We’re going to make a prediction. If your day involves sitting in front of a computer — or even just scanning Instagram on your phone — we bet that you’ll come across, click on and maybe even share something cat-related. As one viral video collage put it, the Internet is made of cats, from tiny kittens learning to meow (#cute) to felines falling off things (#fail) to pets wearing Donald Trump wigs (#lol) to truly talented creatures who can play instrumentsand compete at Jenga (#omg). “Anyone who has spent any amount of time on the Internet can see that cats have an outsize role [there],” says Jason Eppink, curator of “How Cats Took Over the Internet,” which runs through Jan. 31, 2016, at theMuseum of the Moving Imagein Queens. “I wanted to see why.”
The exhibition explores the rise of Internet cat culture — from lo-fi “Meowspeak” chat rooms, a ’90s subculture that paved the way forLOLcat-speak(“I can has cheezburger“), to full-fledged feline celebs likeGrumpy Cat,Keyboard CatandChoupette Lagerfeld(who raked inmore than $4 million last year). But it also delves into our world wide (web?) obsession with these critters. Here’s what we learned.
The first cat video is from … 1894?
Yes, there were cat videos before Maru. The earliest one in the exhibition is from 1894, a Kinetoscope of two boxing kitties filmed by none other than Thomas Edison. In fact, a lot of avant garde filmmakers have shot feline footage, from Alexander Hammid and Maya Deren — whose oddly absorbing “Private Life of a Cat,” from 1947, depicts their pet falling in love, giving birth and raising kittens) — to Stan Brakhage, whose trippy 1959 short “Cat’s Cradle” remains a film-school staple.
There is a guy, Ben Lashes, who has made a career of repping such celebrities as Grumpy Cat, Keyboard Cat and Nyan Cat. His title? Meme manager. Um, how do we get that job?
Raquel Laneri is a cat enthusiast and writer who lives in Brooklyn. Her favorite cat video of all time is this. You can follow her on Twitter @RaquelLaneri.