September 25, 2020
The corona virus has extreme negative impact on the global economy. But one industry seems almost not to be influenced at all — that is “it” economy. People spend a lot of money on their pets, they take care of their pets just like they look after their own children. Or for the young generation, pets are even better than children.
In addition to toys and snacks for animals, the “it” economy also includes the cultural products related to pets, such as games about pets, restaurants with pets (cats cafe) and pets actors. The online and offline pet industry is experiencing explosive growth.
You may not have pets, but you may use an animal sticker in WhatsApp. what’s more, you may even follow a pet’s “networking account” and become its fan. We see pets everywhere on the internet, in the memes, in the movies and photographs. We cannot deny a fact that watching animal videos become a necessary amusement for many Netizens — especially for the millennials.
Millenials are rising.
Most people love animals,but among them the Millenials’ love for animals is more complicated, as there are some political and economic reasons behind.
Millenials are known as a new generation who typically postpones the parenthood and lives in big city – but that does not mean they are less eager to companionship and the natural world than previous generations. They are the main group who raise pets and spread the pets’ work on the internet.
And Millenials’ love for pets can be far beyond people’s imagination. For example. in China, many young animal lovers live a busy life in a small apartment, owning a pet is a dream that may be difficult for them to fulfill concerning the limitation of the space and time.
Therefore, the option of “raising cloud cats” (watch videos of/interact with other people’s pets) has taken social media by storm, for these fake pet owners, watching videos and looking at pictures of cute cats on the Internet can make up for the loss of not having a cat in real life. And more importantly, these online cute pets can offer them companies and give them comfort when the they are overwhelmed by the loneliness of metropolitan life.
Loving pets is INSTINCT.
If a dog-owner is crazy about dog videos and photographs, well, that seems reasonable. But still. there are a lot of online-pet lovers who do not raise pets themselves and even do not like pets in the reality.
An experiment was carried out at Caltech to study people’s physical response to animals. When the participants were shown different photos of buildings, people, and animals, their brain showed the greatest responses to the animal ones, which means they become more emotional when looking at animals.
See, human’s positive responses to pets online could reflect how much they love pets in our real lives. However, it could just be our natural instinct to be aware and fond of animals.
In a word, the World Wide Web loves it’s animals! So go showing off your cute pets online, you may never imagine how they will be beneficial to people’s mental and physical health.
The Pet Economy Boomhttps://ch.allianzgi.com/en-gb/en-products/allianz-pet-and-animal-wellbeing/peteconomyboom
Why do we love pets on the internet? https://kps3.com/why-do-we-love-pets-on-the-internet/
This blog made me think of ‘The internet is made of cats’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi8VTeDHjcM). I was told it has to do with the most watched videos at a time being videos about cats and the overload of cat pictures online. Don’t get me wrong, I like dogs, reptiles etc. a lot, but cats have a special place in my heart. It does not really surprise me that pets have such an ‘economy’ surrounding them. In high school, whenever me and a friend were stressed, we would just watch cat videos to destress. What does surprise me though is the “raising cloud cats” notion. I never thought that people would actually see themselves as ‘raising’ this pet online. I am definitely going to look into that!
Thank you for commenting! Hahaha the YouTube video is so interesting, I should watch that when I create this post. Yeah about the cloud pets thing, there are many people who can’t understand such groups and think they are too eager to have a pet that they have lost their minds lol, but anyway the online pets really satisfy their needs, and the ones who “share” their pets with the netizens do get money from that! Isn’t it amazing😂
I also stand for dogs(serious face)! The reason that I wrote this blog is that I noticed when I was with a group of people, especially young people, whether you are know them well or not, as long as someone clicks a video of cute animal(especially cats), almost everyone will show interest! The pets is a universal topic! In particular, if you use the icon/profile or send a photo of cute animals online, it always attracts more attention… Humans are ruled by pets.