I’ve never experienced “Radioactive Cats,” Sandy Skoglund’s 1981 installation, in person, but I love the photographs I’ve seen of it: a gray kitchen, with an old man and woman, and everywhere, cats, painted neon green, crawling, writhing, looking lanky and predatory and anything but cute. Skoglund likes to take the things that seem tame and comfortable to us and render them in ways that make us squirm. Lately I’ve begun to think that “Radioactive Cats” suitably predicted the status of the feline on the Internet.

If the Internet is a collective unconscious, we are in big trouble, and I don’t think you have to find sites by child-molesters or terrorists to prove the point. When child-molesters are few, cats will do.

Cats on the Internet are a lot like a joke that my husband tells about the difference between sanity and madness. A desperate-looking guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doctor, you have to help me. I love pancakes.” The doctor looks quizzical. “I would hardly think that counts as a problem. I’m rather fond of pancakes myself.” The patient brightens. “Oh doctor, that’s great. Come to my place. I have closets full.”

A number of years ago we saw a story in Natural History magazine about Andrew T. Lloyd, a researcher who studied the genetic strains of cats in America. His research method was to wander through alleys and look for cats. He had a checklist of genetic characteristics he could identify in seconds. We hooted upon reading the article, constructing imaginary scenarios about Lloyd being caught by the cops and claiming he was hanging out in that alley just to research the cats. Still, what he was doing seems normal to me in comparison to the people who spend their time with pictures of cats on the Internet.

If you type “cute cats” in Google, you’re going to get somewhere upward of 149 million entries, including this column, of course. There’ll be lolcats, cuddly cats, and kitten war, not to mention “Republicans hate kittens” bumper stickers and a page devoted to cats that look like hitler (kitlers). There’s pro and con on that one. There’s also a difference of opinion about fat cats: some people think they are cute, while others condemn the behavior of owners who would allow such an unhealthy condition in their pets.

Before we get any further, I want to add that I’m definitely a hypocrite for denigrating cute cats. I have friends — good friends — who send me fabulous feline pictures from time to time, and I enjoy them immensely. I’ve even been known to forward the occasional kitty link myself from time to time. My favorite is a video of an Abyssinian cat playing with bath water, gliding back and forth. It’s actually kind of boring in a way: there are lots of cat videos out there that are “action packed,” but I find this one soothing and centering. Go look at it and laugh at me.

According to anthropologists, in some cultures, social controls are based on shame as opposed to guilt, where shame is an emotion shared out in the community while guilt is something that torments you inside and privately. Ours has been a guilt culture for centuries, but I wonder if the prevalence of “awkward” amusements on the Internet heralds our shift to a shame culture where we like to parade, or even revel in our low side, whether it is an appetite for kinky sexual practices or felines with their guard down.

Lolcats are the best of the closets full of cats on the Internet. Lol is of course the texting acronym “laughing out loud” and the genre refers to cute pictures of cats with captions that undercut the cuteness by turning the image into a joke. The humor is predicated on an image of cats as bimodal: endearing but powerful, and affectionately resentful of the humans who give them shelter. A fairly typical one shows a cat sitting on a computer keyboard, with the caption, “I sez SYSTEM IZ DOWN: Petting will now commence.”

My personal favorite is the lolcat Bible Translation Project. Here is an example of the early part of Genesis rendered into lolcat, starting at Chapter 1, verse 14:

An Ceiling Cat sayed, i can has lightz in the skiez for splittin day An no day.15 It happen, lights everwear, like christmass, srsly.16 An Ceiling Cat doeth two grate lightz, teh most big for day, teh other for no day.17 An Ceiling Cat screw tehm on skiez, with big nails An stuff, to lite teh Urfs.18 An tehy rulez day An night. Ceiling Cat sawed. Iz good.19 An so teh furth day w00t.

If this is gibberish to you, consult the webpage on “How to speak lolcat.” I’m no William Safire, but I think lolcat represents some changes and challenges American English is undergoing these days: nuf said.

Trying too hard is contemptible, and the Internet shows us how. The widespread popularity of lolcats has spawned sites featuring loldogs. Please understand, I am a big fan of dogs, but loldogs are not funny. An example is of a dog’s response to being offered a banana, “Dis snausage taste funny…” Since dogs by definition lack cats’ innate dignity, jokes at their expense tend to be low blows, and the most successful loldogs are simply cute pictures.

But lolcats are not just cute pictures of cats. There is a lolcat thread that Sandy Skoglund would recognize. It represents humans in perpetual danger from their pets: one example shows the thought bubbles of cute kittens. Four are saying, “Look cute for teh camera,” while one says, “yes, yes, maybe that heavy lamp will do the job.” The caption is “1 out of 5 lolkittens are plotting ur demise.” In its sense of irony and foreboding lolcats represents a way of looking at the world in which down is up, as well as the representation of a language all its own that questions our rules about language, as should be evident from the examples above.

According to Ethan Zuckerman, lolcats are an American phenomenon that doesn’t translate well to other countries. Another favorite discussion of the phenomenon testily explains to a puzzled Brit that it’s the intertextual references that make the genre, “You have to be up to date on quite a few internet cliche’s (sic) to appreciate LOLcats for what it’s worth. They are absolutely genius. If you don’t find them humorous it’s probably because no one is getting bopped on the head or running in circles [author’s note: reference to Benny Hill]. Stay off of our web pages you humorless dolts. Unless of course you want to start LOLbrits, which I’d be all for.”

The intertextual references this user is describing link lolcats to 4chan, the Internet community which, according to Wikipedia, The Guardian once described as “lunatic, juvenile… brilliant, ridiculous and alarming.” The antics of 4chan are anarchy in action, and lolcats is their cute face. I’m not against anarchy, mind you, but a little of it goes a long way, and no matter how you slice it, anarchy is never just cute. By its nature it confronts us with humanity’s leering demons. It’s 4chan who is responsible for “Rickrolling,” a harmless prank which purports to give useful web links but takes unsuspecting dupes to a video of a 1987 song by Rick Astley. Another 4chan venture involved elevating the symbol for the swastika to the top of Google’s Hot Trends list.

All the same, some human endeavors can benefit from a little anarchy. And our propensity to admire (and be ironic about) cute pets may offer one more way to make some of us squirm when it comes to the struggle for human rights. By the Cute Cat Theory, Ethan Zuckerman explains that protest movements are increasingly using “read/write platforms” like Blogger, Flickr, YouTube and Google Maps to get their message out.

According to the New York Times, Zuckerman also noted that in Iran improvised communications structures put in place over the last five years can now be used to circumvent censorship, “In earlier cases, the important news that bloggers had to share on a social network might have related to soccer, or a certain favorite pet, but today those same tools are used to get the word out about protests and a spirit of defiance within Iran.” Or, as Thomas Jefferson didn’t say, “Can the lolcats of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these lolcats are the gift of God?”

Tweet  Print This Post

Tags: animals, stone age memes, technology // Add Comment »