Whether you love or hate people who talk like pets, use cute phrases like “pupperinos” and “heckin’ good bois,” or share grammatically incorrect cat talk memes, the concept of “pet voice” has become just as much a part of it. the social media landscape as pictures of furry and scaly fellows. Indeed, speaking with and through animals to convey our human emotions and thoughts is one of the defining experiences of internet culture.
But the pet voice phenomenon is not unique to the social media era. Media and pets have always been intertwined, and owners and animal lovers have been playing with communication through them for hundreds of years.
As historian Katherine Grier details in “Pets in America: A History,” as far back as the 19th century, people were exchanging letters with their furry companions. Taking advantage of the rise of photography technology, they began printing photo plates of their animals to distribute to friends. Such interpersonal experiences can be thought of as the Victorian equivalent of sending cute pet pictures via messaging apps like Snapchat or WhatsApp.
But not all early pet experiences were so harmless. Fashion scholar Julia Long challenges the way people use pets as props. He points to the 1886 Washington Post interview with a woman who “gives her precious love” to her pet bugs, which she wears as a fashion statement. The reporter notes that when asked whether the insect knew its owner, this lady expressed her great anguish and surprise at the idea that her beloved pet did not return her love.
The thought of wearing a bug as a brooch, or even keeping it as a pet, might give readers pause today. But as a communication tactic, experience speaks volumes. The act of anthropomorphizing, or attributing human characteristics to non-human beings, is an alienating concept. The woman who gives the bugs a “voice” is speaking as someone else, especially someone who can’t actually speak for herself, distancing herself from their words. Although this distance is small, it has a big impact in today’s age of mediation. One of the most famous New Yorker cartoons depicts two dogs on a computer saying, “No one on the Internet knows you’re a dog.” The cartoon demonstrates how to speak through pets the ambivalence of the Internet or difficulty in determining definitive meanings in online communication.
It’s especially important that we understand this tactic today, as the anthropomorphized pet voice has taken on new life in the age of Instagram and TikTok.
As I discussed in my recent book, The Internet Is for Cats: How Animal Images Shape Our Digital Lives, such animal imagery is often used to mask more insidious parts of internet culture, such as hate speech and harassment.
The “cool amphibian meme” of Pepe the Frog, declared a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League in 2016, shows how malicious human posters can transform seemingly innocent images of pets and animals. In addition, when speaking whom an animal, even a cartoon frog, the human poster puts distance between itself and what it says. On the opposite side of the political spectrum, behind an orange tabby veil, is the popular Twitter account Jorts the Cat, which aggressively tweets pro-union and workers’ rights sentiments. And, paradoxically, it gets even more difficult when an internet cat criticizes the governor with legislation.
Removing anthropomorphism is also a profitable business. In recent years, pet influencers have skyrocketed in popularity and become intertwined with sponsored posts and advertising deals. As Internet scholar Sophie Bishop discusses, brands engage in the “security dance” when hiring influencers, a process that involves using automated tools to gauge the potential risk of a potential human influencer harming the brand. Pets bypass this security dance entirely. While there’s always a human poster behind the animal influencer, the distance that a pet’s voice brings makes them “safer” and, in turn, more marketable.
Petcon founder Loni Edwards said in 2020, “You get all the benefits of a human influencer with the cuteness of pets. Everyone loves pets. They are cheerful, sweet, they make us happy. But they won’t be drunk at a party and damage your brand like a human influencer.”
Although the sound of pets is comforting and common, it has serious implications to think about in our digital age. But not all LOLs are lost. As one person told me, “Social media used to be this fun thing, but now it can come with a lot of negativity and stress. So I followed some cute animal accounts for a burst of positivity in my scrolling timeline.”
These accounts can still offer a respite from the more difficult aspects of being online—as long as we remember that behind every pet voice is a human poster.
Jessica Maddox is an associate professor of digital media at the University of Alabama. His first book, The Internet is for Cats: How Animal Images Shape Our Digital Lives, is out now. This article was written for the Zocalo Public Square.