs through memes, individuals may develop strong affects and attachments to those memetic practices and their meanings. The subtitle of this chapter is “Collisions, Collusions, and Cloaks,” which is terminology I borrow from privacy studies64 as well as considerations of how racism functions under the guise of Feels Good, Man  145

humor and ambivalence online.65 While at first seemingly disparate concepts, I apply the notion of collisions and collusions to cloaks to show how they are deliberate and how animal imagery—­and more specifically, animal memes—­function as cloaks online. Collisions and collusions harken back to the idea of context collapse, or how online, social, spatial, and temporal boundaries are flattened and bring together otherwise seemingly separate audiences.66 When individuals post online, they must consider how friends, colleagues, family, and casual acquaintances could all be potential audiences of the same post. In analyzing how individuals come to craft posts for myriad and disparate audiences, Jenny Davis and Nathan Jurgenson coined the terms context collision and context collusion to better describe the range of the phenomena. They define context collisions “as those occasions in which contexts come together without any effort on the part of the actor, and sometimes, unbeknownst to the actor, with potentially chaotic results” and context collusions as “the purposeful, intentional, bringing together of various social contexts and their related networks.”67 The difference between the two is intentionality and whether one means to bring seemingly disparate content and contexts together. Specifically, I apply Davis and Jurgenson’s ideas of context collisions and collusions to the cultural practice of sharing pet and animal images and memes.Tenets of pet and animal social media—­including attention, cuteness and joy, and neoliberalism—­underscore the bulk of this visual culture, but these ideas can be wielded in purposeful ways that do not necessarily have end goals of quotidian sharing, communication, or aspirational labor and status. The case of Pepe the Frog is one such instance of this. Originally created as a comic book character, Pepe was co-­opted by some of the internet’s most toxic sites, like 4chan. From there, the meme spread beyond this site, which angered these individuals.68 For Pepe the Frog, his initial rapid spread from forums like 4chan or Something Awful to the mainstream was a cultural collision in which subcultures unwillingly crashed with broader digital cultures. In an effort to reclaim Pepe, those on the alt-­right engaged in the intentional manipulation of cultural tenets—­of both pet and animal social media and 146  The Internet Is for Cats

their own internet forums—­to accomplish their goals. This cultural collusion was a deliberative action on the part of those on the alt-­ right and became a way to underscore many of their overarching practices of media manipulation. By purposefully crashing contexts and content together on such a large scale, those on the alt-­right worked to reclaim Pepe, spread their ideologies, and collude their community with the broader populace.

#SavePepe, or the Battle for Animal Meme Joy Pepe the Frog was a cartoon created by artist Matt Furie in 2005 for his comic Boy’s Club. Furie drew Pepe and his fellow anthropomorphized reptile roommates hanging out, playing video games, and smoking marijuana.69 In Pepe’s early days, his image was mainly used as a reaction meme on the Something Awful forums, meaning users would respond to existing content with images of Pepe.70 One particularly popular iteration of the cartooned frog involved Pepe with his pants pulled down around his ankles, urinating and uttering the phrase “feels good, man.”71 This was often the iteration used to react to content that pleased the user, and this version of the meme spread widely on 4chan’s /b/ board, the site’s subforum for random content that was also an epicenter for some of the internet’s greatest vitriol.72 Pepe memes circulated on the internet for about a decade before eventually earning widespread popularity. In 2014, American music artists Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj both shared Pepe memes to their social media accounts as reactions, and this helped further catapult Pepe into the mainstream populace. Pepe merchandise appeared on fan-­and user-­generated sites such as Etsy, Red­ bubble, and Teepublic.73 Memes began spreading across other social media sites like Tumblr, denoting Pepe’s spread from 4chan and Something Awful to more popular places on the internet. However, not all were pleased with Pepe’s newfound popularity. Many of the meme’s original spreaders (who were notably not his creator, Matt Furie) embarked on a campaign to “reclaim him from the normies.”74 Normies is a derogatory term used on websites Feels Good, Man  147

like Something Awful, Reddit, 4chan, and 8kun to describe those who do not participate in these spaces as so-­called normal, mainstream people.75 In the case of Pepe, individuals on these forums felt normies had taken their favorite reaction meme from them.76 These users began attempting to turn Pepe into the seediest, most disgusting, most hateful meme they could, with new iterations of Pepe’s signature “feels good, man” phrase turning into the likes of “kill Jews, man.”77 The goal was to make the meme’s association so despicable that normies would never want to use him again.78 The movement was successful. As rising tides of populism and authoritarianism swept across the globe in the 2016 Brexit referendum and the 2016 election of Donald Trump in the United States, Pepe’s newfound vitriol became the preferred meme of those subscribing to these ideologies. Pepe became a memetic calling card for those subscribing to White supremacist and alt-­right views.79 After then candidate Donald Trump tweeted an image of himself as Pepe the Frog in front of the U.S. presidential seal and his son Donald Trump Jr. tweeted an image of Pepe Photoshopped into a Who’s Who of those among his father’s campaign, the Anti-­ Defamation League (ADL) declared Pepe a hate symbol due to the frequency and scale of the meme’s racist, bigoted uses.80 As Jesse Daniels discusses, “The move to remake Pepe began on /r9k/, a 4chan board where a wide variety of users, including hackers, tech guys (and they were mostly guys), libertarians, and white supremacists . . . gathered.”81 However, this discourse and use of Pepe only prevails in Western, Anglophone contexts, and for many in Latin America and Asian countries, Pepe remains a meme of silliness and relaxation.82 Much of the contemporary discourse around Pepe coalesces around his post-­2016 status as a hate symbol and how creator Matt Furie reacted to Pepe being hijacked. In a 2016 profile in the Los Angeles Times, Furie declared, “I’m a lifelong artist. Hate and racism couldn’t be further from my radar. I try to focus on positivity and nature and animals.”83 For Furie, animal imagery was a way to tell positive stories and embrace the lighter, softer side of animal representations. Pepe was a source of joy for 148  The Internet Is for Cats

Furie and his readers, but this became at odds with the affects of White nationalists. Joy became a central theme and affect at stake in Pepe’s memetic practices and the discourse around him as a hate symbol. Who got to enjoy Pepe, and how should they enjoy him? After the ADL declared Pepe a hate symbol, Furie’s publisher, Fantagraphics Books, released the following statement: “Fantagraphics Books wants to state for the record that the one, true Pepe the frog, as created by the human being and artist Matt Furie, is a peaceful cartoon amphibian who represents love, acceptance, and fun (and getting stoned). Both creator and creation reject the nihilism fueling Pepe’s alt-­right appropriators, and all of us at Fantagraphics encourage you to help us reclaim Pepe as a symbol of positivity and togetherness.”84 Fantagraphics’s statement anthropomorphized Pepe to the point of likening his alt-­right appropriation to kidnapping, noting Pepe himself rejected his newfound usage. But their statement also underscored the original Pepe as a figure of positivity and something to be enjoyed by readers and casual meme makers. Fantagraphics’s statement posited that Pepe should be shared and relished as lighthearted, not hateful. Also in 2016, Furie himself composed an op-­ed in Time, declaring, “I’m reclaiming him. He was never about hate”: “The nature of Pepe, as featured in my comic book, ‘Boy’s Club,’ celebrates peace, togetherness, and fun. I aim to reclaim the rascally frog from the forces of hate and ask that you join me in making millions of new, joyful Pepe memes that share the lighthearted spirit of the original chilled-­out champion.”85 Furie and Fantagraphics Books framed the discussion as a reclaiming of joy and of who got to enjoy Pepe. Pepe’s original affective joy was now fundamentally at odds with what White nationalists had done with him. But Furie and Fantagraphics also relied on attention as a war-­ game strategy in the battle for Pepe’s joy. Furie called for his fans and followers to flood digital spaces with millions of wholesome Pepe memes, hoping to change the narrative. In this way, when one saw Pepe content, the benevolent Pepe would be what attracted eyeballs. Furie and Fantagraphics needed Pepe to stand out amid Feels Good, Man  149

the immense amount of unideal Pepe content, but they could not do this alone. This call to arms of attention required internet users to engage in cultural materiality in the form of meme-­making processes, practices, and spreading. Memes, like animal images, always enmesh meaning, materiality, and social practice, and in the case of Pepe, this tripartite relationship was bolstered by the deliberate intent to reclaim the memetic frog from internet and cultural toxicity. Animal imagery is always highly malleable, and it is hypermalleable within the specific properties of memes and digital cultures. However, this attention-­flooding strategy was meant to reduce malleability, not enhance it, as memetic animal image malleability helped contribute to Furie’s Pepe problem in the first place. Such an attention-­flooding strategy is one that has been often used by online harassers, such as those in GamerGate as well as those on the alt-­right. This practice may be used in doxing, or the publishing of one’s personal information to the internet without their consent, or coordinated harassment campaigns in which individuals dump harmful content into a user’s profile or mass-­report them for platform violations that do not actually exist, among others.86 Such work has been incredibly useful within the media manipulations of the alt-­right through the idea of “attention hacking,” which “increase[s] the visibility of their ideas through the strategic use of social media, memes, and bots.”87 By encouraging his fans and followers to engage in their own form of attention hacking, Furie attempted to beat the alt-­right at its own game. The alt-­right has been experts at harnessing participatory culture techniques and social media affordances and dynamics to accomplish their goals,88 and manipulating the hypermalleability of animal-­imagery-­as-­memes for ideological ends has been no exception. Digital animal imagery and memes, such as the LOLCats, were born of sites like 4chan, and if memes are “a reflection of the cultural spaces from which they emerge,”89 then the history of LOLCats remains intertwined with 4chan as a site of extreme vitriol. This is not to say we should throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater, but understanding animal imagery and the visual cultures of pet and animal social media means understanding the 150  The Internet Is for Cats

context and history from which contemporary practices emerged, even if they are less than ideal. A site like 4chan cannot be so definitively split that one thing is taken and everything else is ignored. Though, to be sure, LOLCats, like Pepe, can be battled over. They can be reclaimed and narratives can change—­but histories never go away. Even in refuting the original context, it is worth questioning what original tenets may remain and percolate subtly over time, like with BuzzFeed ’s mining of Reddit content in the era of journalistic aggregators. This means understanding that contemporary pet and animal social media and its concomitant practices have their digital roots on the same internet as White nationalist gathering grounds and racist trolling attacks. Within the cultural materiality of enmeshing meaning and attention, of trying to reclaim Pepe’s original meaning, two sides engaged in a discursive tug-­of-­war indicative of Stuart Hall’s writings on the popular. Hall famously declared, “Popular culture is neither, in the ‘pure’ sense, the popular traditions of resistance . . . nor is it the forms which are superimposed on and over them. It is the ground on which the transformations are worked.”90 Pepe could never exist outside of cultural, political, ideological, and historical contexts, and instead, Pepe’s memetic practices became a battleground to think about joy, animal imagery, and extremism. Within an attention economy and materiality, Hall’s foundational words take on a renewed importance, as the processes of these transformations are hypervisible, with increasingly high stakes. These transformations are now goaded by the hyperdiscursive, hyperaffective properties of digital spaces, accelerating their circulation and (temporary) conclusions before a new ideological battle begins. Such popular, ideological battles are further ungirded by the intensity of identity in neoliberal times91 and the neoliberal underpinnings of social media dynamics and architectures.92 Ultimately, Furie’s #SavePepe campaign was futile. In 2017, Furie penned another Boy’s Club comic, this time featuring Pepe in a casket, essentially killing off the image he lost control over.93 However, despite being killed by his creator, Pepe remains alive and well on 4chan, Reddit, and other internet subcultural hubs. Feels Good, Man  151

But contrary to what many popular media and journalistic outlets claim about Pepe, he was never isolated to the fringe, dark corners of the internet. Such a claim is paradoxical, given the fact Pepe was tweeted by then presidential candidate Donald Trump, and the claim also glosses over how extremism is not isolated to any “dark” corner of the web but flows relatively freely through many mainstream hubs. To underscore this, in June 2020, I used the My Reddit Scraper tool to scrape the top posts on the r/pepethefrog subreddit, and I then ran the information through the data visualization software Orange to see how people were still talking about Pepe (figure 5.1). In the word cloud, users frequently invoke Pepe alongside Donald Trump and racial and ethnic slurs, demonstrating how Pepe continues to thrive in discriminatory, bigoted ways. Furie could not successfully kill Pepe—­not because Pepe had taken a life of his own, but because those who had co-­ opted the animal meme had been too successful in their endeavors. Additionally, Furie could not end Pepe because the meme itself was indicative of so much more, including joy. One may balk at my assertion of the association of Pepe and joy, but as I have discussed throughout this book, joy, and its concomitant cuteness, is rarely straightforward. That being said, it may be controversial to identify joy as something at stake in an ADL-­recognized hate symbol. But a hate symbol can only become identified as such because of its use and circulation, meaning it is of interest and enjoyment to certain people. An animal image hate symbol, even a cartoon, highlights how joy is always contingent and contextual, even if most people find the topic abhorrent. It also underscores how pet and animal imagery can be used as a weapon to further marginalize. I do not apologize here for the White supremacists and nationalists who have co-­opted Pepe’s imagery, but I present this analysis as a way to understand how future memes may be weaponized as such. In the statements released by Furie and Fantagraphics Books, they both positioned joy and hate as polar opposites. Their descriptions of hate mirror Lynn Segal’s theorization of joy. In acting on feelings, hate manifests through specific actions and practices and can be bolstered by group collectivity. While Pepe’s conversion to 152  The Internet Is for Cats

Fig. 5.1. A summation of the most used words on the r/Pepe subreddit in June 2020 Credit: Word cloud created by author a White nationalist symbol was “a prank with a big payoff ”94 that forced national journalists to cover the meme and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to release a primer on Pepe,95 Pepe was also about identity, hate, and joy. Akin to how Segal writes joy can cultivate a “we-­mode” to form “shared dwellings,”96 hate can do the same. As Alice Marwick argues in her analysis of morally motivated and organized network harassment campaigns, harassing someone online is often the result of a group feeling as if their network’s norms have been violated. This can trigger moral outrage in the form of collective, targeted harassment campaigns.97 In the case of Pepe, his use by those outside of 4chan and Reddit spheres was seen as a violation, and in this instance, the violation was twofold. Because memes also serve as collective-­forming and boundary-­maintaining devices, the use of the meme outside its supposedly sanctioned circles meant that one, these groups’ boundaries had been trampled and two, something they viewed as theirs, that brought them joy, had been taken. As such, the campaign to reclaim Pepe “from the normies” was a form of morally motivated network harassment in which Feels Good, Man  153

communities sought to reclaim something they felt had been unfairly taken from them. But as Adrienne Massanari and Shira Chess argue, hate is more than an affect or emotion; it is also a justice construct.98 Within the so-­called prank of Pepe and his conversion to a White nationalist symbol, there was also the hatred of those on 4chan toward the so-­called normies, whose enjoyment of Pepe diminished the joy they found in the meme. By widely circulating outside of its original boundaries, the meme could no longer provide the joy it once did. The attempt to reclaim Pepe from the normies was more than just a simple prank; it was an imbrication of the cultural tenets of pet and animal social media with deliberative, collective affect from those who felt they had lost him. Joy is a key tenet and classical trope in fascist discourse, and fascism largely influences alt-­right and White nationalist ideologies.99 Von Geert Lovink and Marc Tuters identify this as “the theft of joy narrative, in which an authoritarian figure channels the desire and resentments of the ‘radical loser’ through a spectacle of collective hate.”100 The theft of joy idea in extremist discourse propagates how those not subscribing to these ideas are trying to take away the things and ideas that make one happy. Such a narrative is befitting of the White, masculine identity crises of the twenty-­first century, and while this is not to say that all men engaged in a masculine identity crisis are fascist, the narrative aligns with what Laurie Ouellette and Sarah Banet-­Weiser discuss about men feeling as if they are losing their “rightful” position due to diversity, people of color, and feminists.101 This narrative undergirded the attempts to reclaim Pepe as a form of morally motivated, networked harassment,102 as those on 4chan and Reddit felt the use of Pepe outside their circles diminished the joy they personally could find in him. The theft of joy narrative also maps neatly to the feminist killjoy, for stealing joy is akin to killing it. Fascists mobilize organized, networked support by promoting the idea that those upholding dominant, hegemonic structures are trying to take away everything the individual holds dear and are “not allowing” them to “enjoy” anything by pointing out the “problems” with everything. Tuters 154  The Internet Is for Cats

elaborates on this, particularly within digital cultures: “In contrast, however, to the post-­critical argument (so forcefully articulated by Henry Jenkins), it would appear that what makes the new-­right so appealing to so many in these subcultures is how this ideology seems to offer a critique of the dominant hegemonic system which they perceive as threatening their enjoyment.”103 The theft of joy narrative is an affectively driven one in which one reacts to the belief that their joy is being taken. To be sure, not all joy is fascist, but joy is an affect and practice that can be mobilized. Pepe had particularly high potential for the theft of joy narrative when considering identity, extremism, and the affective joy that underscores animal image sharing online. Those who subscribe to liberal ideologies are framed in this narrative as not being capable of appreciating joyful things, which leads them to try to take joy from others. This also reflects the “us versus them” mentality, which Bridgett Blodgett and Anastasia Salter note “has a long history in fringe political movements.”104 “Us versus them” frames the fight for Pepe, his joy, and who got to enjoy him. In positioning Pepe as such, the alt-­right framing of the “us” in the “us versus them” mentality posits one group’s “we-­mode” of joy against another’s. Lovink and Tuters argue the spread of Pepe on 4chan and the efforts to reclaim him “act as what [Chantal] Mouffe would call a ‘libidinal bond’ in the formation of an ‘us.’ /pol/ anons frequently use the meme in order to demarcate a nebulous other whose identity, if not clearly deducible from the local context, is left to the reader’s interpretation.”105 In trying to reclaim Pepe, 4chan users frequently positioned Pepe as what was struggled over in the “us versus them” wars. Here, the “them” was left vague, but given existing research on 4chan, as well as what was struggled over in the collisions and collusions of Pepe, it could be assumed this nebulous other could have been normies, feminists, so-­called social justice warriors (SJWs), people of color, or political liberals.106 Lovink and Tuters’s discussion of the theft of joy narrative also invokes the idea of schadenfreude, or enjoyment in another’s distress.107 For those on the alt-­right, schadenfreude, particularly toward liberals and so-­called SJWs, means finding joy in Feels Good, Man  155

challenging or destroying another’s joy, as was further indicated in 4chan’s discourse of reclaiming Pepe. Here, joy comes from watching others not have it. Schadenfreude becomes a form of payback for the theft of joy narrative—­taking someone else’s joy because theirs has been threatened. These types of discussions continue to reflect the idea of joy as a Michel de Certeau tactic, even for extremist groups. Tactics are meant to make spaces habitable when they do not readily exist as such, but it is imperative to ask, Tactics for whom? as well as what habitable may mean. For quotidian users of pet and animal social media, this may mean carving out space against toxicity. For extremists, this may mean pushing back on a rapidly changing world to reestablish dominance. The battle for Pepe and his joy was a way for those on the alt-­right to not only prank others and control multiple narratives but also carve out a memetic visual culture to be habitable and their own.

Feel Bad, Man: Hiding Collusions in Plain Sight Pepe functioned as both cultural collision and collusion. The meme’s initial collision into broader internet culture was accidental. By this, I do not mean people spread the meme without any deliberative thought but rather that those on 4chan who had felt a strong gatekeeping affinity toward Pepe did not sanction this move. As such, Pepe’s networked reclaiming was more than just a prank; it was a purposeful move to spread ideology, manipulate broader media and politics, and reclaim the meme. Those on 4chan engaged in cultural context collusions—­manipulating the tenets of attention, joy and cuteness, and neoliberalism found within pet and animal social media to engage in broader media manipulation and win this specific culture war. In the broader public, and even within certain academic communities, memes are not taken seriously. There are, of course, large swaths of internet scholars, communication and media scholars, and more that take these images seriously as objects of scholarly inquiry. But part of why those on 4chan were successful in culturally colluding with Pepe and the tenets of pet and animal social 156  The Internet Is for Cats

media was that it was compounded by a threefold punch powered by myths of frivolity: one, the struggle of pundits, politicians, and journalists to report on toxicity on the internet as anything other than that in “dark corners”108; two, the refusal to take memes seriously as communicative devices109; and three, the refusal to take pet-­and-­animal-­based content seriously as a communicative device. Pepe was not just a meme but a meme of a cartoon frog, and as Laura Glitsos and James Hall argue, it is impossible to understand Pepe without also understanding his “frogness.”110 Taken together, this terrain augmented the goals and abilities of those on the alt-­right to reclaim Pepe in the ways that they did. As Adrienne Massanari and Shira Chess argue, “Memes have the potential violence of offline material and other forms of propaganda, potentially leading to violent hate speech or even push toward genocidal rhetoric. . . . One might ask how silly cartoons might lead people toward this level of violence, but research on hate speech and genocide illustrates that specific words and images have meanings that help condition audiences toward certain actions.”111 Memes can function as ideal cultural collusions in which ideological and political beliefs of a community intertwine with broader tenets of internet culture to accomplish specific, deliberate goals. Memes are most often first and foremost images, but this seemingly simplistic statement allows for more critical examinations of images, affect, nationalism, and identity. Hokka and Nelimarkka elaborate, “Images work as material for the affective-­discursive practices in which emotional, nationalistic narratives from the past are linked with current events, present political concerns and shared feelings. Thus, image circulation has become an established affective practice among the national-­ populists, and national-­ populist thinking is effectively spread through images that catlyse and mobilise affects; fear, anger, and resentment that are essential for populist movements.”112 The affect of joy is equally important and helps explain why animal image memes retain power in populist and alt-­right movements. The battle to reclaim Pepe, and the battle to make him wholesome again, shows how the affect of joy can be what catalyzes and mobilizes individuals in these Feels Good, Man  157

ideological, political wars. Joy as affect runs deep through myriad facets of contemporary digital cultures. Images, and specifically animal memes, are useful material for these affective-­discursive practices, particularly in mobilizing affects and shared feelings and reaffirming boundaries and collective identities. Because there is a delight in animal imagery—­“whether it is a vehicle for pride, hatred, sentiment, horror, or joy”113—­animal imagery online (be it memes, videos, or pictures) is always already affectively charged. As the case of Pepe shows, the meme was key for these affective and identity-­building practices of the alt-­right and those on 4chan, but after Pepe’s cultural collision into the mainstream, the meme served multiple other affective purposes—­ trolling, and doing it “for the lulz”114 to insert Pepe into legacy media and political arenas; reaffirming their own boundaries and identity by making Pepe align with their beliefs and preventing others from using the meme; and forcing said ideological beliefs into mainstream conversations by making him a cultural lightning rod. By trying to reclaim the meme in such a public way, those on the alt-­right were able to insert not just their images into the broader cultural populace but their ideas as well. Pepe’s cultural collusion was particularly useful in its form as a cloak, or “the use of difficult to detect authorship and hidden agendas intended to accomplish political goals, including white supremacy.”115 Jessie Daniels coined the term cloak to describe covert racism hiding online, and Robert Topinka expands the notion to his analysis of the subreddit r/ImGoingToHellForThis, where the liberal notion of free speech is applied to illiberal ideas of racism and nationalism to justify politically incorrect humor: “In such cases, cloaks including humor and visual remediation can provide cover if not sanction for such discourses, frustrating critical unmasking precisely by foregrounding what might typically be repressed but repositioning it as humor.”116 By expanding the idea of cloaks to include participatory media sites, not just informative pages masking their authority, it becomes possible to examine the subtle and insidious ways participatory media act as cloaks and individuals insert their ideas into the mainstream. 158  The Internet Is for Cats

Pepe as a cloak may seem antithetical given how in the effort to reclaim him, captions that were attached to the meme included “Kill Jews, Man.” This is explicitly harmful and anti-­Semitic. But what was cloaked in Pepe’s cultural collusion was not necessarily racist, anti-­Semitic ideas but their secondary function of making once-­fringe ideas more acceptable. Shifting the Overton window, or the colloquial term for the range of politically acceptable ideas in the mainstream population,117 is a key goal of White nationalists and those on the alt-­right in order to recruit and insert their ideologies into conventional discourse.118 Therefore, Donald Trump’s use of Pepe in his campaign was not just about reclaiming Pepe or reaffirming that presidential campaign’s racist, xenophobic policies; it was about elevating Pepe so high that even if one was condemning the discourse, the sentiments were still present. This was a key example of what Whitney Phillips describes as the “oxygen of amplification,” and in journalists covering Pepe and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign releasing a statement on the meme, new life was breathed into Pepe, his ideals were inadvertently validated, and the issue remained present in public discourse for another day. Pepe and animal memes writ large are particularly effective cloaks for racist, anti-­Semitic, xenophobic, and otherwise toxic and harmful ideas. Because of their malleability and the fact that they are often dismissed as fun, silly images, there can be a delay in assessing the depth of their implications or how serious they may function for certain groups. As Robert Topinka suggests, “Cloaks covering for racism are often highly visible yet effective. . . . This suggests that racism in participatory media spaces requires careful yet critical tracing, rather than ideological unmasking.”119 My goal in this case study was to trace the strands informing Pepe through his status as an animal meme to the broader tenets of visual pet and animal social media. Animal imagery, and specifically memes, function as these types of cloaks. In their most extreme iterations, they are like Pepe. In their minor cloaking infractions, they can be pet influencers masquerading a neoliberal agenda and the precarity of digital labor or questionable animal welfare for videos and pictures in made-­for-­social-­media experiences. Feels Good, Man  159

Cloaks can be cultural collusions, or deliberate maneuvers to promote ideologies in the mainstream, reaffirm group dynamics and identity, and mobilize affect. In the case of Pepe, this cultural collusion was enhanced by how animal imagery and memes function as cloaks, for in taking advantage of the hypermalleable nature of animal memes, in conjunction with preexisting tenets of pet and animal social media, those on the alt-­right were able to expertly harness the tools and dynamics of participatory media for their goals. The same properties underscoring all pet and animal social media—­attention, cuteness and joy, and heightened identity under neoliberalism—­do not just coalesce around the cute and the wholesome; these tenets run deep and can be mobilized by any group of people for any specific end within the hypermalleable nature of digital animal images.

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6 Nature Is Healing, We Are the Virus Beyond Signifiers

During the first months of 2020, most of the world went into lockdown as the novel coronavirus, or COVID-­19, pandemic ravaged the globe. Individuals from almost all countries retreated into their homes to practice social distancing and slow the spread of the virus. As humans mostly sat inside, they also shared numerous pieces of uplifting news on social media to help ease the burden, trauma, and uncertainty of the twenty-­first century’s first global pandemic. Toward the end of March 2020, a specific type of heartwarming news story appeared across sites like Facebook and Twitter—­with humans inside and out of the way, it seemed as if nature was finding a way to positively respond. These uplifting tales included stories of swans and dolphins returning to the famous Venetian canals ever since humans had vacated public life.1 A similar story involved a group of elephants who apparently raided vats of corn wine in China’s Yunnan province, where they drank so much they passed out in a tea garden.2 The stories of swans, dolphins, and elephants roaming freely because human public gatherings had been prohibited offered some heartwarming news during a dangerous, uncertain time, and these stories were shared across social media with a similar ethos: with humans out of the way, nature could be 161

free. The only problem? Most of this news was fake. There were no swans and dolphins in Venice, and no elephants drank so much they passed out in China (the story of the Welsh town overrun by goats, however, was true3). The images shared alongside these stories had been removed from their original contexts, with new stories and captions made up to accompany their COVID-­19-­based social media journeys. National Geographic fact-­checked and debunked these stories in a March 20, 2020, article,4 but that didn’t necessarily stop this particular spread. While many environmentalists shared these (fake) stories to show how humans are detrimental to nature, the words of one commentator on Twitter, Thomas Schulz, latched on: “Wow . . . Earth is recovering. Air pollution is slowing down. Water pollution is clearing up. Natural wildlife returning home. Coronavirus is Earth’s vaccine. We’re the virus.”5 Schulz’s words reflected the sentiment of the fake animal news pieces—­that human life and activities damage the Earth, and when public life ceased, nature could quickly and easily correct itself. While some of Schulz’s points were true (e.g., air pollution did decrease during the early months of the COVID-­19 pandemic),6 wildlife did not necessarily reclaim spaces. The tweet spread widely, but probably not for the reasons the user had hoped. Instead, many parodied the statement, which ultimately morphed into the memetic phrase “nature is healing, we are the virus.”7 The phrase evolved to include images. Meme creators also Photoshopped animals into obviously out-­of-­place scenarios, as was the case with Toilet Shark, or a Photoshopped image of a shark in a household toilet. The use of juxtaposition for out-­of-­place objects and fake scenarios underscore what Katz and Shifman refer to as memetic nonsense, in which meaning is played with, deconstructed, or eschewed altogether in favor of making no sensible statement about reality.8 In not making any sense whatsoever, memetic nonsense contains a subversive quality that “liberates participants from the onerous modern obligation to generate new meaning in every utterance.”9 The “nature is healing, we are the virus” memes became a way to find silliness and play where there 162  The Internet Is for Cats

was seemingly none during a global pandemic. With the world’s situation so grave, “nature is healing, we are the virus” was a nonsensical reprieve in the face of collective trauma, massive disruptions, and a situation that was quite literally life or death. By being nonsensical, this was one thing that did not have to be figured out, tackled, or assessed in changing times. There are multiple strands to unpack in the proliferation of fake animal news at the start of the COVID-­19 pandemic, as well as the subsequent “nature is healing, we are the virus” meme. But I focus on the interplay of something seemingly “good” (cute animal content) and “bad” (fake news) to underscore one final time how intertwined these facets are and why trying to separate them is unproductive. My goal in this book was to analyze the visual cultures of pet and animal social media in order to theorize and discuss the communication practices associated with them. To do so, I applied to my analysis three social modalities, or cultural tenets, that undergird this visual culture: attention, cuteness and joy, and neoliberalism. Far from running disparate and distinct from one another, these cultural dynamics are so inextricably intertwined that it is impossible to fully separate them. While I did so purely for organizational clarity, the other dynamics always seeped into each chapter’s discussion. While I structured this book around them to begin to chart the massive terrain that is pet and animal social media, myriad aspects of this culture remain. In mapping out these curvatures, crevices, and cracks, I showed how comforting, convoluted, and contradictory pet and animal social media may be. Images and videos in this visual culture can be affective objects of immense joy, but they can also be sources of stress, anxiety, and harm—­be it through constantly working to garner fame or in using fake animal rescue videos, crush videos, or animal memes to enact harm on people or other animals. That being said, however, this book is a critique not necessarily of individual content creators but of the cultures and systems in which they operate. As Whitney Phillips notes, the presence of cute and fun content online, such as LOLCats or squeal-­worthy Nature Is Healing, We Are the Virus  163

waddling penguins, softened the blow for the vitriol.10 Historically speaking, it was easy to put up with the internet’s toxicity because of the cute and joyful. But even Phillips’s excellent argument relies on a binary that has become too apparent in my research: the presumption that vitriol is never squeal-­worthy or, to return to the proposition made in the introduction, that the internet is equal (and separate) parts cats and garbage. Sometimes, cats can be wielded to be garbage, and other times, as chapter  5’s discussion of Pepe shows, garbage can be wielded through cats in order to cloak more insidious maneuvers. The reason cats and garbage can function simultaneously, and even as each other, is because of the undergirding tenets of attention, cuteness and joy, and neoliberalism. These apply to all types of animal content, and there is nothing that says animal content online has to be wholly benevolent. One person’s joy can be another person’s harm, and one person’s tactics can be another’s targeted harassment campaign. Such magnanimity is also entirely conditional and contextual, as one person’s joy may be another person’s harm. It may seem paradoxical to theorize it as such, but in bringing all my strands together and complicating them through Pepe the Frog, it becomes apparent that these tenets are just as malleable as animal imagery itself. Understanding these dynamics from positions of harm does not excuse the behavior of toxic individuals but shows how many aspects of internet culture are often approached from positions of assumed benevolence. For instance, Michel de  Certeau’s tactics are often theorized as being a way for individuals to cope with inhabitable spaces—­something I even applied to my analysis—­but less has been understood here about how extremists, ideologues, and those with more harmful and problematic internet practices may also conceive of their work as trying to make something their own in a world that they perceive as uninhabitable. With this in mind, I would like to conclude by pushing back on the idea of something that has become a cultural signifier—­the “cute cat video.” Often, in my research, I encountered iterations of this phrase in academic and popular discourse alike, and it was typically used to describe everything the problematic internet is 164  The Internet Is for Cats

not. There is trolling, there is abuse, there is partisanship—­and then there are cute cat videos. For instance, media scholar Ethan Zuckerman, in his approach to analyzing civic activism in participatory media, coined the phrase “Cute Cat Theory of Digital Activism.” Zuckerman acknowledged his phrasing was tongue-­in-­cheek but nevertheless used the phrase to describe how quotidian internet users with no relative interest in political activism become interested when their internet use is threatened or taken away by the government.11 Again, such phrasing upholds a binary that assumes cat content or animal content is only ever quotidian and not the threatening aspect itself. The phrase “cute cat video” has become a cultural signifier to position certain internet content and practices against others. This upholds the taken-­for-­granted nature and supposed frivolity of pet and animal content online. As I have shown through this book, this house-­of-­cards binary cannot stand in internet research, as it collapses with the smallest of breaths. The unchallenged benevolence of “cute cat videos” does not stand up to even the smallest bit of cultural or historical scrutiny. Challenging this binary matters, since, as Whitney Phillips writes, “the ability to disconnect from consequences, from specificity, from anything but one’s own desire to remain amused forever, kept the ugliness that was always tucked into the folds of internet culture nebulous.”12 In addition to referring to everything that the seemingly toxic internet is not, the cultural signifier of “cute cat videos” disconnects us from just how intertwined the wholesome and the cumbersome are in digital cultures. In doing so, we all inadvertently make space for what we perceive as ugliness to continue—­be it overt toxicity like Pepe the Frog or more complex forms such as decontextualized information, made-­for-­social-­ media animal experiences, or attention-­gathering strategies. But I do not believe all hope is lost. The phrase “cute cat videos” may create space for the toxicity to continue, but it is possible to be more forceful in pushing it out. In my office, I have a poster hanging behind my desk that says, “Be critical of the media you like,” and this perspective is needed for “cute cat videos.” We can enjoy things and recognize that they might not exist in absolute Nature Is Healing, We Are the Virus  165

goodness or benevolence. This does not mean disavowing them, but it opens up space for the necessarily political dimensions of everyday life. When someone seeks to ruin something enjoyable, reclaiming it, being knowledgeable of it, or trying to change it for the better can be acts of resistance. These are the quotidian ways to push back on attention or even neoliberalism. Holding enjoyment and complexity side-­by-­side does not mean disavowing something. It means enjoying something unconditionally with the knowledge that it is not perfect but our cultural spaces and practices do not have to be. Too often, perfect becomes the enemy of good in popular culture. It would have been very easy for me to conclude this book by writing something cheesy in line with the opening parable and meme of this chapter: yes, we are the virus to the pets and animals of the world. But I do not believe that. Time and time again, when I told people I was writing this book and explained what it was about, I was told I was “ruining cat memes” for everyone. I do not believe I did. I painted a picture of the complexity of the phenomenon, but again, I implore readers to find comfort in holding the fun and the joyful in tandem with historical context and problematic potentials. It is only by recognizing what is possible that we can begin to fight it off, and that by no means kills joy. In fact, the opposite is true. By reaffirming our joy for the things we like, it doubles down on how the notion that things we enjoy are always worth fighting for.

166  The Internet Is for Cats

Appendix

This study was designed, conducted, and analyzed as a mostly inductive multifaceted digital ethnography consisting of interviews, textual work, and observations. Instead of choosing just one method for this study, I used a crystallization approach to gather the insights that come from all three methods reflecting, refracting, and even occluding one another. I discuss each of these components below. My interviews consisted of a variety of people who participated in pet and animal social media. These people included the following: pet owners or animal keepers (such as those who worked for zoos, shelters, rescues, and aquariums) who posted about their own pets and animals on the internet; researchers who specialized in how mediating animals have implications for their welfare and conservation; and people who had no pets of their own but nevertheless enjoyed posting and sharing pictures of pets and animals online. In total, seventy-­two people were interviewed. Participants were recruited in a variety of ways, including public posts on my own social media pages (including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter), calls on public listservs, cold-­messaging and

167

-­emailing, and snowball sampling. While some of my interviews occurred before the COVID-­19 pandemic, most took place during it, so as such, most of my interviews were conducted over Skype and Zoom. They all lasted anywhere from forty-­five to eighty-­five minutes and followed a semistructured protocol. All participants and their pets and animals were given pseudonyms to protect their identities. I had approval from my university’s Institutional Review Board to conduct all these interviews. I included textual work to buttress and complicate what was said in the interviews, as well as vice-­versa. Sometimes, the texts included for analysis came from following the metafields approach discussed in the introduction, in which I followed pet and animal social media across numerous sites on the internet (such as during chapter  2’s discussion of made-­for-­social-­media pet and animal experiences, including discovering the news articles about puppy room service and puppies and prosecco brunches). Other times, such as in chapter 5, I relied on searches of terms like Pepe the Frog in LexisNexis to develop a definitive corpus. Since chapter 5 functions as a case study to draw together themes discussed throughout the book, creating a definitive corpus and thus applying a deductive approach to look for my social modalities was appropriate. Prior to this, my study relied heavily on an inductive approach to develop these social modalities. The bulk of textual work was often intertwined with observation. As noted in the introduction, I choose my primary platforms for observational analysis through popularity and user metrics, which yielded Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. I added TikTok upon its meteoric rise in 2020. For instance, I present chapter 3’s discussions of cuteness and joy on Reddit in a rather cohesive way—­I searched for the top ten most populous pet and animal image subreddits and then searched for the five most popular posts of all time in each of those subreddits. Those were the only bits of text included for analysis of Reddit. However, I only conducted this search and defined these boundaries after spending almost a year watching pet and animal subreddits.

168 Appendix

Observation in digital ethnography is often thought of as glorified lurking, but when done correctly, it is much more definitive than that. I spent at least an hour a day, if not more, on pet and animal accounts on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. I spent at least an hour a day in pet and animal Facebook groups and on Twitter and Reddit. I took notes constantly, and when content or content creators moved across platforms or referenced other sites, I used the metafields approach to follow them or the content (such as discussed in chapter 2’s discussion of Pets Add Life). One must also adhere to strict ethics in observations of digital ethnography. Extreme care must be taken to protect those one is analyzing. Any screenshots were kept in password-­protected folders on my password-­protected computer and deleted off my phone and iCloud as quickly as possible. I used my own pseudonym/identifier code in taking notes so nothing could ever be traced back to my participants. Even in instances when social media was already dominated by pseudonymity, such as Reddit, I provided only a link to the archived post in my citations and not the specific comments. While it is also largely considered that any public social media content is acceptable fodder for research, I consider this to be a relatively low bar, and I only include names from those in viral stories or internet celebrity contexts. Using both viral status and internet celebrity as a barometer for public research data is a constantly shifting and contextual benchmark and not a static absolute. It will always depend on the individual person. During analysis, I sat with my data. I sat with thousands of pages of interview transcripts, online newspaper and magazine articles, and social media posts. By this point, my social modality themes had begun to emerge, and I categorized data into these three tenets. However, as discussed through this book, most every iteration I analyzed connected to more than one social modality. Analysis consisted of lots of highlighters, drawn arrows, and sticky notes telling me to “see also attention” or “see also cuteness.” I could have used something like NVivo, but ironically, for social

Appendix 169

media research, I prefer being a Luddite in analyzing my data and get more out of it by physically holding it my hands. Too often, methods get overlooked or undervalued in research, particularly in books. I hope this appendix has offered some clarity on how I conducted this multipart study, and like I would say in a conference presentation, if anyone has any questions as to what I did or why, they are welcome to find me online and contact me.

170 Appendix

Acknowledgments

This book would have been impossible without the immense support I received from those around me. I first have to thank Sean (and our dogs, Samson and Rudy) for always going on this journey with me. Many thanks to Nicole Solano, my incredible editor, for taking a chance on this project, and thanks to my reviewers and the whole team at Rutgers University Press for working so hard to make this the best possible book. Many thanks to Doug (Bugcat), Heather (Pusheen), Natasha, Samantha (Roman), Sarah (Huckleberry, Tallulah, and Maybelle), Brittany (Luna), Jen (Peaches), Kelsey (Stella, Bjorn, and Loki), Hannah (Ghost, Fenrir, and Sif ), and Emily (Sadie) for their endless support. I’m also incredibly fortunate to have great colleagues and previous coauthors that challenge me intellectually but who I can also call friends: Shaheen, Kaitlin (Dugan, Dot, and a whole litany of foster babies), AJ (Sousami), Alyx ( Josie and Charlie), Kristen, Dianne (Kat, Woody, and Gus), Maya (Kudzu, Bear, and Disco), Brian, Cynthia (Mia and Charlie), Miriam, Anneliese (Cooper and Francis), Kim (Luna), Matt, and Jessy. Also, thank you to all my academic Twitter friends who supported me and 171

followed along with this project from proposal to publication. Special shoutout to Shira (Ninja, Qibli, and Cricket) for pushing me to commit and finally write this book. And last but certainly not least, a special thanks to all my participants. This book would not have been possible without your incredible insights.

172 Acknowledgments

Notes

Introduction 1. “This Is Fine,” Know Your Meme, accessed June 25, 2021, https://​know yourmeme​.com/​memes/​this​-is​-fine.

2. Katie Rogers, “Why ‘This Is Fine’ Is the Meme This Year Deserves,”

New York Times, August 5, 2016, https://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2016/​08/​06/​ arts/​this​-is​-fine​-meme​-dog​-fire​.html.

3. Chris Plante, “This Is Fine Creator Explains the Timelessness of

His Meme,” Verge, May 5, 2016, https://​www​.theverge​.com/​2016/​5/​5/​ 11592622/​this​-is​-fine​-meme​-comic.

4. Abby Ohlheiser, “The 24 Most Important Viral Reactions on the Internet in the Past 20 Years,” Washington Post, December 30, 2019, https://​

www​.washingtonpost​.com/​technology/​2019/​12/​30/​most​-important​-viral​ -reactions​-internet​-past​-years/.

5. Ohlheiser.

6. Sarah Jeong, “The Internet of Garbage,” Verge, August 28, 2018, https://​ www​.theverge​.com/​2018/​8/​28/​17777330/​internet​-of​-garbage​-book​-sarah​ -jeong​-online​-harassment.

7. Abby Ohlheiser, “‘Dumpster Fire’ Is Now a Miriam-­Webster Dictionary Entry, and Here’s Why,” Washington Post, March 7, 2018, https://​www​

.washingtonpost​.com/​news/​the​-intersect/​wp/​2018/​03/​07/​congratulations​ -everybody​-dumpster​-fire​-is​-now​-a​-dictionary​-entry​-and​-heres​-why/.

8. Sarah Banet-­Weiser and Kate M. Miltner, “#MasculinitySoFragile:

Culture, Structure, and Networked Misogyny,” Feminist Media Studies 16, no. 1 (2016): 171–­174, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​14680777​.2016​.1120490.

173

9. E. J. White, A Unified Theory of Cats on the Internet (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2020).

10. Sharon Harper, “The World’s Most Amazing 100% Awesome Photog-

raphy Theory,” Photographies 9, no. 3 (2016): 327–­348, https://​doi​.org/​10​ .1080/​17540763​.2016​.1202133.

11. Tama Leaver, Tim Highfield, and Crystal Abidin, Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures (Cambridge: Polity, 2020).

12. Adam Davis, “Just 22 Cute Animal Pictures You Need Right Now,”

BuzzFeed, December 2, 2016, https://​www​.buzzfeed​.com/​adamdavis/​ they​-are​-just​-really​-cute​-tbh.

13. Jessica Maddox, “The Secret Life of Pet Instagram Accounts: Joy, Resistance, and Commodification in the Internet’s Cute Economy,” New

Media & Society 23, no. 11 (September 2020): 3332–­3348, https://​doi​.org/​ 10​.1177/​1461444820956345.

14. Claire Parkinson, Animals, Anthropomorphism, and Mediated Encounters (Oxfordshire, U.K.: Routledge, 2020).

15. Graeme Turner, British Cultural Studies: An Introduction (Oxfordshire, U.K.: Routledge, 2003).

16. Daren C. Brabham, “Studying Normal, Everyday Social Media,” Social

Media + Society 1, no. 1 (2015): 1–­2, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​2056305115580484; Harry T. Dyer, Designing the Social: Unpacking Social Media Design and Identity (New York: Springer, 2020).

17. Adrienne Massanari, Participatory Culture, Community, and Play: Learning from Reddit (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2015), 1.

18. Richard Johnson, “What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?,” Social Text 16 (1986): 38–­80, https://​doi​.org/​10​.2307/​466285.

19. White, Unified Theory.

20. Asaf Nissenbaum and Limor Shifman, “Internet Memes as Contested

Cultural Capital: The Case of 4chan’s /b/ Board,” New Media & Society 19, no. 4 (2017): 483–­501, https://​doi​.org/​/​10​.1177/​1461444815609313.

21. Cole Stryker, Epic Win for Anonymous (New York: Overlook, 2011).

22. Kate Miltner, “‘There’s No Place for Lulz on LOLCats’: The Role of

Genre, Gender, and Group Identity in the Interpretation and Enjoy-

ment of an Internet Meme,” First Monday 19, no. 8 (2014), https://​doi​ .org/​10​.5210/​fm​.v19i8​.5391.

174 Notes

23. Stuart Cunningham and David Craig, Social Media Entertainment: The New Intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley (New York: New York University Press, 2019), 5.

24. Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online (Bingley, U.K.: Emerald, 2018); Rebecca Lewis, Alice E. Marwick, and William

Clyde Partin, “‘We Dissect Stupidity and Respond to It’: Response Videos and Networked Harassment on YouTube,” American Behavioral Scientist 65, no. 5 (2021): 735–­756, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​0002764221989781; Jessica Maddox, “What Do Creators and Viewers Owe Each Other? Microcelebrity, Reciprocity, and Transactional Tingles in the ASMR

YouTube Community,” First Monday 26, no. 1 (2020); Mark R. Johnson

and Jamie Woodcock, “‘It’s Like the Gold Rush’: The Lives and Careers

of Professional Video Game Streamers on Twitch​.tv.” Information, Com-

munication, & Society 22, no. 3 (2019): 336–­351.

25. Arturo Arriagada and Francisco Ibáñez, “‘You Need at Least One

Picture Daily, If Not, You’re Dead’: Content Creators and Platform

Evolution in the Social Media Ecology,” Social Media + Society 6, no. 3 (2020): 1–­12, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​2056305120944624.

26. George Hoare and Nathan Sperber, An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci: His Life, Thought and Legacy (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).

27. José van Dijck, The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social

Media (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Tarleton Gillespie, “The Politics of ‘Platforms,’” New Media & Society 12, no. 3 (2010): 347–­364.

28. Allison Page, “‘This Baby Sloth Will Inspire You to Keep Going’:

Capital, Labor, and the Affective Power of Cute Animal Videos,” in

The Aesthetics and Affects of Cuteness, ed. Joshua Paul Dale, Joyce Goggin, Julia Leyda, Anthony P. McIntyre, and Diane Negra (Oxfordshire, U.K.: Routledge, 2016), 76.

29. Sarah Banet-­Weiser, “Keynote Address: Media, Markets, Gender:

Economies of Visibility in a Neoliberal Moment,” Communication

Review 18, no. 1 (2015): 53–­70, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​10714421​.2015​ .996398.

30. Whitney Phillips, “It Wasn’t Just the Trolls: Early Internet Culture,

‘Fun,’ and the Fires of Exclusionary Laughter,” Social Media + Society 5, no. 3 (2019): 2, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​2056305119849493.

Notes 175

31. Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2015), 7.

32. Crystal Abidin, “‘Aren’t These Just Young, Rich Women Doing Vain

Things Online?’: Influencer Selfies as Subversive Frivolity,” Social Media + Society 2, no. 2 (2016): 1–­17, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​2056305116641342.

33. Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).

34. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans. Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, reprint ed. (New York: International, 2014), 8.

35. Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall, Visual Culture: The Reader (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE, 1999), 1.

36. Alice E. Marwick, “Instafame: Luxury Selfies in the Attention Economy,” Public Culture 27, no. 1 (2015): 137–­160, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1215/​ 08992363​-2798379.

37. Nicholas Mirzoeff, An Introduction to Visual Culture (Oxfordshire, U.K.: Routledge, 2009), 3.

38. Mirzoeff, 10.

39. Hal Foster, preface to Vision and Visuality, ed. Hal Foster (New York: New Press, 1999), xi.

40. Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE, 2016).

41. Rose, 20.

42. Marwick, “Instafame,” 138.

43. Diana Zulli, “Capitalizing on the Look: Insights into the Glance,

Attention Economy, and Instagram,” Critical Studies in Media Com-

munication 35, no. 2 (2018): 140, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​15295036​.2017​ .1394582.

44. Jason Potts, “The Alchian-­Allen Theorem and the Economics of Internet Animals,” M/C Journal 17, no. 2 (2014), https://​doi​.org/​10​.5204/​mcj​.779.

45. Joshua Paul Dale, Joyce Goggin, Julia Leyda, Anthony P. McIntyre, and

Diane Negra, “The Aesthetics and Affects of Cuteness,” in The Aesthetics and Affects of Cuteness, ed. Joshua Paul Dale, Joyce Goggin, Julia Leyda,

Anthony P. McIntyre, and Diane Negra (Oxfordshire, U.K.: Routledge, 2016), 19–­20. 176 Notes

46. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

47. Rosalind Gill and Ngaire Donaghue, “Resilience, Apps and Reluctant Individualism: Technologies of the Self in the Neoliberal Academy,” Women’s Studies International Forum 54 ( January–­February 2016): 92, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1016/​j​.wsif​.2015​.06​.016.

48. Limor Shifman, Memes in Digital Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2014).

49. Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green, Spreadable Media: Cre-

ating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2013).

50. Jessica Boddy, “Dogs Are Doggos: An Internet Language Built around Love for the Puppers.” NPR, April 23, 2017. https://​www​.npr​.org/​

sections/​alltechconsidered/​2017/​04/​23/​524514526/​dogs​-are​-doggos​-an​ -internet​-language​-built​-around​-love​-for​-the​-puppers.

51. Jody Berland, Virtual Menageries: Animals as Mediators in Network Cultures (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2019).

52. Julia Long, “Portable Pets: Live and Apparently Live Animals in Fashion, 1880–­1925,” Costume 43, no. 1 (2009): 111–­12, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1179/​ 174963009X419755.

53. Katherine Grier, Pets in America: A History (Boston, Mass.: Harvest, 2006).

54. Heidi J. Nast, “Critical Pet Studies?,” Antipode 38, no. 5 (2006): 894, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1111/​j​.1467​-8330​.2006​.00484​.x.

55. “U.S. Pet Ownership Statistics,” American Veterinary Medical Asso-

ciation, accessed April 23, 2022, https://​www​.avma​.org/​resources​-tools/​ reports​-statistics/​us​-pet​-ownership​-statistics.

56. Jordan Tyler, “FEDIAF: Pet Food Sales Lead Total Industry

Revenue in 2018,” Pet Food Processing, June 19, 2019, https://​www​

.petfoodprocessing​.net/​articles/​13185​-fediaf​-pet​-food​-sales​-led​-total​ -industry​-revenue​-in​-2018​#:​~:​text​=​Annual​%20pet​%20food​%20sales​ %20in​,2​.5​%25​%2C​%20according​%20to​%20FEDIAF.

57. “How Many Pets Are There in Australia?,” Pet Industry Association Australia, Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,

accessed March 30, 2022, https://​kb​.rspca​.org​.au/​knowledge​-base/​how​ -many​-pets​-are​-there​-in​-australia/.

Notes 177

58. “Pet Industry Market Size, Trends & Ownership Statistics,” Amer-

ican Pet Products Association, accessed April 23, 2022, https://​www​ .americanpetproducts​.org/​press​_industrytrends​.asp.

59. Tyler, “Pet Food Sales.”

60. “Zoo and Aquarium Statistics,” Association of Zoos and Aquariums,

accessed April 23, 2022, https://​www​.aza​.org/​zoo​-and​-aquarium​-statistics​ ?locale​=​en.

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Screen Media, ed. Michael Lawrence and Karen Lury (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

62. Burke.

63. Kari Weil, Thinking Animals: Why Animal Studies Now? (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012)

64. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism

and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).

65. Christine Hine, Ethnography for the Internet: Embedded, Embodied and Everyday (Oxfordshire, U.K.: Routledge, 2015).

66. “The Most Popular Social Media Platforms of 2019,” Digital Information

World, accessed April 23, 2022, https://​www​.digitalinformationworld​.com/​ 2019/​01/​most​-popular​-global​-social​-networks​-apps​-infographic​.html.

67. Arjun Kharpal, “TikTok Owner ByteDance’s Revenue Surged 111% in 2020, Records 1.9 Billion Users,” CNBC, June 17, 2021, https://​www​ .cnbc​.com/​2021/​06/​17/​chinas​-bytedance​-tiktok​-owner​-saw​-revenue​ -surge​-111percent​-in​-2020​.html.

68. Gabriele de Seta, “Three Lies of Digital Ethnography,” Journal of Digi-

tal Social Research 2, no. 1 (2020): 83, https://​doi​.org/​10​.33621/​jdsr​.v2i1​.24.

69. Hine, Ethnography for the Internet.

70. Jenna Burrell, “The Field Site as a Network: A Strategy for Locating

Ethnographic Research,” Field Methods 21, no. 2 (2009): 183, https://​doi​ .org/​10​.1177/​1525822X08329699.

71. Massimo Airoldi, “Ethnography and the Digital Fields of Social

Media,” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 21, no. 6 (2018): 665, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​13645579​.2018​.1465622.

72. Zizi Papacharissi, A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites (Oxfordshire, U.K.: Routledge, 2010).

178 Notes

73. Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006).

74. Catherine Knight Steele, “Black Bloggers and Their Varied Publics: The Everyday Politics of Black Discourse Online,” Television & New Media 19, no. 2 (2018): 112–­127.

75. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 3rd ed. (New York: Basic, 2017).

1. Kittens in Context 1. Samantha Murphy, “World Wide Web Inventor: I Wasn’t Expecting

Kittens,” Mashable, March 12, 2014, https://​mashable​.com/​archive/​tim​ -berners​-lee​-reddit​-ama.

2. Berland, Virtual Menageries, 8.

3. John Berger, Why Look at Animals? (New York: Penguin, 2009). 4. van Dijck, Culture of Connectivity. 5. White, Unified Theory, 12.

6. Ariadna Matamoros Fernández, “Platformed Racism: The Mediation

and Circulation of an Australian Race-­Based Controversy on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube,” Information, Communication, & Society 20, no. 6 (2017): 930–­946, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​1369118X​.2017​.1293130.

7. Berger, Why Look at Animals?

8. Leah Shafer, “Cat Videos and the Superflat Cinema of Attractions,” Film Criticism 40, no. 2 (2016), https://​doi​.org/​10​.3998/​fc​.13761232​ .0040​.208.

9. Berland, Virtual Menageries, 29. 10. Parkinson, Animals. 11. Parkinson, 24.

12. Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001).

13. Manovich, Language. 14. Manovich, xv.

15. Manovich, 6, 9.

16. Berland, Virtual Menageries.

17. Sarah T. Roberts, Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2019).

Notes 179

18. Berland, Virtual Menageries.

19. Amanda Pickering, “Interpreting the Animal Choices on the World’s

Most Popular Programming Books,” AWL, October 10, 2014, https://​ www​.theawl​.com/​2014/​10/​interpreting​-the​-animal​-choices​-on​-the​ -worlds​-most​-popular​-programming​-books/.

20. Lisa Nakamura, Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet (Oxfordshire, U.K.: Routledge, 2002), 258.

21. Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in

the Social Media Age (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2013).

22. Jonathan Marceau, “Budorcas taxicolor: Takin,” University of Michigan

Museum of Zoology, accessed June 9, 2022, https://​animaldiversity​.org/​ accounts/​budorcas​_taxicolor/.

23. Berland, Virtual Menageries.

24. Zizi Papacharissi, “We Have Always Been Social,” Social Media + Society 1, no. 1 (2015): 1–­2, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​2056305115581185.

25. John Hartley, “Pushing Back: Social Media as an Evolutionary Phe-

nomenon,” in The Sage Handbook of Social Media, ed. Jean Burgess, Alice

Marwick and Thomas Poell, 13–­34 (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE, 2018).

26. José van Dijck, Thomas Poell, and Martijn de Waal, The Platform

Society: Public Values in a Connective World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 9.

27. Jean Burgess and Joshua Green, YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Polity, 2018).

28. Burgess and Green.

29. White, Unified Theory, 76.

30. Jean Burgess, “From ‘Broadcast Yourself ’ to ‘Follow Your Interests’:

Making Over Social Media,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 18, no. 3 (2015): 281–­285, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​1367877913513684.

31. Gillespie, “Politics of ‘Platforms.’” 32. Parkinson, Animals, 3.

33. Mark Andrejevic, Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004).

34. Greg Elmer, “Prospecting Facebook: The Limits of the Attention Econ-

omy,” Media, Culture, & Society 41, no. 3 (2019): 332–­346, https://​doi​.org/​ 10​.1177/​0163443718813467.

180 Notes

35. José van Dijck and Thomas Poell, “Understanding Social Media Logic,” Media and Communication 1, no. 1 (2013): 2–­14, https://​doi​.org/​10​.12924/​ mac2013​.01010002.

36. Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love: Gender,

Social Media, and Aspirational Work (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2017).

37. Sam Biddle, Paulo Victor Ribeiro, and Tatiana Dias, “Invisible Censorship,” Intercept, March 15, 2020, https://​theintercept​.com/​2020/​03/​16/​ tiktok​-app​-moderators​-users​-discrimination/.

38. van Dijck and Poell, “Social Media Logic.”

39. Alice E. Marwick, “You May Know Me from YouTube: (Micro-­)

Celebrity in Social Media,” in A Companion to Celebrity, ed. P. David

Marshall and Sean Redmond (Malden, Mass.: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 335–­336.

40. Graeme Turner, “The Mass Production of Celebrity: ‘Celetoids,’ Reality

TV and the ‘Demotic Turn,’” International Journal of Cultural Studies 92, no. 2 (2006): 153–­165, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​1367877906064028.

41. Stuart Cunningham and David Craig. “Creator Governance in Social

Media Entertainment,” Social Media + Society 5, no. 4 (2019): 2, https://​ doi​.org/​10​.1177/​2056305119883428.

42. Herbert A. Simon, “Designing Organizations for an Information

Rich World,” in Computers, Communications, and the Public Interest,

ed. Martin Greenberger (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), 40.

43. Patrick Crogan and Samuel Kinsley, “Paying Attention: Towards a

Critique of the Attention Economy,” Culture Machine 13 (2012): 1, 3, https://​culturemachine​.net/​paying​-attention/.

44. White, Unified Theory, 79.

45. Steve Baker, Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity, and Representation, 2nd ed. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 121.

46. Ramon Lobato and James Meese, “Kittens All the Way Down: Cute

in Context,” M/C Journal 17, no. 2 (2014), https://​doi​.org/​10​.5204/​mcj​ .807.

47. Kate Marx, “‘He’s So Fluffy I’m Gonna Die!’ Cute Responses by Hikers to Autonomous Animals on the Appalachian Trail,” Anthrozoös 32, no. 1 (2019): 92, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​08927936​.2019​.1550283.

Notes 181

48. Simone Ngai, “The Cuteness of the Avant-­Garde,” Critical Inquiry 31, no. 4 (2005): 814, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1086/​444516.

49. Lorraine Plourde, “Babymetal and the Ambivalence of Cuteness,”

International Journal of Cultural Studies 21, no. 3 (2018): 293–­307, https://​ doi​.org/​10​.1177/​1367877916674741.

50. Nick Douglas, “It’s Supposed to Look Like Shit: The Internet’s Ugly

Aesthetic,” Journal of Visual Culture 13, no. 3 (2014): 315, https://​doi​.org/​ 10​.1177/​1470412914544516.

51. Douglas.

52. Marx, “He’s So Fluffy,” 93.

53. van Dijck, Culture of Connectivity.

54. Jen Doll, “Seriously, What’s So Great about Corgis?,” Atlantic, April 19, 2012, https://​www​.theatlantic​.com/​culture/​archive/​2012/​04/​seriously​ -whats​-so​-great​-about​-corgis/​329121/.

55. Harold A. Herzog, “Forty-­Two Thousand and One Dalmatians: Fads, Social Contagion, and Dog Breed Popularity,” Society & Animals 14, no. 4 (2006): 387–­388.

56. Harvey, Brief History of Neoliberalism.

57. Stuart Hall, “The Neo-­Liberal Revolution,” Cultural Studies 25, no. 6 (2011): 705–­728, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​09502386​.2011​.619886.

58. Rosalind Gill, “Culture and Subjectivity in Neoliberal Times,” Subjectivity 25 (2008): 432–­445, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1057/​sub​.2008​.28.

59. James N. Gilmore, “Everywear: The Quantified Self and Wearable

Fitness Technologies,” New Media & Society 18, no. 11 (2015): 2524–­2539, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​1461444815588768.

60. Catherine Rottenberg, “Neoliberal Feminism and the Future of Human Capital,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 42, no. 21 (2017): 329–­348, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1086/​688182.

61. Gill and Donaghue, “Resilience.” 62. Hall, “Neo-­Liberal.”

63. Paul Gilroy, “‘We Got to Get Over before We Go Under . . . :’

Fragments for a History of Black Vernacular Neoliberalism,” New

Formations 80–­81 (2013): 23–­28, https://​doi​.org/​doi:​10​.3898/​neWf​.80/​ 81​.01​.2013.

64. Gilroy.

65. Gill, “Culture and Subjectivity.” 182 Notes

66. Gill.

67. Christina Scharff, “The Psychic Life of Neoliberalism: Mapping the

Contours of Entrepreneurial Subjectivity,” Theory, Culture & Society 33, no. 6 (2016): 107–­122, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​0263276415590164.

68. White, Unified Theory.

69. Leah Scolere, Urszula Pruchniewska, and Brooke Erin Duffy, “Con-

structing the Platform-­Specific Self-­Brand: The Labor of Social Media Promotion,” Social Media + Society 4, no. 3 (2018): 1–­11, https://​doi​.org/​ 10​.1177/​2056305118784768.

70. Nicholas-­Brie Guarriello, “Never Give Up, Never Surrender: Game Live Streaming, Neoliberal Work, and Personalized Media Econo-

mies,” New Media & Society 21, no. 8 (2019): 1750–­1769, https://​doi​.org/​ 10​.1177/​1461444819831653.

71. Ana Jorge, Lidia Marôpo, Ana Margarida Coelho, and Lia Novello, “Mummy Influencers and Professional Sharenting,” European

Journal of Cultural Studies 25, no. 1 (2021), https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​ 13675494211004593; Catherine Archer, “Social Media Influencers,

Post-­feminism and Neoliberalism: How Mum Bloggers’ ‘Playbour’ Is Reshaping Public Relations,” Public Relations Inquiry 8, no. 2 (2019): 149–­166, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​2046147X19846530.

72. Crystal Abidin, “Agentic Cute (^.^): Pastiching East Asian Cute in

Influencer Commerce,” East Asian Journal of Popular Culture 2, no. 1 (2016): 33–­47, https://​doi​.org/​doi:​10​.1386/​eapc​.2​.1​.33​_1.

73. Gabriella Lukacs, “The Labor of Cute: Net Idols, Cute Culture, and

the Digital Economy in Contemporary Japan,” Positions 23, no. 3 (2015): 496, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1215/​10679847​-3125863.

74. Rosalind Gill and Akane Kanai, “Mediating Neoliberal Capitalism:

Affect, Subjectivity, and Inequality,” Journal of Communication 68, no. 2 (2018): 318–­326, https://​doi​.org/​doi:​10​.1093/​joc/​jqy002.

75. Susan Nance, Entertaining Elephants: Animal Agency and the Business of the American Circus (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 5.

76. Hartley, “Pushing Back,” 19.

77. Annette Markham and Katrin Tiidenberg, eds., Metaphors of the Inter-

net: Ways of Being in the Age of Ubiquity (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2020), 15.

Notes 183

78. Gillespie, “Politics of ‘Platforms.’”

79. Brett Frischmann, “The Misleading Power of Internet Metaphors,” Observations (blog), Scientific American, September 5, 2018, https://​

blogs​.scientificamerican​.com/​observations/​the​-misleading​-power​-of​ -internet​-metaphors/.

80. Jessica Maddox and Jennifer Malson, “Guidelines without Lines,

Communities without Borders: The Marketplace of Ideas and Digital Manifest Destiny in Social Media Platform Policies,” Social Media +

Society 6, no. 2 (2020): 1–­10. https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​2056305120926622.

81. Hall, “Neo-­Liberal,” 722.

82. Emily Hund and Lee McGuigan, “A Shoppable Life: Performance,

Selfhood, and Influence in the Social Media Storefront,” Communication, Culture, & Critique 12, no. 1 (2019): 18–­35, https://​doi​.org/​doi:​10​ .1093/​ccc/​tcz004.

2. “I’ve Heard People on TikTok Love This” 1. Crystal Abidin, “Mapping Internet Celebrity on TikTok: Exploring

Attention Economies and Visibility Labours,” Cultural Science Journal 12, no. 1 (2021): 77–­103, https://​doi​.org/​10​.5334/​csci​.140.

2. Diana Zulli and David James Zulli, “Extending the Internet Meme:

Conceptualizing Technological Mimesis and Imitation Publics on the

TikTok Platform,” New Media & Society (2020): 1–­19, https://​doi​.org/​10​ .1177/​1461444820983603.

3. Ryan Milner, The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2016).

4. Abidin, “Internet Celebrity on TikTok.” 5. Gill, “Culture and Subjectivity.” 6. Parkinson, Animals.

7. Randy Malamud, An Introduction to Animals and Visual Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

8. Malamud, 23.

9. Berger, Why Look at Animals?

10. Douglas Kellner, Media Spectacle (Oxfordshire, U.K.: Routledge, 2003).

11. Marwick, “Know Me from YouTube.” 184 Notes

12. Katrin Tiidenberg, “‘Instagrammable’ as a Metaphor for Looking and Showing in Visual Social Media,” in Metaphors of the Internet, 65–­66.

13. Tiidenberg, 68.

14. John Tagg, The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).

15. Tagg.

16. Long, “Portable Pets.” 17. Long.

18. David B. Nieborg and Thomas Poell, “The Platformization of Cultural Production: Theorizing the Contingent Cultural Commodity,” New Media & Society 20, no. 11 (2018): 4275–­4292. https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​ 1461444818769694.

19. Nieborg and Poell.

20. Gavin Alexander, “Tiptoe the TikTok Famous Tortoise,” Palisadian-­ Post, November 12, 2020, https://​www​.palipost​.com/​tiptoe​-the​-tiktok​ -famous​-tortoise/.

21. John Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction (Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge, 2015), 258.

22. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Anchor, 1959).

23. Goffman.

24. Hannah Ditchfield, “Behind the Screen of Facebook: Identity

Construction in the Rehearsal Stage of Online Interaction,” New Media & Society 22, no. 6 (2020): 927–­943, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​ 1461444819873644.

25. Katrin Tiidenberg and Andrew Whelan, “Sick Bunnies and Pocket

Dumps: ‘Not-­Selfies’ and the Genre of Self-­representation,” Popular

Communication 15, no. 2 (2017): 141–­153, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​15405702​ .2016​.1269907.

26. Jessica Greenebaum, “It’s a Dog’s Life: Elevating Status from Pet to

‘Fur Baby’ at Yappy Hour,” Society & Animals 12, no. 2 (2004): 117–­135.

27. Russell Belk, “Extended Self in a Digital World,” Journal of Consumer Research 40, no. 3 (2013): 477–­500, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1086/​671052.

28. Logan Molyneux, “A Personalized Self-­image: Gender and Branding

Practices among Journalists,” Social Media + Society 5, no. 3 (2019): 1–­10, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​2056305119872950.

Notes 185

29. “About,” WeRateDogs, accessed July 2, 2021, https://​weratedogs​.com/​ pages/​about​-weratedogs.

30. Phillips, Can’t Have Nice Things.

31. Note: After extensive searching, I found this account does not exist, which is why I used the name Kara told me.

32. “Home,” Pets Add Life, accessed July 2, 2021, https://​petsaddlife​.org/. 33. “Home.”

34. van Dijck and Poell, “Social Media Logic.”

35. Jennifer Sinski, Robert M. Carini, and Jonetete D. Weber, “Putting

(Big) Black Dog Syndrome to the Test: Evidence from a Large Metro-

politan Shelter,” Anthrozoös 29, no. 4 (2016): 639–­652, https://​doi​.org/​10​ .1080/​08927936​.2016​.1228769.

36. “Black Cats Shunned for Purr-­fect Selfies,” BBC News, January 30, 2018, https://​www​.bbc​.com/​news/​uk​-42871851.

37. Sarah Mayorga-­Gallo, “Whose Best Friend? Dogs and Racial Bound-

ary Maintenance in a Multiracial Neighborhood,” Sociological Forum 33,

no. 2 (2018): 505–­528, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1111/​socf​.12425.

38. Jessica Maddox, “Visuality beyond Virality: Situating the Ocularcen-

tric Internet in the Regime of Enthrallment” (PhD diss., University of Georgia, 2018).

39. Maddox.

40. Abidin, Internet Celebrity.

41. Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid, 4.

42. Nancy Baym, Playing to the Crowd: Musicians, Audiences, and the Inti-

mate Work of Connection (New York: New York University Press, 2018).

43. Marwick, “Know Me from YouTube,” 333. 44. Leaver, Highfield, and Abidin, Instagram.

45. Henry Friedman, “THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: We’re super

excited that #teamfinn has just landed its first ever partnership, with

@titosvodka,” Instagram, September 10, 2020, https://​www​.instagram​ .com/​p/​CE9xybrh4WB/​?utm​_medium​=​copy​_link.

46. Courtney Dasher, “SanTUNA and his little helper, Colin, helped me

curate our 4th annual holiday gift guide for humans and pets,” Instagram,

December 11, 2020, https://​www​.instagram​.com/​p/​CIq98PCBdbp/​?hl​=​en.

47. Sarah Banet-­Weiser, Authentic™: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 60.

186 Notes

48. Tania Bucher, “Want to Be on the Top? Algorithmic Power and the Threat of Invisibility on Facebook,” New Media & Society 14, no. 7 (2012): 1164–­1180, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​1461444812440159.

49. Crystal Abidin, “#Familygoals: Family Influencers, Calibrated Amateurism, and Justifying Young Digital Labor,” Social Media + Society 3, no. 2 (2017): 1–­15, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​2056305117707191; Crystal

Abidin, “Micromicrocelebrity: Branding Babies on the Internet,” M/C Journal 18, no. 5 (2015), https://​doi​.org/​10​.5204/​mcj​.1022.

50. Abidin, “Internet Celebrity on TikTok,” 79.

51. Zulli and Zulli, “Extending the Internet Meme.”

52. Sophie Bishop, “Why the ‘Ideal’ Influencer Looks Like . . . That,” Paper Magazine, August 12, 2019, https://​www​.papermag​.com/​top​-beauty​ -influencers​-2639784604​.html​?rebelltitem​=​16​#rebelltitem16.

53. Sophie Bishop, “The Safety Dance,” Real Life Magazine, January 11, 2021, https://​reallifemag​.com/​the​-safety​-dance/.

54. Gemma Gené, Life with Mochi (Kansas City, Mo.: Andre McMeel, 2021).

55. Abidin, “Micromicrocelebrity,” para. 5.

56. Leaver, Highfield, and Abidin, Instagram, 172. 57. Leaver, Highfield, and Abidin, 171.

58. “Lake District Hotel Launches Lemur Yoga Classes,” BBC News, April 2, 2019, https://​www​.bbc​.com/​news/​uk​-england​-cumbria​ -47783459.

59. Ashley Edes, “How Social Media Supports Animal Cruelty and the Illegal Pet Trade,” Revelator, June 20, 2019, https://​therevelator​.org/​ social​-media​-illegal​-pet​-trade/.

60. “Let Goat Yoga Enlighten Your Viral Content Strategy,” Bigeye

Agency, accessed July 2, 2021, https://​www​.bigeyeagency​.com/​insights/​ let​-goat​-yoga​-enlighten​-your​-viral​-content​-strategy/.

61. Kat Thompson, “This Hotel Will Deliver Puppies and Prosecco Right

to Your Room,” Thrillist, July 29, 2019, https://​www​.thrillist​.com/​news/​

nation/​hotel​-monaco​-denver​-puppies​-prosecco​-room​-service​-national​ -dog​-day​-2019.

62. Liz Balmaseda, “Puppies and Brunch in West Palm? Yes, Please!”

Palm Beach Post, March 6, 2020, https://​www​.palmbeachpost​.com/​

entertainment/​20200306/​puppies​-and​-brunch​-in​-west​-palm​-yes​-please. Notes 187

63. Storey, Cultural Theory.

64. “Watch Penguins Stroll through Chicago’s Aquarium,” ABC Chicago, April 8, 2020, https://​abc7chicago​.com/​chicago​-aquarium​-penguins​ -shedd​-coronavirus​-cute​-animals/​6087402/.

65. Cara Giaimo, “The Story behind the Most Famous Photo from

Hurricane Andrew,” Atlas Obscura, September 6, 2016, https://​www​

.atlasobscura​.com/​articles/​the​-story​-behind​-the​-most​-famous​-photo​ -from​-hurricane​-andrew.

66. K. Anne-­Isola Nekaris, Nicola Campbell, Tim G. Goggins, E. Johanna

Rode, and Vincent Nijman, “Tickled to Death: Analysing Public Perceptions of ‘Cute’ Videos of Threatened Species (Slow Lorises—­Nycticebus

Spp.) on Web 2.0 Sites,” Plos One 8, no. 7 (2013), https://​doi​.org/​doi:​10​ .1371/​journal​.pone​.0069215.

67. Parkinson, Animals, 18.

68. Nicole Axworthy, “YouTube Bans ‘Fake’ Animal Rescue Exploitation

Videos,” VegNews, April 2, 2021, https://​vegnews​.com/​2021/​4/​youtube​ -bans​-fake​-animal​-rescue​-exploitation​-videos.

69. Axworthy.

70. Tarleton Gillespie, Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Mod-

eration, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2018).

3. Beyond Doomscrolling in an Internet of Cute 1. Megan McCluskey, “‘It’s like a Clark Kent Hair Swoosh.’ Here’s What We

Know about the Extra Tail on Narwhal the ‘Unicorn Puppy’s’ Head,” Time, November 15, 2019, https://​time​.com/​5729987/​narwhal​-unicorn​-puppy/.

2. Zach Braff, Twitter, November 13, 2019, https://​twitter​.com/​zachbraff/​ status/​1194658526406172672.

3. McCluskey, “Narwhal.”

4. Rochelle Steffen, “This is the ONLY Instagram account that is real for Narwhal. @macthepitbull please don’t be fooled by others. Thank you

for your support!” Instagram, November 19, 2019, https://​instagram​.com/​ p/​B5C1SVwApM0/​?utm​_medium​=​copy​_link.

5. Ray Parisi, “Someone Impersonated Me on Instagram (and Had 3x More Followers Than Me)—­Here’s How I Stopped Him,” CNBC,

188 Notes

September 24, 2019, https://​www​.cnbc​.com/​2019/​09/​24/​how​-i​-stopped​ -someone​-impersonating​-me​-on​-instagram​.html.

6. Rochelle Steffen, Instagram, November 26, 2019, https://​www​ .instagram​.com/​p/​B5VxhRGAF7b/​?utm​_medium​=​copy​_link.

7. Joshua Paul Dale, “Cute Studies: An Emerging Field,” East Asian

Journal of Popular Culture 2, no. 1 (2016): 5–­13, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1386/​ eapc​.2​.1​.5​_2.

8. Nancy Baym and danah boyd, “Socially Mediated Publicness: An

Introduction,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 56, no. 3 (2012): 320–­329.

9. Zizi Papacharissi, “Affective Publics and Structures of Storytelling: Sentiment, Events and Mediality,” Information, Communication, &

Society 19, no. 3 (2015): 307–­324, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​1369118X​.2015​ .1109697.

10. Lobato and Mees, “Kittens.”

11. Ngai, “Cuteness of the Avant-­Garde,” 816.

12. Simon May, The Power of Cute (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2019).

13. Maddox, “Pet Instagram Accounts”; Potts, “Alchian-­Allen Theorem.” 14. Marx, “‘He’s So Fluffy.’”

15. Plourde, “Babymetal,” 297.

16. Daniel Harris, Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic: The Aesthetics of Consumerism (Boston, Mass.: Da Capo, 2001), 5.

17. Ngai, “Cuteness of the Avant-­Garde.” 18. May, Power of Cute, 2–­3. 19. Abidin, “Agentic Cute.” 20. May, Power of Cute, 92. 21. May.

22. Nancy Baym, Personal Connections in the Digital Age (Cambridge: Polity, 2010); van Dijck, Culture of Connectivity.

23. Lynne Segal, Radical Happiness: Moment of Collective Joy (Brooklyn: Verso, 2017), 24.

24. Segal, 16.

25. Berger, Why Look at Animals?

26. Jessica H. Lu and Catherine Knight Steele, “‘Joy Is Resistance’: Cross-­ platform Resilience and (Re)Invention of Black Oral Culture Online,”

Notes 189

Information, Communication, & Society 22, no. 6 (2019): 823–­837, https://​ doi​.org/​10​.1080/​1369118X​.2019​.1575449.

27. Lu and Steele.

28. Sara Ahmed, “Killing Joy: Feminism and the History of Happiness,” Signs 35, no. 3 (2010): 571–­594.

29. Segal, Radical Happiness, 25.

30. Stuart Hall, “Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies,” in Stuart

Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, ed. David Morley and Kuan-­

Hsing Chen, 262–­275 (London: Routledge, 1996), 269.

31. Jenkins, Ford, and Green, Spreadable Media.

32. Emily van der Nagel, “‘Networks That Work Too Well’: Intervening

in Algorithmic Connections,” Media International Australia 168, no. 1 (2018): 81–­92, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​1329878X18783002.

33. Victoria O’Meara, “Weapons of the Chic: Instagram Influencer

Engagement Pods as Practices of Resistance to Instagram Platform

Labor,” Social Media + Society 5, no. 4 (2019): 1–­11, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177​ %2F2056305119879671.

34. Sander de Ridder, “Are Digital Media Institutions Shaping Youth’s

Intimate Stories? Strategies and Tactics in the Social Networking Site

Netlog,” New Media & Society 17, no. 3 (2015): 356–­374, https://​doi​.org/​ 10​.1177/​1461444813504273.

35. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 37.

36. Nieborg and Poell, “Platformization of Cultural Production.” 37. Baker, Picturing the Beast, 121.

38. “Doomscrolling,” Urban Dictionary, accessed July 6, 2021, https://​www​ .urbandictionary​.com/​define​.php​?term​=​doomscrolling.

39. Annette N. Markham, “Pattern Recognition: Using Rocks, Wind,

Water, Anxiety, and Doom Scrolling in a Slow Apocalypse (to Learn

More about Methods for Changing the World),” Qualitative Inquiry 27, no. 7 (2020): 914–­927, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​1077800420960191.

40. Markham.

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42. “Timeless Cleanse.”

190 Notes

43. Perry Parks, “Choosing Joy as Methodology in Journalism Research,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 45, no. 2 (2021): 124–­125, https://​doi​ .org/​10​.1177/​0196859920924392.

44. Phillips, Can’t Have Nice Things.

45. Massanari, Participatory Culture.

46. Garett Sloane, “Reddit Deletes Donald Trump Community, and 2,000 Others, in Purge of Offensive Content,” AdAge, June 29, 2020, https://​ adage​.com/​article/​digital/​reddit​-deletes​-donald​-trump​-community​ -and​-2000​-others​-purge​-offensive​-content/​2264821.

47. Brian Heater and Taylor Hatmaker, “Reddit Bans r/donaldtrump Following Violence at the US Capitol,” Tech Crunch, January 8,

2021, https://​techcrunch​.com/​2021/​01/​08/​reddit​-donaldtrump​-ban​ -capitol/.

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50. “Feather Pillow,” r/unlikelyfriends, Reddit, accessed July 6, 2021, https://​ www​.reddit​.com/​r/​unlikelyfriends/​comments/​en9knq/​feather​_pillow/.

51. Massanari, Participatory Culture.

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53. “5 Little Doggies Eating a Pig,” r/Natureisbrutal, Reddit, accessed July 6, 2021, https://​www​.reddit​.com/​r/​Natureisbrutal/​comments/​ 6ds3i4/​5​_little​_doggies​_eating​_a​_pig/.

54. “5 Little Doggies.”

55. Whitney Phillips and Ryan M. Milner, The Ambivalent Internet: Mischief, Oddity, and Antagonism Online (Cambridge: Polity, 2017), 10.

56. “Stuck between a Rock and a Har-­, Rock,” r/Natureisbrutal, Red-

dit, accessed July 6, 2021, https://​www​.reddit​.com/​r/​Natureisbrutal/​ comments/​65p6ko/​stuck​_between​_a​_rock​_and​_a​_har​_rock/.

57. “Getting a Closer Look,” r/Natureisbrutal, Reddit, accessed July 6, 2021, https://​www​.reddit​.com/​r/​Natureisbrutal/​comments/​6c2q27/​getting​_a​ _closer​_look/.

58. “About Community,” r/aww.

Notes 191

59. Lauren M. Robinson, Rebekah Skiver Thompson, and James C. Ha, “Puppy Temperament Assessments Predict Breed and American

Kennel Club Group but Not Adult Temperament,” Journal of Applied

Animal Science 19, no. 2 (2016): 101–­114, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​10888705​ .2015​.1127765.

60. Adrienne Massanari, “#Gamergate and the Fappening: How Reddit’s Algorithm, Governance, and Culture Support Toxic Technocultures,” New Media & Society 19, no. 3 (2017): 329–­346, 330, 333.

61. “About Community,” r/Natureisbrutal; “About Community,”

r/natureisfuckinglit, Reddit, accessed July 6, 2021, https://​www​.reddit​ .com/​r/​NatureIsFuckingLit/.

62. Jessie Daniels, “Race and Racism in Internet Studies: A Review and

Critique,” New Media & Society 15, no. 5 (2012): 695–­719, https://​doi​.org/​ 10​.1177/​1461444812462849.

63. Theresa L. Petray and Rowan Collin, “Your Privilege Is Trending:

Confronting Whiteness on Social Media,” Social Media + Society 3, no. 2 (2017): 2, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​2056305117706783.

64. André Brock, “From the Blackhand Side: Twitter as Cultural Conver-

sation,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 56, no. 4 (2012): 534, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​08838151​.2012​.732147.

65. Anne Burns, “Self(ie)-­Discipline: Social Regulation as Enacted

through Discussions of Photographic Practice,” International Journal of Communication 9 (2015): 1716–­1733, https://​ijoc​.org/​index​.php/​ijoc/​ article/​view/​3138.

66. Bridget Blodgett and Anastasia Salter, “Ghostbusters Is for Boys:

Understanding Geek Masculinity’s Role in the Alt-­right,” Communi-

cation, Culture, & Critique 11, no. 1 (2018): 137, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1093/​ ccc/​tcx003.

67. Blodgett and Salter, 137.

68. Massanari, “#Gamergate.”

69. Mayorga-­Gallo, “Whose Best Friend?”

192 Notes

4. “You Can’t Buy Happiness, but You Can Rescue It” 1. Michael McIntyre, “Tuna the Instagram Dog, Whose Owner Comes from Mayfield Heights, Will Flash His Toothy Smile in Cleveland

Monday,” Cleveland.com, April 18, 2014, https://​www​.cleveland​.com/​ tipoff/​2014/​04/​tuna​_the​_instagram​_dog​_whose​_o​.html.

2. “About,” Tuna Melts My Heart, accessed July 7, 2021, https://​www​ .tunameltsmyheart​.com/​about.

3. “Shop,” Tuna Melts My Heart, accessed July 7, 2021, https://​www​ .tunameltsmyheart​.com/​shop.

4. Matt Stopera, Jack Shepherd, and Andrew Gauthier, “Why Tuna Is

the Most Inspiring Dog on the Internet,” BuzzFeed, November 13, 2013, https://​www​.buzzfeed​.com/​mjs538/​why​-tuna​-is​-the​-most​-inspiring​ -dog​-on​-the​-internet​#​.bw1vMvEAR7.

5. Gill, “Culture and Subjectivity.”

6. Gill; Scharff, “Psychic Life of Neoliberalism.”

7. Sarah Banet-­Weiser, Rosalind Gill, and Catherine Rottenberg.

“Postfeminism, Popular Feminism and Neoliberal Feminism? Sarah Banet-­Weiser, Rosalind Gill and Catherine Rottenberg in Conver-

sation,” Feminist Theory 21, no. 1 (2020): 3–­24, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​ 1464700119842555.

8. Ngai Keung Chan, “‘Becoming an Expert in Driving for Uber’: Uber

Drivers/Bloggers’ Performance of Expertise and Self-­presentation on

YouTube,” New Media & Society 21, no. 9 (2019): 2048–­2067, https://​doi​ .org/​10​.1177/​1461444819837736.

9. Archer, “Social Media Influencers.”

10. Sarah Banet-­Weiser, “‘Confidence You Can Carry!’ Girls in Crisis and

the Market for Girls’ Empowerment Organizations,” Continuum: Jour-

nal of Media & Cultural Studies 29, no. 2 (2015): 182–­193, https://​doi​.org/​ 10​.1080/​10304312​.2015​.1022938.

11. Rottenberg, “Neoliberal Feminism.”

12. Alex Rosenblat, Uberland: How Algorithms Are Rewriting the Rules of Work (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018).

13. Brooke Erin Duffy, “The Romance of Work: Gender and Aspira-

tional Labour in the Digital Culture Industries,” International Journal

Notes 193

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1367877915572186; Stefanie Duguay, “‘Running the Numbers’: Modes of Microcelebrity Labor in Queer Women’s Self-­representation on

Instagram and Vine,” Social Media + Society 5, no. 4 (2019): 1–­11, https://​ doi​.org/​10​.1177/​2056305119894002.

14. Rottenberg, “Neoliberal Feminism.”

15. Leaver, Highfield, and Abidin, Instagram.

16. Jorge, Marôpo, Coelho, and Novello, “Mummy Influencers.” 17. Gill and Kanai, “Mediating Neoliberal Capitalism.” 18. Gill and Kanai.

19. Stuart Hall, “The Whites of Their Eyes: Racist Ideologies and the

Media,” in Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Critical Reader, ed. Gail Dines and Jean M. Humez, 81–­84 (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE, 2011).

20. Gill and Kanai, “Mediating Neoliberal Capitalism.” 21. Page, “‘Baby Sloth.’”

22. Gill and Kanai, “Mediating Neoliberal Capitalism.”

23. Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad, “The Confidence Cult(ure),” Australian Feminist Studies 30, no. 86 (2016): 324–­344, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​ 08164649​.2016​.1148001.

24. van Dijck and Poell, “Social Media Logic.”

25. Jordan Schonig, “‘Liking’ as Creating: On Aesthetic Category Memes,” New Media & Society 22, no. 1 (2020): 26–­48, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​ 1461444819855727.

26. Leaver, Highfield, and Abidin, Instagram.

27. Patricia G. Lange, Thanks for Watching: An Anthropological Study of Video Sharing on YouTube (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2019).

28. Jodi Dean, “Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclo-

sure of Politics,” Cultural Politics 1, no. 1 (2005): 51–­74, https://​doi​.org/​10​ .2752/​174321905778054845.

29. Katrin Tiidenberg, “Bringing Sexy Back: Reclaiming the Body

Aesthetic Via Self-­shooting,” Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial

Research on Cyberspace 8, no. 1 (2014), https://​doi​.org/​10​.5817/​CP2014​ -1​-3.

30. Rottenberg, “Neoliberal Feminism.”

31. Berland, Virtual Menageries; Nance, Entertaining Elephants. 194 Notes

32. Berger, Why Look at Animals? 33. Berland, Virtual Menageries.

34. Nance, Entertaining Elephants, 4.

35. Syd Robinson, “15 Dog Posts from This Week That You Should Look at Instead of Doomscrolling,” BuzzFeed, January 9, 2021, https://​

www​.buzzfeed​.com/​sydrobinson1/​dog​-posts​-week​-january​-10​-2021​

?epik​=​dj0yJnU9​VWZUVkF​4LTdCe​DRQSklxN0​RUWm1SZjAtZ​ 19GUjE5aWYmcD0wJm49a​UptRVNicVZNSGJBNzQte​ TZnaC05dyZ0​PUFBQUFBR0RsNUtr.

36. Josie Ayre, “21 Wholesome Tweets about Animals That Prove

How Ridiculous They Are,” BuzzFeed, May 22, 2020, https://​www​

.buzzfeed​.com/​josieayre1/​super​-cute​-animal​-tweets​-that​-will​-melt​ -your​-heart.

37. Lily Feinn, “Man Who Vowed He’d Never Give up on His Lost Dog

Reunites with Him 4 Years Later,” The Dodo, May 14, 2021, https://​www​ .thedodo​.com/​daily​-dodo/​man​-who​-vowed​-to​-never​-give​-up​-on​-lost​ -dog​-reunites​-with​-him​-4​-years​-later.

38. Stephen Messenger, “Watch This Adorable Baby Bobcat Step Out

to Bravely Explore the World,” The Dodo, May 14, 2021, https://​www​

.thedodo​.com/​daily​-dodo/​watch​-this​-adorable​-baby​-bobcat​-step​-out​ -to​-bravely​-explore​-the​-world.

39. Nieborg and Poell, “Platformization of Cultural Production.” 40. Nieborg and Poell, 4276.

41. C. W. Anderson and Matthias Revers, “From Counter-­power to

Counter-­Pepe: The Vagaries of Participatory Epistemology in a Digital Age,” Media and Communication 6, no. 4 (2018): 7, https://​doi​.org/​10​ .17645/​mac​.v6i4​.1492.

42. Parkinson, Animals, 66.

43. Miltner, “‘No Place for Lulz.’”

44. Phillips, Can’t Have Nice Things, 6.

45. Kevin Munger, “All the News That’s Fit to Click: The Economics of Clickbait Media,” Political Communication 37, no. 3 (2020): 376–­397, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​10584609​.2019​.1687626.

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47. CatCon Worldwide, accessed July 7, 2021, https://​www​.catconworldwide​ .com/.

Notes 195

48. Paige Skinner, “YouTube Convention VidCon Is Turning 10, but Not without Some Growing Pains,” LA Magazine, July 10, 2019, https://​ www​.lamag​.com/​culturefiles/​vidcon​-10​-youtube/.

49. “Talent,” CatCon Worldwide, accessed July 7, 2021, https://​www​ .catconworldwide​.com/​2021​-talent/; “About,” PetCon.

50. “About,” PetCon.

51. Cunningham and Craig, “Creator Governance.”

52. Anne Gilbert, “Live from Hall H: Fan/Producer Symbiosis at San

Diego Comic-­Con,” in Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Medi-

ated World, 2nd ed., ed. Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, 354–­68 (New York: New York University Press, 2017).

53. Bishop, “Safety Dance.”

54. Ben Robinson, “Towards an Ontology and Ethics of Virtual Influencers,” Australasian Journal of Information Systems 24 (2020), https://​doi​ .org/​10​.3127/​ajis​.v24i0​.2807.

55. Banet-­Weiser, “Confidence.”

56. Sarah Banet-­Weiser, Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2018).

57. Banet-­Weiser.

58. Banet-­Weiser, 6.

59. Greenebaum, “It’s a Dog’s Life”; Heidi Nast, “Loving . . . Whatever: Alienation, Neoliberalism and Pet-­L ove in the Twenty-­F irst Cen-

tury,” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 5, no. 2 (2006): 300–­337, https://​acme​-journal​.org/​index​.php/​acme/​article/​ view/​7 61.

60. Greenebaum, “It’s a Dog’s Life.”

61. David D. Blouin, “Are Dogs Children, Companions, or Just Animals? Understanding Variations in People’s Orientations toward Ani-

mals,” Anthrozoös 26, no. 2 (2013): 279–­294, https://​doi​.org/​10​.2752/​ 175303713X13636846944402.

62. Maddox, “Visuality beyond Virality.”

63. Ben Steverman, “Young Americans Are Killing Marriage,” Bloomberg, April 4, 2017, https://​www​.bloomberg​.com/​news/​articles/​2017​-04​-04/​ young​-americans​-are​-killing​-marriage.

64. Maddox, “Visuality beyond Virality.” 65. Steverman, “Young Americans.” 196 Notes

66. Brijesh Sivathanu, “Adoption of Online Subscription Beauty Boxes: A

Behavioural Reasoning Theory (BRT) Perspective,” Journal of Electronic Commerce in Organizations 16, no. 4 (2018), https://​doi​.org/​10​.4018/​ JECO​.2018100102.

67. Benjamin Burroughs, “YouTube Kids: The App Economy and Mobile

Parenting,” Social Media + Society 3, no. 2 (2017): 1–­8, https://​doi​.org/​10​ .1177/​2056305117707189; Benjamin Nicoll and Bjorn Nansen, “Mimetic

Production in YouTube Toy Unboxing Videos,” Social Media + Society 4, no. 3 (2018): 1–­12, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​2056305117707189.

68. Nast, “Loving.”

69. Banet-­Weiser, Empowered, 11.

70. Blouin, “Orientations toward Animals.”

71. Will McKeithen, “Queer Ecologies of Home: Heteronormativity, Spe-

ciesism, and the Strange Intimacy of Crazy Cat Ladies,” Gender, Place, &

Culture 24, no. 1 (2017): 123, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​0966369X​.2016​.1276888.

72. McKeithen.

73. McKeithen, 123.

74. White, Unified Theory.

75. Berland, Virtual Menageries, 219.

76. McKeithen, “Queer Ecologies,” 124. 77. White, Unified Theory. 78. White, 24.

79. Marwick, Status Update. 80. White, Unified Theory.

81. Sally Jones, “Adopt, Don’t Shop: A Phrase Worth Thousands of Lives,” Canine Journal, June 30, 2021, https://​www​.caninejournal​.com/​adopt​ -dont​-shop/.

82. @HappyDogMomCo, Instagram, accessed July 7, 2021, https://​instagram​ .com/​happydogmomco​?igshid​=​NjY2NjE5MzQ=.

83. @HappyDogMomCo, “My dog is my soulmate,” Instagram, March 14, 2021, https://​instagram​.com/​p/​CMZ8voBF06g/​?utm​_medium​=​

copy​_link; @HappyDogMomCo, “I work hard so my dog can have nice things,” Instagram, June 14, 2021, https://​instagram​.com/​p/​

CQGvXeKJLiJ/​?igshid​=​NjY2NjE5MzQ=; @HappyDogMomCo, “Dogs are my favorite people,” Instagram, June 23, 2021, https://​ instagram​.com/​p/​CQeKhK9pkf​_/​?utm​_medium​=​copy​_link.

Notes 197

84. Blouin, “Orientations toward Animals.” 85. Gill and Orgad, “Confidence.” 86. Gill and Orgad, 326.

87. Segal, Radical Happiness.

5. Feels Good, Man 1. Haven Orecchio-­Egresitz, “The FBI Says That Most Serial Killers and

School Shooters Abused Animals before They Murdered People. In the Internet Age, That Animal Torture Has Found a Devoted Audience

Online.” Business Insider, July 30, 2020, https://​www​.insider​.com/​making​ -animal​-crush​-torture​-videos​-is​-serial​-killer​-warning​-sign​-2020​-7.

2. Haven Orecchio-­Egresitz, “The Availability of ‘Animal Crush’ Content Has Created a Cat-­and-­Mouse Subculture of Attention-­Seeking

Animal Abusers and the Web Sleuths Who Suss Them Out,” Insider, July 29, 2020, https://​www​.insider​.com/​making​-animal​-crush​-torture​ -videos​-serial​-killer​-warning​-sign​-2020​-7.

3. Andy Day, “Nipples Are Banned, but Animal Abuse and Brutal

Violence Are OK: Instagram Is Broken.” Fstoppers, December 16, 2018, https://​fstoppers​.com/​originals/​nipples​-are​-banned​-animal​-abuse​-and​ -brutal​-violence​-are​-ok​-instagram​-broken​-318896.

4. Stuart Oldham, “‘Don’t F**K with Cats’: Deanna Thompson and

Director Mark Lewis Reflect on Their Creepy Netflix Series,” Variety,

January 27, 2020, https://​variety​.com/​2020/​tv/​news/​dont​-fuck​-with​-cats​ -netflix​-luka​-magnotta​-deanna​-thompson​-1203479502/.

5. Oldham.

6. Malamud, Animals and Visual Culture, 156.

7. W. J. T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

8. Naledi Ushe, “2 Men Arrested after TikTok Video Shows Allegedly

Illegal Surgery Being Performed on Pregnant Dog,” People, February 17, 2021, https://​people​.com/​crime/​2​-men​-arrested​-after​-tiktok​-video​-of​ -allegedly​-unlicensed​-surgery​-on​-pregnant​-dog/.

9. Marc Tuters and Sal Hagen, “(((They))) Rule: Memetic Antagonism and Nebulous Othering on 4chan,” New Media & Society 22, no. 12 (2020): 2218–­2237, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​1461444819888746. 198 Notes

10. Maddox, “Visuality beyond Virality.”

11. Thomas A. Schwandt and Emily F. Gates, “Case Study Methodology,” in The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, ed. Norman

K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, 341–­355 (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE, 2017).

12. Charles C. Ragin and Howard Becker, What Is a Case? Exploring the

Foundations of Social Inquiry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

13. Jeong, “Internet of Garbage”; Ohlheiser “‘Dumpster Fire.’”

14. Safiya Noble, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (New York: New York University Press, 2018).

15. Siva Vaidhyanathan, Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

16. Shira Chess and Adrienne Shaw, “A Conspiracy of Fishes, or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying about #GamerGate and Embrace

Hegemonic Masculinity,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media

59, no. 1 (2015): 208–­220, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​08838151​.2014​.999917; Gillespie, Custodians of the Internet.

17. Fernández, “Platformed Racism.”

18. Lisa Nakamura, “‘I WILL DO EVERYthing That Am Asked’: Scam-

baiting, Digital Show-­Space, and the Racial Violence of Social Media,” Journal of Visual Culture 13, no. 3 (2014): 257–­274, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​ 1470412914546845.

19. Banet-­Weiser and Miltner, “#MasculinitySoFragile.”

20. Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis, “Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online,” Data & Society, May 15, 2017, https://​datasociety​ .net/​library/​media​-manipulation​-and​-disinfo​-online/.

21. Baker, Picturing the Beast.

22. Laurie Ouellette and Sarah Banet-­Weiser, “Special Issue: Media and

the Extreme Right: Editor’s Introduction,” Communication, Culture, & Critique 11, no. 1 (2018): 2, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1093/​ccc/​tcx021.

23. Derek Thompson, “Donald Trump and ‘Economic Anxiety,’” Atlantic,

August 18, 2016, https://​www​.theatlantic​.com/​business/​archive/​2016/​08/​ donald​-trump​-and​-economic​-anxiety/​496385/.

24. Ouellette and Banet-­Weiser, “Extreme Right,” 4. 25. Ouellette and Banet-­Weiser, 5.

Notes 199

26. Adrienne L. Massanari and Shira Chess, “Attack of the 50-­Foot Social Justice Warrior: The Discursive Construction of SJW Memes as the Monstrous Feminine,” Feminist Media Studies 18, no. 4 (2018): 527, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​14680777​.2018​.1447333.

27. Jessie Daniels, “The Algorithmic Rise of the ‘Alt-­right,’” Contexts 17, no. 1 (2018): 61, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​1536504218766547.

28. Daniels.

29. Miriam E. Sweeney and André Brock, “Critical Informatics: New

Methods and Practices,” Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 5, no. 1 (2014): 1–­8, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1002/​ meet​.2014​.14505101032.

30. Maddox and Malson, “Guidelines without Lines.” 31. Gillespie, Custodians of the Internet. 32. Roberts, Behind the Screen.

33. Phillips and Milner, Ambivalent Internet. 34. Baker, Picturing the Beast.

35. Phillips, Can’t Have Nice Things.

36. Fernández, “Platformed Racism.” 37. Baker, Picturing the Beast, 23.

38. Shifman, Memes in Digital Culture, 7–­8 (emphasis in original). 39. Milner, World Made Meme.

40. Miltner, “‘No Place for Lulz.’”

41. Erika M. Sparby, “Digital Social Media and Aggression: Memetic

Rhetoric in 4chan’s Collective Identity,” Computers and Composition 45 (2017): 85–­97, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1016/​j​.compcom​.2017​.06​.006.

42. Nissenbaum and Shifman, “Internet Memes,” 483–­484. 43. Stryker, Epic Win.

44. Marta Dynel, “‘I Has Seen Image Macros!’: Advice Animal Memes as

Visual-­Verbal Jokes,” International Journal of Communication 10 (2016): 664, https://​ijoc​.org/​index​.php/​ijoc/​article/​view/​4101.

45. “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” Know Your Meme, accessed July 9, 2021, https://​knowyourmeme​.com/​memes/​the​-most​-interesting​ -man​-in​-the​-world.

46. “Scumbag Steve,” Know Your Meme, accessed July 9, 2021, https://​ knowyourmeme​.com/​memes/​scumbag​-steve.

47. Baker, Picturing the Beast. 200 Notes

48. “Confession Bear,” Know Your Meme, accessed July 9, 2021, https://​ knowyourmeme​.com/​memes/​confession​-bear.

49. Jacqueline Vickery, “The Curious Case of Confession Bear: The Reap-

propriation of Online Macro-­Image Memes,” Information, Communica-

tion, & Society 17, no. 3 (2014): 301–­325, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​1369118X​ .2013​.871056.

50. Gabriella Coleman, Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous (New York: Verso, 2014).

51. Sparby, “Memetic Rhetoric,” 18.

52. Julia R. DeCook, “Memes and Symbolic Violence: #Proudboys and

the Use of Memes for Propaganda and the Construction of Collective

Identity,” Learning, Media, and Technology 43, no. 4 (2018): 486, https://​ doi​.org/​10​.1080/​17439884​.2018​.1544149.

53. Brock, “Blackhand Side.”

54. Phillips, Can’t Have Nice Things. 55. DeCook, “Symbolic Violence.” 56. DeCook, 485.

57. Phillips, “Wasn’t Just the Trolls.”

58. Jenni Hokka and Matti Nelimarkka, “Affective Economy of National-­ Populist Images: Investigating National and Transnational Online

Networks through Visual Big Data,” New Media & Society 22, no. 5 (2020): 772, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​1461444819868686.

59. Hokka and Nelimarkka, 772, 787.

60. Baym and boyd, “Socially Mediated Publicness.” 61. Baker, Picturing the Beast. 62. Baker.

63. Baker, 4.

64. Jenny L. Davis and Nathan Jurgenson, “Context Collapse: Theo-

rizing Collusions and Collisions,” Information, Communication, & Society 17, no. 4 (2014): 476–­485, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​1369118X​ .2014​.888458.

65. Robert J. Topinka, “Politically Incorrect Participatory Media: Racist

Nationalism on r/ImGoingToHellForThis,” New Media & Society 20, no. 5 (2018): 2050–­2069, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​1461444817712516.

66. Alice E. Marwick and danah boyd, “I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately: Twitter Users, Context Collapse, and the Imagined Audience,”

Notes 201

New Media & Society 13, no. 1 (2010): 114–­133, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​ 1461444810365313.

67. Davis and Jurgenson, “Context Collapse,” 480, 481.

68. Sam Thielman, “Matt Furie on Life after Pepe the Frog: ‘You Have to Lead by Example,’” Guardian, October 29, 2020, https://​www​

.theguardian​.com/​books/​2020/​oct/​29/​matt​-furie​-on​-life​-after​-pepe​-the​ -frog​-lead​-by​-example​-mindviscosity.

69. Thielman.

70. “Pepe the Frog,” Know Your Meme, accessed July 9, 2021, https://​ knowyourmeme​.com/​memes/​pepe​-the​-frog.

71. “Pepe the Frog.” 72. “Pepe the Frog.” 73. “Pepe the Frog.”

74. Elle Hunt, “Pepe the Frog Creator Kills Off Internet Meme Co-­

opted by White Supremacists,” Guardian, May 7, 2017, https://​www​

.theguardian​.com/​world/​2017/​may/​08/​pepe​-the​-frog​-creator​-kills​-off​ -internet​-meme​-co​-opted​-by​-white​-supremacists.

75. Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-­right (New York: Zero, 2017).

76. Jessica Roy, “How ‘Pepe the Frog’ Went from Harmless to Hate

Symbol,” Los Angeles Times, October 11, 2016, https://​www​.latimes​.com/​

politics/​la​-na​-pol​-pepe​-the​-frog​-hate​-symbol​-20161011​-snap​-htmlstory​ .html.

77. Roy.

78. Adi Robertson, “Pepe the Frog Died, and Part of the Internet Died

with Him,” Verge, February 5, 2020, https://​www​.theverge​.com/​2020/​2/​5/​ 21113587/​pepe​-frog​-feels​-good​-man​-matt​-furie​-trolling​-documentary​ -review​-sundance​-2020.

79. Roy, “Hate Symbol.”

80. “Pepe the Frog: General Hate Symbols,” Anti-­Defamation League,

accessed July 9, 2021, https://​www​.adl​.org/​education/​references/​hate​ -symbols/​pepe​-the​-frog.

81. Daniels, “Algorithmic Rise,” 64.

82. Daniel Victor, “Hong Kong Protesters Love Pepe the Frog. No, They’re Not Alt-­right,” New York Times, August 19, 2019, https://​www​.nytimes​ .com/​2019/​08/​19/​world/​asia/​hong​-kong​-protest​-pepe​-frog​.html. 202 Notes

83. Roy, “Hate Symbol.” 84. Roy.

85. Matt Furie, “Pepe the Frog’s Creator: I’m Reclaiming Him. He Was

Never about Hate,” Time, October 13, 2016, https://​time​.com/​4530128/​ pepe​-the​-frog​-creator​-hate​-symbol/.

86. Massanari, “#Gamergate.”

87. Marwick and Lewis, “Media Manipulation,” 1. 88. Marwick and Lewis.

89. DeCook, “Symbolic Violence,” 486.

90. Stuart Hall, “Notes on Deconstructing the ‘Popular,’” in People’s History and Socialist Theory, ed. Raphael Samuel (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 234.

91. Ouellette and Banet-­Weiser, “Extreme Right.” 92. Schonig, “‘Liking’ as Creating.”

93. Robertson, “Pepe the Frog Died.” 94. Daniels, “Algorithmic Rise,” 64. 95. Daniels.

96. Segal, Radical Happiness.

97. Alice E. Marwick, “Morally Motivated Networked Harassment as

Normative Reinforcement,” Social Media + Society 7, no. 2 (2021): 1–­13, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177/​20563051211021378.

98. Massanari and Chess, “Social Justice Warrior.”

99. Von Geert Lovink and Marc Tuters, “Memes and the Reactionary

Totemism of the Theft of Joy,” Non.CopyRiot, August 12, 2018, https://​

non​.copyriot​.com/​memes​-and​-the​-reactionary​-totemism​-of​-the​-theft​ -of​-joy/.

100. Lovink and Tuters.

101. Ouellette and Banet-­Weiser, “Extreme Right.” 102. Marwick, “Networked Harassment.”

103. Marc Tuters, “LARPing & Liberal Tears: Irony, Belief, and Idiocy in the Deep Vernacular Web,” in Post-­Digital Cultures of the Far Right:

Online Actions and Offline Consequences in Europe and the US, ed. Maik Fielitz and Nick Thurston (New York: Transcript, 2018), 45.

104. Blodgett and Salter, “Ghostbusters Is for Boys,” 137.

105. Tuters and Hagen, “Memetic Antagonism,” 2228, 2230. 106. Massanari and Chess, “Social Justice Warrior.”

Notes 203

107. Lovink and Tuters, “Reactionary Totemism.”

108. Rebecca Lewis, “All of YouTube, Not Just the Algorithm, Is a Far-­

right Propaganda Machine,” FFWD (blog), Medium, January 8, 2020,

https://​ffwd​.medium​.com/​all​-of​-youtube​-not​-just​-the​-algorithm​-is​-a​ -far​-right​-propaganda​-machine​-29b07b12430; Whitney Phillips, “The

Oxygen of Amplification: Better Practices for Reporting on Extremists, Antagonists, and Manipulators.” Data & Society, May 22, 2018, https://​ datasociety​.net/​library/​oxygen​-of​-amplification/.

109. Whitney Phillips and Ryan Milner, “A Meme Can Become a Hate Symbol by Social Consensus,” New York Times, October 3, 2016,

https://​www​.nytimes​.com/​roomfordebate/​2016/​10/​03/​can​-a​-meme​

-be​-a​-hate​-symbol​-6/​a​-meme​-can​-become​-a​-hate​-symbol​-by​-social​ -consensus.

110. Laura Glitsos and James Hall, “The Pepe the Frog Meme: An Explanation of Social, Political, and Cultural Implications through the

Tradition of the Darwinian Absurd,” Journal for Cultural Research 23, no. 4 (2019): 381–­395, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​14797585​.2019​.1713443.

111. Massanari and Chess, “Social Justice Warrior,” 14.

112. Hokka and Nelimarkka, “Affective Economy,” 787. 113. Baker, Picturing the Beast, xxi.

114. Phillips, Can’t Have Nice Things.

115. Jessie Daniels, “Cloaked Websites, Propaganda, Cyber-­Racism, and

Epistemology in the Digital Era,” New Media & Society 11, no. 5 (2009): 660, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1177​%2F1461444809105345.

116. Topinka, “Politically Incorrect,” 2066.

117. Marwick and Lewis, “Media Manipulation.” 118. Marwick and Lewis.

119. Topinka, “Politically Incorrect,” 2065.

6. Nature Is Healing, We Are the Virus 1. Anagha Srikanth, “As Italy Quarantines over Coronavirus, Mislead-

ing Reports of Swans and Dolphins in Venice Canals Go Viral,” Hill,

March 18, 2020, https://​thehill​.com/​changing​-america/​sustainability/​

environment/​488286​-italys​-coronavirus​-lockdown​-shows​-what​-nature.

204 Notes

2. Arijeta Lajka, “Photos Do Not Show Elephants Raiding Farm amid

Coronavirus Quarantine,” Associated Press, March 19, 2020, https://​ apnews​.com/​article/​8636773067.

3. “Coronavirus: Goats Take Over Empty Streets of Seaside Town,” BBC News, March 31, 2020, https://​www​.bbc​.com/​news/​uk​-wales​-52103967.

4. Natasha Daly, “Fake Animal News Abounds on Social Media as Corona­ virus Upends Life,” National Geographic, March 20, 2020, https://​www​ .nationalgeographic​.com/​animals/​article/​coronavirus​-pandemic​-fake​ -animal​-viral​-social​-media​-posts.

5. “We Are the Virus,” Know Your Meme, accessed July 9, 2021, https://​ knowyourmeme​.com/​memes/​we​-are​-the​-virus.

6. Emma Newburger, “Covid Pandemic Drove a Record Drop in

Global Carbon Emissions in 2020,” CNBC, December 10, 2020,

https://​www​.cnbc​.com/​2020/​12/​11/​covid​-record​-drop​-global​-carbon​ -emissions​-2020​.html.

7. “We Are the Virus,” Know Your Meme.

8. Yuval Katz and Limor Shifman, “Making Sense? The Structure and Meanings of Digital Memetic Nonsense,” Information, Communication, & Society 20, no. 6 (2017): 825–­842, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​ 1369118X​.2017​.1291702.

9. Katz and Shifman, 839.

10. Phillips, “Wasn’t Just the Trolls.”

11. Ethan Zuckerman, “Cute Cats to the Rescue? Participatory Media and Political Expression,” in Youth, New Media, and Political Participation,

ed. Danielle Allen and Jennifer Light, 131–­150 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2013).

12. Phillips, “Wasn’t Just the Trolls,” 2.

Notes 205

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures. Abidin, Crystal, 3, 11, 47, 71, 72, 73, 85 ableism, 39, 45, 138 activism, 165 adoption, 4, 64, 65–­66, 80–­81, 130 advertising, 8, 38, 63, 78, 124 Advice Animals, 142–­143 aesthetics, 5, 12, 14–­15; animal, 87; of content creators, 72; cute, 42–­44; cuteness and, 41; internet, 42; of technology, 43 affect: amplification of, 145; commodification of, 110, 127; cute, 42–­44; cuteness and, 41; images and, 144–­145; joy and, 157; market and, 127; neoliberalism and, 107, 109–­110; Pepe the Frog and, 149; toxicity and, 137 affection, 19, 127 affective response, 41 affective stock, 21 ageism, 39 agency, 85, 88 aggregators, 113–­115, 151 aggression, 84

agriculture, 111 Ahmed, Sara, 87, 88, 102, 128 algorithms, 46, 51, 71; bias and, 138; circumventing of, 89; manipulation of, 89; metrics and, 110 Althusser, Louis, 48 alt-­right, 139, 140, 148, 159, 160; appropriation by, 149; media manipulation and, 150; memes and, 144; Pepe the Frog and, 146–­147, 157; schadenfreude and, 155–­156 ambivalence, 98–­99 Andrejevic, Mark, 37 animal celebrity, 112 animal images: as cloaks, 159, 160; closeness to nature and, 99; delight and, 158; harmful use of, 144; mediation and, 29–­30; as replacing experience of being with animals, 29; in Silicon Valley, 32–­33; symbols, 33, 145; toxicity and, 137, 138 animal lovers, 121

235

animals: endangered, 75; materiality of, 74; as mediators, 28–­29; symbolism, 145; valuation of, 77; versus pets, 21; wild, 54, 75, 112. See also pets; pets and animals animal studies, 21, 32, 41, 58–­59 animal welfare, 60, 76, 77, 100, 159 antagonism, 144 anthropomorphism, 143; memes and, 145; symbolism and, 145 anthropomorphization, 52, 89, 143, 145, 149 Anti-­Defamation League (ADL), 148, 149, 152 anti-­Semitism, 148, 159 aquariums, 4, 20, 60, 76 architecture, 138 Aristotle, 86 aspirational labor, 67–­68, 78, 146 attention, 8, 16, 37–­41, 44, 53, 124, 163; antagonism and, 144; branding and, 46; cuteness and, 52; ideology of, 62, 63; influencers and, 66; looking relations and, 62, 69, 73, 78–­79; materiality and, 73; materiality of, 91; neoliberalism and, 136; quantification of, 38, 40; strategic, 149–­150; toxicity and, 137 attention economy, 8, 16, 40–­41, 44, 53, 124; influencers and, 66; metaphor of, 48, 55, 84; neoliberalism and, 46 attention flooding, 149, 150 attention practices, 85 audio, 51–­52 authenticity, 70–­71 authoritarianism, 148, 154 autocorrect, 42 “aww” factor, 82–­83 Baker, Steve, 41, 92 Banet-­Weiser, Sarah, 121, 122, 127, 139, 154 Belk, Russell, 60 Berger, John, 31, 99; Why Look at Animals?, 29, 54–­55, 86–­87 Berland, Jody, 28–­30, 33 Berners-­Lee, Tim, 28, 34

236 Index

binary, 55, 164, 165; collapse of, 127–­128; false, 137 Bishop, Sophie, 72 Black Dog Syndrome, 65–­66 Blacks: joy and, 87; neoliberalism and, 45; racism and, 65 Blodgett, Bridgett, 102, 155 body positivity, 131 boundaries, 42, 78, 129, 143, 145, 154; racial, 65, 103 boundary-­making, 142 boundary policing, 144 Boy’s Club (Furie), 147, 149, 151 brand culture, 121 branding, 46, 55, 60 Brexit, 1, 139, 148 Burgess, Jean, 36 Burke, Andrew, 20 BuzzFeed, 4, 44, 60, 70, 113; Reddit used by, 101, 151; reporters at Petcon, 72, 114, 117 calculated actions, 103 camera hunting, 57, 74 cameras, 20, 31, 56–­57 cannibalization, 74, 76 capitalism, 9, 17, 18; free market, 44; late, 47, 127; neoliberal, 109, 128; pets as “beyond,” 130 care deficit, 47 cat cafés, 74, 76 CatCon, 21, 116; merchandise, 117, 118 cat ladies, 116, 128, 138 Cat Lady Box, 124, 126, 127, 128–­129, 130 cat moms and dads, 108, 121, 123, 128, 129 cat videos, 136; as cultural signifier, 164–­165; first made, 32; YouTube, early, 35 celebrity, 39–­40, 55; identity and, 138 celebrity cats, 7, 40, 55; branding of, 46 celebrity practices, 39 Chess, Shira, 154, 157 children, 72–­73, 123 China, 51 circuses, 47, 111–­112

classism, 138 clickbait, 115–­116 Clinton, Hillary, 159 cloaks, 145–­146, 158–­159, 160 cloud, the, 49 collisions, 145–­146, 156 collusions, 145–­146 colonialism, 30, 33, 65 colorism, 65–­66 commercialism, 39 commodification, 40, 41, 49; neoliberal, 112; neoliberalism and, 109–­110, 133 communication, 38, 146; commerce and, 110; cuteness and, 43; replication and, 52; societal change and, 48 community standards, 78, 134, 141 compositional modalities, 15 computing, 32–­33 confidence, 110, 131–­132 connectivity, 30, 85 conservation, 74–­75, 77 consumer culture, 106, 127 consumption, 73, 106; of attention, 40; of individuals, 39, 46, 68; of pets, 107; visual, 54 content consumers, 38, 62 content creator culture, 7 content creators, 8, 39, 46, 62; aggregation and, 114; clickbait and, 115–­116; convention merchandise and, 117; tactics and, 109 content moderation, 78, 81, 103, 141 context, 62, 95; speculation on, 99 context collisions, 146 context collusions, 146 conventions, 21, 66, 69–­71, 72, 114, 116–­120, 122 Convergence Culture ( Jenkins), 24 corporate sponsorship, 8 COVID-­19 pandemic, 76, 92–­93, 117, 119, 161–­163 Craig, David, 39 “crazy cat lady” stereotype, 128 creativity, 46–­47 cruel relief, 9

cruelty, 97, 134, 135–­136 crush videos, 134–­135, 136, 137, 144 cultural collisions, 156, 158 cultural collusions, 147, 156, 157, 160 cultural dynamics, 40, 163 cultural materiality, 59, 60, 67 cultural practices, 58, 110; economic metaphors and, 49 cultural production, 58, 90, 112 cultural sociality, 49 cultural studies, 4, 5, 6; neoliberalism and, 121; ruptures in, 88 cultural tenets, 5, 6, 15, 163 cultural theory, 41 culture, 58, 78; economics and, 18; participatory, 108; as platformized, 57; societal change and, 48; unpacking of, 12–­13 Cunningham, Stuart, 39 curation, 63, 64, 78; influencers and, 66; neoliberalism and, 109 cute aesthetic, 82–­84; clickbait and, 115–­116; joy and, 91 cute affect, 43, 44, 82–­84; joy and, 86 cute economy, 16–­17, 44; metaphor of, 48, 84 cute labor, 47 cuteness, 8, 41–­44, 152, 163; antagonism and, 14; attention and, 52, 82; cruel relief and, 9; digitally mediated, 84; fame and, 82; imparting of, 90–­93; joy and, 86–­88, 92, 136; masking by, 11; neoliberalism and, 46–­47, 110, 136; power imbalance and, 84–­854; as sociality, 85–­86; as social practice, 84; as struggle, 94; as tactic, 109; toxicity and, 137, 164 cute response, 42, 43, 83; power imbalance and, 84; sociality and, 85 cute studies, 82, 84 Dale, Joshua Paul, 82 Daniels, Jessie, 148, 158 datafication, 45, 55, 64, 68, 107, 110; animal welfare and, 76; clickbait and, 116; platforms and, 38, 46

Index 237

Davis, Jenny, 146 Dawkins, Richard, 18 Dean, Jodi, 111 de Certeau, Michel, 89, 92, 93, 103, 156, 164 decontextualization, 75, 95, 98–­99, 104, 114; Reddit and, 101 DeCook, Julia, 144 demotic turn, 39 Derrida, Jacques, 48 dialectics, 58 digital celebrity, 116 digital culture, 4, 6, 10, 37, 78–­79; hegemony and, 155; practices, 5; spectacle and, 55; toxicity and, 140 digital culture industries, 57–­58 digital culture practices, 53 digital labor, 159 digital mediation, 58, 84 Disney, 44 distancing, 130, 143; anthropomorphism and, 145 divorce selfies, 123 documentation, 56, 74 Dodo, The, 113 Dog Agency, 70 Dog Mom Box, 124, 125, 127, 130 dog moms and dads, 108, 121, 123, 129, 132; identity and, 138 doomscrolling, 92–­93 Douglas, Mary, 11 Douglas, Nick, 42 doxing, 150 Duffy, Brooke Erin, 67 dumpster-­fire metaphor, 2–­3, 138, 141 Dynel, Marta, 143 economics, 10, 18; logics, 45, 46; neoliberal, 17, 44; scarcity and, 44 economy, 40; metaphors, 16–­17, 18, 48–­50, 55, 84; political, 38; social media, 111. See also attention economy; cute economy Edison, Thomas, 32 Edwards, Loni, 119–­120 8kun, 148 elephants, 47, 111–­112, 135, 161–­162 Elmer, Greg, 38

238 Index

emotional labor, 47 epicenters, 113 escapism, 87 Evans, Jessica, 13 everyday, the, 41 extremism, 140, 154, 155; mainstream and, 152; meme use by, 144 “eyeballs,” attracting, 16, 37, 40, 46, 55, 67 Facebook, 38, 44 fake animal news, 162, 163 fake animal rescue videos, 78, 144 fame, 39, 52, 63, 67; logic of, 40 family, 54–­55 fans, 39, 46, 68 Fantagraphics Books, 149–­150, 152 fascism, 154, 155 femininity, 42. See also women feminism, 41, 86, 88, 102–­103, 110, 129; commodity, 121; corporate, 131–­132; market and, 127; neoliberalism and, 121, 127; popular, 121, 122, 127; tropes of, 87. See also women “feminist killjoy” stereotype, 87, 102–­103, 128, 154 fetishization, 54 film, early, 32 followers, 39, 46 Ford, Sam, 49 Foster, Hal, 14 4chan, 1, 136, 148, 150–­151; collusion and, 156–­157; Pepe the Frog and, 146, 147, 153, 154; “us versus them” mentality, 155 Frankfurt School, 41 free market, 17, 44, 106, 139 free speech, 141, 158 Frischmann, Brett, 49 frivolity, 11; feminine, 129; memes and, 156–­157; toxicity and, 142 Funniest Home Videos, 54 fur baby identity, 59–­60, 123, 124, 127 Furie, Matt, 147, 148–­150, 151–­512 GamerGate, 139–­140, 150 gatekeeping, 144, 156

Geertz, Clifford, 25, 26 gender ideals, 108 genocide, 157 gig economy, 108 Gilbert, Anne, 119 Gill, Rosalind, 17, 18, 45–­46, 49, 106, 108, 110, 131 Gillespie, Tarleton, 48–­49 Glitsos, Laura, 157 GNU, 33, 34 Goffman, Erving, 59–­60, 71 Gramsci, Antonio, 12–­13, 48 Green, Joshua, 49 Green, K. C., 1–­2 Guarriello, Nicholas-­Brie, 46 habitability, 89–­90, 91, 93, 94, 97, 103, 109, 130 Hagan, Sal, 136 Hall, James, 157 Hall, Stuart, 13, 44, 48, 49, 121, 123, 151 happiness, 81, 83, 86, 130–­131; confidence and, 132 Harambe the Gorilla, 137 harassment, 96, 136–­137; campaigns, 138, 150, 153; memes and, 144 Harris, Daniel, 84 Hartley, John, 35, 48 hashtags, 69, 87, 121, 130 hate, 81, 152–­154; collective, 154 hate speech, 138, 157 hate symbols, 152 hegemonic shifts, 123, 127 hegemony, 8, 36, 46, 56, 58, 66, 78, 112; upholding of, 154–­155 heteronormativity, 39, 129 heuristics, 12, 56 Highfield, Tim, 3, 73 historical memory, 44, 45 Hokka, Jenni, 144, 157 home video shows, 54 homophobia, 45, 96, 139 Horse in Motion (Muybridge), 31, 31, 57 horses, 31–­32, 57 human capital, 108, 111, 124

human labor, 47, 48 humor, 62, 112, 141–­142, 158 hunting, 57, 74 hypercapitalism, 40 hyperconsumerism, 127 I Can Has Cheezburger?, 4, 112 iconography, 5, 12, 14–­15; technology and, 33–­34 identification, 56, 122 identity, 59, 155; animal symbolism and, 145; building of, 158; cats and, 129; collective, 142; group, 145; market and, 127; market logics and, 122; masculine, 154; neoliberalism and, 110–­111; nostalgia and, 139; perceived lack of, 103; toxicity and, 138, 140; White, 140, 154; White male, 143–­144 identity claims, 122, 127, 145 identity expression, 101 identity performance, 60 identity politics, 139–­140 identity shifts, 127 identity wars, 136 ideological work, 49–­50 ideology, 34, 58, 154, 156; of attention, 53, 62, 63; of content, 38; political, 144; neoliberal, 130; systemic, 45 image modalities, 15 imitation publics, 52, 71 immigrants, seen as threat, 139 impression management, 59–­60 individualism, 17, 46, 132 industrialization, 29 Industrial Revolution, 31, 57, 87, 99, 111 inequality, 39, 45, 109; economic, 139; structural, 108; systemic, 108 influencer industry, 11, 69 influencer perfection, 79 influencers, 8, 38, 47, 66–­69; authenticity and, 70; celebrity influence on, 40; curation and, 89; lifespans of, 72, 73 information economy, 40 infrastructure, 89, 99, 116, 139 insects, 19, 43, 135

Index 239

Instagram, 3, 40, 56, 68–­69, 73–­74, 107; advertising and, 90; content aggregation and, 114; curation and, 89; pet accounts, 4, 5, 60–­61, 62–­63, 67, 72, 91–­92, 95 “Instagrammable,” 55–­57, 61, 66, 74, 76 institutions, 107–­108, 123 interiority, 53 internet celebrity, 66, 67, 71–­72, 107, 112; authenticity and, 70 internet studies, 4, 6, 18, 70, 78–­79 “Internet Ugly,” 42, 43 Jenkins, Henry, 49; Convergence Culture, 24 Jhally, Sut, 37 journalism, 112–­116, 151 joy, 81, 83, 86–­88, 115, 130, 163; affective, 155, 157; clickbait and, 116; collective, 87, 103; cuteness and, 92, 136; decontextualization and, 99–­100, 101; identity as threat to, 102; imparting of, 90–­93; neoliberalism and, 110, 132, 136; Pepe the Frog and, 148–­149, 152; as political, 87; as practice, 86, 87; reclamation of, 149; resistance and, 87–­88; as struggle, 94; as tactic, 109, 154, 155, 156; toxicity and, 164 joyfulness, 8, 15, 137 Jurgenson, Nathan, 146 Katz, Yuval, 162 kitsch, 41 last instance, 48 Leaver, Tama, 3, 73 lemur yoga, 74–­75 libidinal bond, 155 likability, 64, 68; animal welfare and, 76 Livant, Bill, 37 Lobato, Roman, 41 LOLCats, 4, 7, 9, 112, 132, 136–­137, 142, 150–­151, 163–­164 LOLWork, 9, 47, 109 Long, Julia, 19, 43, 57

240 Index

looking relations, 18, 29, 53, 58, 64, 78; attention and, 69; materiality and, 61–­62, 74, 124; material practices and, 55–­56, 91; neoliberalism and, 107; race and, 65; sociocultural, 56 Lorenz, Konrad, 42, 83 Lovink, Von Geert, 154, 155 Lu, Jessica, 87, 88 Lukacs, Gabriella, 47 Mac’s Mission, 80–­81 Malamud, Randy, 54, 134–­135, 136 Malson, Jennifer, 49 Manovich, Lev, 32 Marey, Étienne-­Jules, 32 marginalization, 4, 88 market dynamics, 110, 111, 132 marketing, 16, 34, 60, 75–­76, 124 market logics, 10, 17, 18, 49, 111, 116 Markham, Annette, 92 Marwick, Alice, 129, 153 Marx, Kate, 43 mascots, 34 masculinity, 57; toxic, 102; White, 139, 154. See also men Massanari, Adrienne, 6, 101–­102, 154, 157 mass society, 56 materiality, 18, 53, 58–­59, 74, 78, 124; of attention, 91; cultural, 151; dangerous, 78; looking relation and, 61–­62 material practices, 5, 37, 58–­59, 132; attention as, 62; looking relations and, 55–­56, 91 May, Simon, 84–­85 Mayorga-­Gallo, Sarah, 65, 103 M/C Journal, 41 McKeithen, Will, 128 meaning-­making practices, 95, 104 mediated encounters, 36–­37, 54; historical examples of, 57 mediation, 48, 64–­65; through technology, 41 media worlds, 119 Meese, James, 41 meme culture, 7

memes, 7, 142–­147; anthropomorphism and, 145; audio, 52; frivolity and, 156–­157; scholarship of, 18; toxicity and, 137; White, male centrality of, 144 memetic logics, 52 memetic nonsense, 162–­163 memetic practices, 137, 143, 145, 148, 149 men: centrality, presumed, 143; heterosexual, 139; identity crisis and, 154; White, 139, 140, 143. See also masculinity menageries, 33, 111, 112 merchandise, 105–­106, 107, 117, 118, 122, 131 meritocracy, 108 metaphors: biological, 88–­89; economics and, 16–­17, 18, 48–­50, 55, 84; implications of, 49 metrics, 38, 107, 110 microcelebrities, 39, 68, 78, 112; authenticity and, 70; as neoliberal, 46; performance and, 73 micro-­microcelebrities, 72–­73 Middle Ages, 128 Miltner, Kate, 142 Minaj, Nicki, 147 Mirzoeff, Nicholas, 13, 14 misogyny, 96, 102, 138, 139 Mitchell, W. J. T., 135 modalities, 15 mommy blogging, 109 monetization, 8; of creativity, 47 monitoring, 38 monopolies, 138 Mouffe, Chantal, 155 Muybridge, Eadweard, 31–­32, 57

Nekaris, Anna, 77 Nelimarkka, Matti, 144, 157 neoliberal culture, 17–­18 neoliberalism, 8, 9–­10, 17–­18, 44–­48, 106, 120, 124, 163; affect and, 109–­110; antagonism and, 144; commodification and, 109–­110; consumer culture and, 127; culture and, 45; economic metaphors and, 49; extended self and, 111; feminism and, 121, 127; free market, 139; identity and, 121–­122; institutions and, 107–­108; pet influencers and, 66; resistance to, 166 neoliberal sensibilities, 49 neoliberal subjectivities, 17–­18, 46, 47–­48, 106–­107 net idols, 47 New York Times, 1 Ngai, Simone, 42, 83, 84 niches, 71 Nieborg, David, 57 “normies,” 147–­148, 153–­154 nostalgia, 10, 139 “not selfies,” 59

Nakamura, Lisa, 34 Nance, Susan, 47, 111 Nast, Heidi, 20 National Geographic, 162 nationalism, 140, 145, 158 nativism, 139 nature, 29, 34; COVID-­19 pandemic and, 161–­162; desire to be closer to, 31–­32, 99; domination over, 57; hierarchies of, 59; return to, 87

Page, Allison, 9–­10, 18, 47, 109 Parkinson, Clair, 37 Parkinson, Claire, 32, 54 patriarchy, 139 People magazine, 135 Pepe the Frog, 137, 146–­150, 153–­160, 164; #SavePepe attempt, 151–­152 performance, 59–­60, 67; authenticity and, 70; identity, 60; identity and, 143–­144; microcelebrity and, 68, 73

Obama, Michelle, 65 object materiality, 58–­59 Ohlheiser, Abby, 2 O’Meara, Victoria, 89 101 Dalmatians, 44 Orgad, Shani, 110, 131 other, the, 34, 155 Ouellette, Laurie, 139, 154 Overton window, 159

Index 241

Perry, Katy, 147 personas, 39, 46, 59; microcelebrity and, 68 pet accounts, 4, 5, 60–­61, 62–­63, 67, 72; context and, 95; joy and, 91–­92; “takeover,” 114 pet and animal images, 35; contact with animals and, 36–­37; doomscrolling and, 93; ideology and, 136; malleability of, 137, 141, 145, 150, 159, 160; neoliberalism and, 112; as proprietorial, 138; toxicity and, 136; weaponized, 152. See also animal images pet and animal practices, 58–­59 PetCon, 21, 66, 69–­7 1, 72, 114, 116–­120; merchandise, 117, 118 pet influencers, 4, 66–­69, 70–­73, 78, 112; conventions, 116, 117, 119–­120; identity and, 138; lifespans of, 72; neoliberalism and, 159 pet ownership, 55; aspirational labor and, 67; consumer culture and, 127; as material practice, 63–­64; as “playbour,” 109; realities of, 99–­100; reality of, 131; as type of materiality, 64–­65 pet parents, 59–­60, 108, 121, 122–­124, 129; identity as, 138 pets: abandonment of, 76; black, 65–­66; consumer culture and, 127; extended self and, 60, 68, 94, 130; humanistic orientations, 123, 127; as micro-­ microcelebrities, 73; money spent on, 20; ownership statistics, 20; as part of owners, 68; versus other animals, 21. See also animals; pets and animals Pets Add Life, 63–­64, 64 pets and animals: attention and, 40; attention economy and, 40; audio and, 52–­53; as capital, 111; celebrity and, 40; cuteness and, 43; in everyday life, 55; gig economy and, 108; labor and, 47–­48, 111–­112; mediated encounters and, 54; neoliberalism and, 47; popularity changes, 43–­44; spectacle and, 55. See also animals; pets pet trade, 75

242 Index

Phillips, Whitney, 10–­111, 159, 163–­164, 165 photographability, 65, 73 photography, 19, 32, 57, 74; professional, 40 Photoshop, 42, 43, 162 Pinterest, 42 platform dynamics, 51, 52, 91, 94, 99, 115 platform economy, 108 platformization, 57–­58, 90 platforms, 78; aggregators and, 113; datafication and, 38, 46; digital sociality and, 35–­37; logics of, 71; monitoring by, 38; racism and, 138; resistance to, 89; sociality and, 40; use of term, 49 “playbour,” 108 Poell, Thomas, 57 political incorrectness, 158 political rationality, 108, 111 popular culture, 18, 44, 112, 151 popularity, 39, 58, 64, 67; cultural shifts and, 123; feminism and, 121; market and, 127 populism, 145, 148, 157 positivity, 91, 148, 149 Potts, Jason, 16 privacy studies, 145 privatization, 139 privileging, 54, 57, 67, 104 promotion, 107, 110, 128 propaganda, 144, 157 psychic life, 108 quantification, 38, 40, 110 quantity, 95 quotidian, 4, 10, 24, 40, 146, 156, 165–­166; neoliberalism and, 107, 137; toxicity and, 141 race, 39, 72; cultural studies and, 88; identity and, 102; sociality and, 103 racism, 38, 45, 65–­66, 87, 96, 127, 136–­137, 145–­146, 151, 152; algorithmic, 138; baked into interet, 140; baked into internet, 138; cloaks and, 158, 159; humor and, 141; increased visibility of, 139; networked, 138; platformed, 138

Rage Comics, 42, 43 r/aww (Reddit), 4, 97–­98, 99–­100, 114 reaction, 2 Reddit, 1, 4, 6, 28, 96–­103, 105, 148; content aggregated from, 101, 113; Pepe the Frog and, 152, 153, 154 reductionism, 49 reprieves, 9, 47, 115, 133 rescues, 4, 60, 61, 80–­81, 109, 130 resistance, 87, 89, 133, 166 r/Natureisbrutal (Reddit), 98–­99, 101, 102–­103, 140 Roberts, Sarah T., 33 Rose, Gillian, 15 Rottenberg, Catherine, 108, 111 r/pepethefrog (Reddit), 152, 153 Salter, Anastasia, 102, 155 sanctuaries, 60, 61, 109 Sandberg, Sheryl, 108 schadenfreude, 155–­156 Scharff, Christina, 108 Schonig, Jordan, 110 Schulz, Thomas, 162 Segal, Lynne, 86, 87, 132, 152–­153 self, embodied, 59–­60 self, extended, 60, 61, 63, 66; microcelebrity and, 68, 73, 78; neoliberalism and, 111; pet and, 94; pets and, 130; viral content and, 89 self-­confidence, 110; neoliberalism and, 132 self-­discipline, 45, 106, 120, 132 self-­governance, 17, 45 self-­monitoring, 45, 106, 120, 132 self-­presentation, microcelebrity and, 68 self-­representation, 53, 59–­60, 66, 111, 130; authenticity and, 70 self-­surveillance, 17, 46, 110 sensibility, 108 sexism, 45, 102, 127; humor and, 141 sharenting, 72–­73 sharing, 60, 86, 146; children and, 72 shelters, 4, 65, 76, 109, 130 Shifman, Limor, 162

showing, 56 “side hustle” economy, 108 signification, 58 Silicon Valley, 32–­35 Smythe, Dallas, 37 social demographics, 123 sociality, 8, 40; cuteness and, 43–­44, 85–­86; digital, 35–­37; economic metaphors and, 49; as mediated, 35; modes of, 6, 14; types of, 5 social justice warriors (SJWs), 155–­156 social media entertainment, 7–­8 social media logics, 38, 64, 110, 114; animal welfare and, 76; neoliberalism and, 107 social media practices, 64, 66, 74, 78, 116; identity and, 127 social modalities, 15–­18, 37, 41, 53, 137, 163 social practices, 8, 36, 58; cuteness as, 84; as platformized, 57 social relations, 58 Something Awful, 146, 147, 148 spectacle, 33, 54, 55, 134–­135 sponsorship, 69 spreadable content, 49 spreadable media, 18 staging, 61, 91 Stallman, Richard, 34 Steele, Catherine Knight, 25, 87, 88 stereotypes, 65, 87, 115 Storey, John, 58 strategic intimacy, 39, 68 subcultural dynamics, 37, 83, 95–­96 subjectivities, 18 subreddits, 4 subscription boxes, 124–­127, 125, 126 supply and demand, 18, 55, 84; metaphor of, 53 surveillance, 38; workplace, 45 tactics, 89, 91, 93, 103, 156 Tagg, John, 56 technological modalities, 15 technology, 56, 74; aesthetics of, 43; as not responsible for users, 135–­136 television, 37–­38, 54; reality, 39

Index 243

theater, 59 theft of joy narrative, 154–­156 “This Is Fine” meme, 1–­3, 9, 94 Tiidenberg, Katrin, 55–­56, 59 TikTok, 4, 7, 46, 51–­52, 56–­57, 71, 135–­136 Time, 149 timeline cleanse, 92–­93 Topinka, Robert, 158, 159 toxicity, 88, 97, 136–­137, 138–­142, 164; baked in, 144; cuteness and, 165; frivolity and, 157; overt, 144; platformization as, 90; reclamation and, 150; reprieves from, 9, 103, 109, 115; resistance to, 94, 156 toxic technocultures, 101, 114 transphobia, 45, 96, 139 trolling, 11, 81, 96, 129, 139, 151, 158 Trump, Donald, 1, 139; Pepe the Frog and, 148, 152, 159 Trump, Donald, Jr., 148 truth, camera and, 56–­57 Tumblr, 147 Tuna (celebrity dog), 105–­106, 107 Turner, Graeme, 39 Tuters, Marc, 136, 154–­155 Twitter, 61 unboxing, 124 “unicorn puppy,” 80–­81 Unified Theory of Cats on the Internet, A (White), 6–­7 “us versus them” mentality, 155 van der Nagel, Emily, 89 Vickery, Jacqueline, 143 VidCon, 116, 117 violence, 84, 97, 98, 134, 138, 157 viral content, 49, 52, 71; marketing strategy, 75–­76; material implications of, 76–­77; sources of, 75; terminology of, 88–­89 viral media, 18 virtual menageries, 33 visibility, 70 vision, 13, 14

244 Index

visual, the, 13–­14 visual culture, 6–­7, 52, 138; animal welfare and, 76; communication practices and, 163; context of, 150–­151; joy and, 94; practices of, 144; of social media, 8; unpacking of, 12–­15 visuality, 13–­14, 55 visual sociality, 112 Washington Post, 2, 19 Whelan, Andrew, 59 White, E. J., 30, 40, 129; on branding, 46; cat eras, 6–­7, 36; A Unified Theory of Cats on the Internet, 6–­7 White nationalism, 136–­137, 139, 140, 151, 159; memes and, 144; Pepe the Frog and, 149, 152 Whiteness, 65, 102 White supremacy, 96, 148, 152, 158 wholesomeness, 11, 53, 93, 137, 149, 157 Why Look at Animals? (Berger), 29, 54–­55, 86–­87 Williams, Raymond, 12 witchcraft, cats associated with, 128 women: associated with pet parenthood, 132; confidence and, 131, 132; as content creators, 39, 72; negative association of cats with, 128–­129; pet parenthood associated with, 130; seen as threat, 139; in workplace, 45, 108. See also femininity; feminism word clouds, 152, 153 work of being watched, 38, 40 work of watching, 37–­38, 88 xenophobia, 45, 138, 139, 159 YouTube, 4, 7, 35–­36, 39, 46, 110; banned content, 78; first videos, 35 You’ve Been Framed, 54 zoos, 4, 20, 35, 47, 60, 76, 111; cinema and, 32 Zuckerman, Ethan, 165

About the Author

Jessica Maddox is an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Creative Media at the University of Alabama and founding member of the Office of Politics, Communication, and Media. Her research examines internet popular culture, social media platforms, and content creators. She earned a PhD in mass communication from the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication in 2018.

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