Rise of the LOLcats

“The Internet is made of cats,” goes the song. It reminds me in a funny way of one of those strange metaphors that analytic philosophers are fond of. The mind cannot be like a computer, wrote John Searle, because in theory a computer can be made of any mechanism – of cats, mice, cheese, ropes and levers, whatever. That’s why the idea of artificial intelligence is absurd, according to Searle.

Of all the memes that surround us, the lolcats and their variations are the best known and most persistent, to the point where they have become in a way the emblem of the meme phenomenon. The stupidest creative act that you could imagine, as

I’d like to argue that this is not an accident or a stupid creative act, but simply the fate of humanity.

Legitimization via social networks

Social media allows things to emerge more spontaneously and in a less filtered manner. YouTube allows the emergence of videos whose relevance was previously denied because they were once unimaginable, with emotions that weren’t considered real, legitimate, worthy of being shared. Empathy for animals is central among these emotions.

This illegitimate feeling becomes irresistible when it is shared and discussed. There is of course nothing more insufferable than a master who goes on about the intelligence of his dog. But there’s nothing more convincing than a video showing us an intelligent dog. In fact, YouTube stands in opposition to the research of ethologists. While anthropomorphism is the great sin of ethology, it’s the engine of animal virals on the Internet, the very principle of the lolcat.

There may be another reason for the dominance of kittehs on the Internet. They have colonized the “uncanny valley” theorized by researchers in robotics. Cats give a face to the artificial intelligence that we are presented with on the other side of the computer screen. A perfect face, not too human or too monstrous. A face that the co-evolution of humans and cats for thousands of years may have made irresistible, the face of an emotional parasite whose big eyes and meowing bring to mind a human baby and taps into our empathy.

The cat is proud, the cat is lazy, the cat is hungry, the cat loves sex, it takes drugs, it dresses well, it speaks English through the comments on YouTube. But the cat pursues a mysterious, incomprehensible goal. Everything it does seems touched with transcendence.

The cat is both our reflection and our mask in a fantastical computer world. Is it any wonder that as we are dominated by the omnipotence of an emerging artificial intelligence, we rethink our relationship to our inferiors, the stupid cute animals that surround us?

“I, for one, welcome our new cat overlords”:

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This article was originally published on ContreBande (FR)

Image CC Flickr Maggie Osterberg