Questionable Future for Cat Videos

With Trump doing his best not to get re-elected, and the world in the midst of the covid epidemic,  we must ask the important question…What does this mean for cat videos?

Cat videos are historically the most watched and shared.   Based on the numbers, even people who don’t like cats watch cat videos. There are many different specific reasons people watch cat videos. Research indicates that the bottom line is, in general, they make us feel good.

The number of cat videos, viewers and views has continued to climb for over ten years. This is especially true over the past four years, when just about everyone needed some way of feeling good. Cat videos are a form of escapism.

Lavish big budget, fantasy  movie musicals of the 1930s served a similar purpose for a country in the midst of the great depression and the looming specter of World War 2. Back then the public had limited choices, but the studios, once they figured out the public’s desires, produced those movies at a high volume. With the internet, the public can find, and identify, whatever appeals to them. That seems to be cat videos, not big budget musicals or dramas.

It seems ludacris to compare Fred Astaire with Tard the cat, but here we are.

Movie musical's golden age declined with the end of WW2 and I must say the waning depression. It seems we do not need as much to feel-good when things are good as when they are bad. Our optimism comes mores freely when we do not feel we are mid-apocalypse.

So, as we head for another pivot in history, society, economic or culture, for better or whatever, what is to become of cat videos?

Will decreased stress and strife lessen our appetite for cat videos the same way it happened for movie musicals? Will the post-Trump era leave us with a PTSD craving for more cat videos? Perhaps current events will have no impact at all.

Whatever change happens in our cat video watching habits, it may signal something important. I hope it is in some way an indicator that we have grown, and the world is a bit better.