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How cats became the undisputed mascot of the internet. The
advertising slogan of the social news site Reddit is "Come for the
cats. Stay for the empathy." Journalists and their readers seem to
need no explanation for the line, "The internet is made of cats."
Everyone understands the joke, but few know how it started. A
Unified Theory of Cats on the Internet is the first book to explore
the history of how the cat became the internet's best friend.
Internet cats can differ in dramatic ways, from the goth cats of
Twitter to the glamourpusses of Instagram to the giddy, nonsensical
silliness of Nyan Cat. But they all share common traits and values.
Bringing together fun anecdotes, thoughtful analyses, and hidden
histories of the communities that built the internet, Elyse White
shows how japonisme, punk culture, cute culture, and the battle
among different communities for the soul of the internet informed
the sensibility of online felines. Internet cats offer a
playful-and useful-way to understand how culture shapes and is
shaped by technology. Western culture has used cats for centuries
as symbols of darkness, pathos, and alienation, and the communities
that helped build the internet explicitly constructed themselves as
outsiders, with snark and alienation at the core of their identity.
Thus cats became the sine qua non of cultural literacy for the
Extremely Online, not to mention an everyday medium of expression
for the rest of us. Whatever direction the internet takes next, the
"series of tubes" is likely to remain cat-shaped.
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