I have no idea what to write about. Is there anything that you can say that sounds remotely intelligent when you think about dog and cat internet memes? The only thing that comes to mind is a critique about our societal obsession with the cuteness of pet memes. In the United States, and probably everywhere in the world that has an internet connection, internet users pore over cute images, vines, youtube videos, tumblr gifs, the list goes on and on. Just look at this website: http://procatinator.com/
We obviously have an obsession with the endless amount of cute at our fingertips. And who wouldn't? One of the things that would always cheer me up when I had a bad day was working at barns with horses or playing with my black lab. Now that I'm in college I can't really do that anymore so I've resorted to cute pet memes. Animals, especially domesticated pets, have a way of cheering people up. But do we act on our obsession with cute animal images outside of the digital world?
According to the Human Society of the United States "about 2.7 million healthy, adoptable cats and dogs—about one every 11
seconds—are put down in U.S. shelters each year. Often these animals are
the offspring of cherished family pets". So even though an obsession with pets is pervasive in our culture online it doesn't really do anything to solve a pressing problem in reality.
I would argue that the reason why there is still a huge problem with animal abuse in the US, and again probably everywhere in the world, is because we have a higher appreciation for the digital plethora of pet material at our fingertips than for the actual animals themselves. Does anyone remember when Nintendo released the Nintendogs game for the DS? It seemed like the biggest scam to me. It was fun for about ten minutes when you were admiring how cute your computer-simulated dog looked and then when nothing new happened in the game you wondered why you even bought it in the first place. Having a pet dog, a living creature that needed love and attention, was so much more valuable and formative to an individual's personality than the Nintendo game. But caring for animals takes work. Depending on the animal they can be ridiculously needy and every single one of them poops in places where they shouldn't. It's so much easier to just gush over the instant cuteness (minus the messiness of a living thing) of pet memes on the Internet. Maybe the reason why animal euthanasia is so high in the US is because the abundance of pet memes on the internet has desensitized us to the true struggles many pets face in trying to get good homes. If we gorge ourselves on the cuteness of a simulated version of an animal then we have unrealistic expectations that the real thing will be just as cute and not gross at all. (After all, none of the Internet images of cute cats and dogs feature their poop). When people discover that it's far easier to be content with images of animals than with living creatures they may start to prefer the internet version to the real thing. The more this happens, the more animals get put down for lack of people caring about them.
For an interesting take on shelter pet photography policy please look at the post in the link:
http://sleepmurder.tumblr.com/post/57815190794/on-the-importance-of-good-photos-of-shelter-pets
I remember that Nintendo DS game, and I agree, it was a total scam. Sure, while I didn't have a dog at the time, it was entertaining...for those first 10 mins. Now that I have a real dog, I feel like the issue we have is grave in America.
ReplyDeleteThe issue you state is just one of a much dire whole: people are LAZY. They love the virtual world much more than the real one. Call of Duty, Sims, those annoying little restaurants games you find on Facebook ads: games that simulate what one could be doing in real life. Whereas you usually have to work to achieve anything, the virtual counterparts are hand fed to the population. Want to join the Army? Here, play Call of Duty instead. Want to own a real restaurant and get some cash? Too tedious, play on Facebook and earn some diamonds instead. Want a life, well we don't have one of those, so just play Sims instead...
I'm not innocent myself, but I'd just like to point it out on one of these virtual forums, where, y'know, it's virtual. No face-to-face action required.
I'm sure my point is clear now lol Ranting's fun.
It was good to see this from a point of view that usually goes unseen. I fell victim to the Nintendogs ( I am pretty sure that I had the one with the Labrador Retrievers) Those kind of things really do seem to put up the question of hmmm.. I have this virtual dog, do I need a real dog? In my case the answer was yes. A real dog would get you off the sofa as you drown yourself in soda, potato chips, peanut butter mixed with m&ms, etc as opposed to that virtual thing people like to call a dog. Is this a case where we could say that technology has been detrimental? Not just in this particular case, but all of the examples that you and Steven pointed out.
ReplyDeleteI wonder, Amanda, if the dissonance between a certain touchy-feely love of cuteness and the hard reality of that cuteness extends to other realms of contemporary culture. It almost seems at times if the two impulses can not simply be out of touch with one another but incompatible or contradictory. In the case of pets, as you note, a few token campaigns to encourage responsible pet ownership--not sure if you remember the announcement at the end of the Price is Right "remember to spay and neuter," but this is a perfect example of what I'm thinking of--make people feel virtuous in their love of animals, while perhaps also just leading many more people to behave irresponsibly. Obviously, if we were more serious about this, there would have to be some kind of penalty, perhaps even verification, of population control measures. But it would never pass precisely because people would fall back on their touchy-feely love of animals to oppose it. I'm also thinking of things like the use of women's rights to sell recent wars and the invocation of family to support limiting constitutional rights. Even those who support such policies, I think, should be bothered by this inconsistency.
ReplyDeleteSteven, you forgot Second Life (I think that's what it's called). You probably could virtually rant there.
Reece, I wonder if people lose weight after buying a pet? I wouldn't be surprised if they tended to do so.