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The INTERNET Is for C a t s How Animal Images Shape Our Digital Lives Jessica Maddox 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-a nimal 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 28 2. “I’ve Heard People on TikTok Love This”: Attention as Materiality and Looking Relation 51 3. Beyond Doomscrolling in an Internet of Cute 80 4. “You Can’t Buy Happiness, but You Can Rescue It”: Neoliberal Pets and Animals 105 5. Feels Good, Man: Collisions, Collusions, and Cloaks in Pet and Animal Social Media 134 6 . Nature Is Healing, We Are the Virus: Beyond Signifiers 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 rum- blings, 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 repre- sentation 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 celeb- rity 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