photo by kris krüg
The internet is a magical wonderful place of open-source living, multi-use platforms and a kid in a candy store’s viewpoint of fun ways to be creative digitally. When the ability to go digital and have an identity online first came into the household, it was often speculated if online identities paralleled and mimicked IRL (in real life) identities. For the first time since never we had at our fingertips to create and control how other people viewed us. Whether it was in photos, writing, or even our names, our identities were up for grabs and we were the ones selling and buying in this new virtual marketplace.
Gradually the fresh face reality of the digital world wore off and it became more apparent that the online world could really just be a connection and extension of our ‘in real life’ existence. Having not separate identities but one singular identity that was spread out digitally seemed to suit the generation of cyber punks, digital movers and shakers and internet townspeople that our world has cultivated. The beauty of the internet at this stage of its life is that it can foster and sustain the level of creativity that we have in our everyday lives and enhance, enrich and allow it spread exponentially to communities that have otherwise been unconnected.
And then there are the people that create online identities for cats.
draco hydra, taking a break from creating online content
Cats, or kitties as I like to affectionately call them, are well known for their striking personalities and cuddly features but maintaining and pontificating on the internet has not been one of their strong points nor have they ever expressed their necessity to do so. Because they are cats.
Yet. This proves a very interesting point and provides a very interesting social commentary to how the internet plays into our daily existence. No longer is the digital world a playground for the facade of who you are, but it is a world that is as tangible as the world we breathe in and such should all the elements begin to have a place there too.
This digital presence of mammals especially has saturated the airwaves of the Twitter world. Not only did our kitty Draco Hydra magically appear in the Twitter feeds this morning as @Hydracat but there is also the infamous Sockington cat who tweets under @Sockington, has over 600,000 followers reading his tweets, is following over 350 other cat friends on twitter, has a Sockington blog and even has a Sockington t-shirt deigned around his likeness.
Sockington the cat is still a a cat. Draco Hydra is still a cat. Yet their digital presence is strong even if their paws are lacking thumbs, I am totally in favor of this creative ownership and digital identity creation in the internet of today. We are making the world wide web, a web of streaming content that is directly connected to the lives we lead everyday.
And sometimes those lives include dogs, mice, birds, whales and even cats who might love a platform to tweet ‘i wish the window was open.’
Femme Remix 