4 ms·

All those cat videos are paying off.

• TeMPOraL 11y ago
  It may sound like a joke, but there might be something to it. It's probably hard to measure, but I can't imagine the easy access to lightweight mood-improving content doesn't have an impact of people. Personally, I don't browse cats too often, but I've experienced many times how a single picture of a cute cat sent by someone can keep me smiling for a long while.
  • vinceguidry 11y ago
    I think this is the tail wagging the dog here, akin to saying that easy access to violent video games makes people violent. Culture can affect mood, but I think mood affects culture much more strongly than the other way around. We mostly seek out things that validate the way we already feel inside, not go, "I'm feeling pretty crappy today, let me go watch some cat vids to cheer me up." If something comes along that doesn't feed into our current state, we tend to ignore it. We had the Internet for a lot longer than we've had cat videos. It wasn't that we couldn't have had them or that none existed, they just weren't all that popular. There was a definite turn in the 2000s where people, and the Internet, suddenly got a lot happier. My theory is that Internetting before Facebook was mostly a solitary thing that loners would do to get away from lives they otherwise hated. With Facebook the masses came, and so everyone all of a sudden had to cater to a wider audience. People who really do want to get away from humanity have their 4chans, but they're in the minority now. Reddit would have been a very different place in the late nineties.