Cat Video Intervention: Station Conversation

Videos of adorable cats have been burning up the viral charts lately, and we’re definitely part of the problem. But are these clips hurting or helping the overall marketplace of ideas? Paul Cibis tries to stage an intervention for Liz Shannon Miller in today’s Station Conversation.

Paul: We need to talk about the cat videos, Liz.

Liz: I don’t know what you mean.

Paul: You’re a smart girl. Much too smart to be watching these things. You need to be above this kind of junk.

Liz: It’s only every once in a while. Just to take the edge off, OK?

Paul: Don’t lie to me, Liz. You archive I Can Has Cheezeburger to a 2tb RAID.

Liz: Well, just, you know, in case something happens.

Paul: To the entire Internet?

Liz: YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT COULD HAPPEN. Look, can’t a girl just kick back and enjoy the simple pleasures of a cat fighting a printer?

Paul: But there are smart, cutting-edge videos out there that could also use attention.

Liz: Oh, you mean like Ninja Cat?

Paul: No, Liz. No. Videos about politics and science and other non-cat related issues. Boundary-pushing entertainment with nary a feline to be had.

Liz: Hey, these aren’t just cute kitties playing with string! These videos capture the inherent violence of the feline mentality. Each manages to reveal a bit of the fierce soul that lies within each cuddly tabby, disclosing these creatures for what they are — which is adorable.

Paul: Isn’t web video supposed to be the future of entertainment and information exchange? Aren’t companies spending billions to ensure their presence in this space? What is it about cute kitty vids that draw in more viewers that web series with corporate sponsorship?

Liz: Well, cats are for real. A cat doesn’t want to push other branded advertising on you or change your politics. It just wants to frolic, and possibly take a long nap, before frolicking some more.

Paul: So you think it’s the purity that appeals to people?

Liz: Well, there’s also the lack of a language barrier — cats don’t speak any language in particular (except, of course, for Lolzspeak). So a cute kitty video can be an international phenomenon on the level of Evolution of Dance.

Paul: It just seems like such a misuse of the most powerful communications tool since the printing press.

Liz: What do you think is a more noble application for the medium, though? Yet another Microsoft commercial? Jessica Rose being stalked by a strange cult? Gina Gershon parodying Sarah Palin in a bikini?

Paul: Putting Gina Gershon in a bikini is a wonderful use of any medium. But I mean storytelling. Communicating interesting and entertaining ideas. And cat videos are the exact opposite of that.

Liz: To be fair to videos of cats, they may command an alarmingly large amount of our attention, but they’re not heavy on the production value. It’s not like money that could be spent creating the web video equivalent of Citizen Kane is going into the production of Cat Plays the Piano.

Paul: Right, but I promise you that more people will watch Cat Plays the Piano than the web video equivalent of Citizen Kane, whatever that may be. Networks and studios are spending so much money to break into this space with webisodes and modisodes that it seem as if they’d do just as well if they filmed a cat batting at a ringing cell phone and put that up.

Liz: Heee. Kitty vs. cell phone. Heee.

Paul: So when is that going to happen?

Liz: I actually don’t know if that’s a likely outcome, to be honest. For me, these sorts of stupid viral videos are a necessary evil, as the mindless entertainment builds up enthusiasm for the overall medium. Once people are used to watching a two-minute video of Ninja Cat, they’re ready to move to the next step. Which, I suppose, is a two-minute video of a guy getting hit in the nuts. But there’s still progress here.

Paul: Sort of like how short films of a train arriving at a station built up to the first feature films?

Liz: Yes. Would you rip a picture book from a toddler’s hands and make them read War & Peace instead?

Paul: I just remember a time when these sorts of videos were confined to a 30-minute ghetto on Sunday nights called America’s Funniest Home Videos. Now they’re everywhere. I can’t avoid them. People send them to me. It was simpler before.

Liz: Yes, but these are better, because they don’t have Bob Saget doing voiceover.

Paul: True.

Liz: This is the democratization of the medium, removing it from Saget’s hands, and putting it back into the people’s.

Paul: I’m all in favor of democratization, I just wish it would result in a wider variety of intelligent content. Not just adorable diversions. Adorable diversions that I have to fight my way through like breaking waves to reach the wider sea of interesting videos.

Do you think kitty video will always be around or will they fade as the medium grows and becomes more complex?

Liz: I’m not sure. Perhaps in the future students will be shown Pussy Vs. Printer in their Introduction to Primitive 21st Century 2-D Media classes, and they will write long papers about how the medium barely escaped this terrible period in its history. But oh, secretly, how they will laugh.

Paul: It is pretty funny actually.

Liz: I know, right? The kitty is so scared of the printer!

Paul: And yet so fascinated. He’s determined to figure it out.

Liz: But he never will. Because he is a cat. Silly cat.

Paul: In a way that video is a metaphor for my relationship with online cat videos. Only I am the cat and the cat videos are the printer. It’s kind of confusing.

Liz: It’s like a mobius strip.

Paul: Covered in cat dander.