Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Felines and Facades

Cooperating with our push to branch out beyond the mere "book" review, Jake sends in a few notes on a recent Newsweek article. - RD

In the most recent issue of Newsweek (July 17, 2006), a brief article summarizes the burgeoning of MySpace.com-type websites for dogs (Dogster.com), cats (Catser.com), hamsters (Hamsterster.com), and “less conventional” pets (pester.com). It is one of the most banal and uninteresting articles to grace the pages of Newsweek in recent memory (p. 12).

The article reports that these websites are other ways for owners to talk vicariously through their pets, with users admitting that they “discuss human topics… but through cats.” For example, two fellow Catsters (Susan Bailey of Buckinghamshire, England and another unnamed person) met at the Bruce Springsteen concert in New York. But why mention the fact that this website is becoming a place for people to “hook-up,” mimicking the all-too-frequent self-advertisement of Myspace.com, which itself is scarlet laced with loneliness, without really commenting on this phenomenon? The author, Malak Hamwi, could have created an ironic and bemused satire on the fin de siècle of our culture, as we hide behind screens and buttons. But he didn’t. Now that we’ve trained ourselves to shelter beneath our most flattering internet pictures and our carefully crafted cleverisms, we can take it a step further and befriend that female mongoose owner named Shirley with our pet Schlange Jo-Jo, (noting, of course, a few interesting tidbits about its owner). And if you were wondering, the owner of a lovely tan American Cocker Spaniel puppy and a curious tabby kitten, is married. I guess he won’t make many friends…

- Jake McCarty

1 Comments:

At 7:44 PM, Blogger Brent said...

Yes, but have you seen www.catsthatlooklikehiter.com?

Newsweek is not the worst...

 

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