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How Cats Took Over the Internet, Explained

In 2013, Grumpy Cat, aka Tardar Sauce, from Arizona, quickly became an internet sensation known for her perpetual “grumpy” look and wide blue eyes. Grumpy Cat now has a slew of endorsements, including a new Friskies ad and her own movie. There’s the popular term “Caturday,” when owners spend time with their cats on Saturday, taking cute photos to post on Instagram. Facebook is flooded with cute cat memes and some YouTube cat videos yield million plus views. A generation of web users have seemingly become transfixed by cats, how did this happen, and why? 

How Cats Took Over the Internet, a new exhibit now open at the Museum of the Moving Image, explores the virality of cat imagery, not because they are perceived as art, but the surge in this trend warrants some exploration. The exhibit uses a wide selection of Internet cat videos, GIFs and images. Throughout this fall, the exhibit will be accompanied by a series of events, including a Cat-Vant Garde Film Show Oct. 10, special guest speaker events with representatives from YouTube and Reddit, book events, special cat appearances and even a couple of cat adoption dates.

“We encourage people to think a little more deeply about things we [are quick to] dismiss,” said Carl Goodman, Executive Director at MOMI. “We are a participatory culture.”

The exhibit is organized by Associate Curator of Digital Media Jason Eppink. It begins with a concise, 20 year timeline, starting in 1995 with the origins of Meowchat, a newsgroup for cats, chronicling highlights (the term Caturday was coined in 2005) up to the present, including the proliferation of cat personalities in 2013, such as Grumpy Cat, Lil Bub, Colonel Meow and others.

Internet cat sensation Grumpy Cat, aka Tardar Sauce

Beyond the who and what is prompting the trend, the exhibit explores the factors. There are the straightforward reasons-happiness, boredom at work. The “virtual cat park” online, serves as a kind of respite for cat owners to retreat to, to connect with other cat lovers, explains Eppink. There are deeper reasons, such as anthropomorphism, the study of attributing human characteristics to an animal. Or biophilia, where humans develop an affiliation with living things, an interdependence.

Eppink reached out to YouTube, Reddit, Instagram and Tumblr for research and found in the end, that the popularity of cats and dogs is about equal, pretty much across the board.

But, while the virality of cat imagery is very much a western phenomenon, huge “in the United States, Japan and Russia,” says Eppink, in other places such as “Uganda, it’s goats and chickens; in Mexico, llamas.”

One of the cool features of the exhibit-it seeks your input. Visit movingimage.us/cats to send them your own cat images, gifs, and videos, for future inclusion in the exhibit. “I want our visitors to have a voice,” says Eppink.

How Cats Took Over the Internet runs Aug. 7 and has been extended to Feb. 21, 2016. For more information, visit movingimage.us.

About the Author

Linda Sheridan is the Managing Editor for City Guide. She is a lifelong New Yorker, has written for the New York Daily News, and loves travel, writing, music, and space.

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