For her, the virtual cat park theory definitely has merit. Since the days of I Can Haz Cheezburger around a decade ago, there have been two big changes. One: the rise of autoplaying video; two: the age of the smartphone.
This article includes content provided by Vine. While there are, of course, great cat videos, Brennan believes dogs are just so much better suited to video. Cats are so weird - their personalities tend to come across better in still images.
A cat is like laying around and doing weird things. It was much smaller, for starters. Five years on, things are very different. This article includes content provided by Facebook. Dogs on Facebook are truly having a moment. Elsewhere, the Facebook page of a sanctuary for old dogs in Tennessee gained a lot of attention earlier this year for being generally delightful.
But now the internet is the real world, and dogs are as beloved online as they are anywhere! Then again, cats have the upper hand of a long-association with the internet, which could be hard to shake. So there we have it. The next time you assume the internet belongs to cats, maybe think again. Or perhaps all this talk of cats and dogs is very and actually that era is gone.
Maybe the internet truly belongs to gorillas now. Cats v dogs: which animal owns the internet? Photograph: Alamy. Somewhere in the history of the internet, cats became its rulers. Although historians and archeologists call them icons, artifacts, and talismans, it may be that the first cat memes appeared in ancient Egypt.
Bastet was the Egyptian cat-headed goddess. She was associated with lunar energies: childbirth, fertility, and the feminine. In Greek mythology, the goddess Artemis is said to have turned herself into a cat in order to take refuge in the moon.
And the Norse goddess of fertility, Freyja, had a carriage that was pulled by two cats. In the middle ages, cats became associated with the devil. On the Internet, the symbolic cat seems to have lost her negative associations. Now, she appears in ironic memes:. Cat memes can be understood as modern icons that celebrate and worship the symbolic cat. They seem to emphasize how cats are like humans.
But the unconscious message might be more profound. They might be about the way humans are like cats. The web allows us to be like felines, connecting on our own terms and at our own leisure. Witness the success of communities like dailyworth. Perry Stein may be right. The popularity of cats on the Internet may be more than just entertainment and cuteness. It may even be about more than evolutionary biology and social science.
Cat memes might represent a shift in our collective mythology and an increased psychological tolerance. For information on his upcoming books and events click here. This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here.
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