It’s been a big week for kittens of the internet.
I was reminded of The Cute Cat Theory of Digital Activism, coined by Tripodian and now the director of the MIT Center for Civic Media, Ethan Zuckerman. His theory states:
that most people are not interested in activism; instead, they want to use the web for mundane activities, including surfing for pornography and lolcats (“cute cats”).[3] The tools that they develop for that (such as Facebook, Flickr, Blogger, Twitter, and similar platforms) are very useful to social movement activists, who may lack resources to develop dedicated tools themselves.[3] This, in turn, makes the activists more immune to reprisals by governments than if they were using a dedicated activism platform, because shutting down a popular public platform provokes a larger public outcry than shutting down an obscure one.[3]
So keep up the good work folks – post all the kittehs and pups and “I don’t… but when I do…” links and who knows – maybe some good in the world will happen along with them!
Disclaimer: I was telling someone about Ethan’s Commodore 64 Museum when all this other stuff came up. I went on to tell someone else about the Exploding Kitten Kickstarter phenomenon and well…
