Thread by @stanfordpress

It's #InternationalCatDay! We are sharing from A Unified Theory of Cats on the Internet:

“Puss in Boots behaves as no animal could; he moves easily in the human social world…and through social intrigue acquires for his master a genteel, class-conscious happy ending.” (1/?)

“Like the King of Cats, he is a malevolent spirit hidden in the home; but in this instance, he is a malevolent spirit working for us, not against us.” (2/?)

"Over the decades that followed, the identity repertoire of computer geeks embraced many transformations: hacker, science fiction nerd, fantasy nerd, hippie, Deadhead, X-phile, gamer, otaku... Yet a consistent theme was a sense of alienation from the mainstream." (3/?)

"Perhaps it was only a matter of time before a community of self-identified insiders chose these weird, wayward animals as their mascot." (4/?)

"The communities that laid down the social foundations of meme culture saw themselves as inhabitants of the periphery...the ascendance of the cat as the mascot of the internet relied on a view of the internet as a snarky, alienated alternative to the mainstream." (5/?)

The chocolate-silver Ocicat in the previous tweet is named Toast and belongs to SUP’s Director @alanpharvey
#SUPCats (6/?)

“In the participatory culture of Web 2.0, cats proved to be a joke with staying power: a symbol of internet culture that in a single picture, GIF, or six-second video could tap into a cascade of stereotypes about the online world” (7/?)

“Internet cats not only helped to label the social internet, in all its weirdness, its hostility, and its ‘memetic processes,’ but also, by joining the internet at large in a shared canonical formulation” (8/?)

The cats in the previous tweet are named Olive (orange fur) and Linus (black fur) and belong to SUP’s Editor-in-Chief Kate Wahl. (9/?) #SUPCats

"It was a signal that participatory culture had, to borrow a conceit, entered its Baroque period: perpetually referential, with each text leading to others which led to others still, disorienting in its subversion of the idea of a dominant text, frame, or interpretation." (10/?)

"the combination of openness and constraint that governs memes has helped to make them a common currency online, enabling a tremendous number of possible moves.”(11/?)

"Finally, I told my father, 'I'm going to keep the cat.'
'Surprise, surprise,' he said."

Pictured: E.J. White's cat Aaron Purr. (12/?)

"We can likely be confident that whatever turns the internet takes, the tubes will remain cat-shaped...with communities of users fighting endless battles over the imaginary heart of the web, and with play and politics in perpetual mutual reinforcement." (13/?)

The cat pictured in the previous tweet is named Cinnamon and she provides endless help (and purrs) to SUP's Social Media Specialist @KendraSchynert (14/?)

Thank you for joining us for #InternationalCatDay! We hope you enjoyed the quotes from A Unified Theory of Cats on the Internet.

Photo credit: Assoc. editor @fewstein most definitely has a cat who should be on the internet with the rest of her fellow felines. #CatSUP (15/15)