{"id":529,"date":"2012-11-18T19:43:27","date_gmt":"2012-11-18T19:43:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/?p=529"},"modified":"2012-11-18T19:47:55","modified_gmt":"2012-11-18T19:47:55","slug":"an-internet-full-of-cats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/2012\/11\/an-internet-full-of-cats\/","title":{"rendered":"An internet full of cats."},"content":{"rendered":"

Remember that social media experiment I did a few months back<\/a>, in which I measured the “Diversity Quotient” of my social media feeds?<\/p>\n

Well, this afternoon I went back to my original dataset, and this time counted up all the “memes” which were spread around for pure entertainment, and not just for supporting social, political, or moral values.<\/p>\n

The biggest category of messages was general encouragement and motivation. But the second biggest category was humour involving cats and kittens.<\/strong> There were more than double the number of the third-highest group. And almost ten times more cat and kitten jokes than there were jokes about sex! I almost put the cats in a class by themselves. I’m not sure what explains this: perhaps it’s because the proportions of kitten’s faces are very close to the proportions of infant human faces. Or maybe it’s because I love cats, I love every kind of cat – sorry I’m getting emotional – and I just want to hug all of them but that’s crazy because you can’t hug every cat…<\/p>\n

Nevermind. Here’s the tally.<\/p>\n

Total “Inspirational”: 110.
\n<\/strong>
\nGeneral encouragement, motivation, morale-boosting = 53
\nincluded a scientific claim =3
\nreference to a historical figure = 9
\nreference to a pop culture celebrity = 6
\nstatement about love, trust, and friendship =11
\nstatement about friendship with animals = 3
\nbirthday greetings = 2
\npromoting good behaviour = 9
\ngrieving the death of a loved one = 1
\nstatement endorsing some kind of nonconformity = 13<\/p>\n

Total Humour: 225<\/strong><\/p>\n

Humour involving scientific or historical facts = 7
\nHumour involving coffee = 2
\nHumour involving roller derby players = 1
\nHumour involving cats or kittens = 39
\nHumour involving dogs or puppies = 5
\nHumour involving sex = 4
\nAffirmations of [one’s own] bad behaviour = 8
\nCriticism of [other people’s] stupidity or bad behaviour = 17
\nCriticism of pop culture = 4
\nCriticism of religion = 9
\nHumour \/ insults or put-downs = 4
\nPolitical satire = 1<\/p>\n

Humour involving a pop culture reference: 44
\n<\/strong>Of which:<\/p>\n

Humour involving actor \/ singer \/ pop celebrity = 4
\nStar wars = 10
\nDouglas Adams = 8
\nStar Trek = 4
\nFirefly = 3
\nLord of the Rings = 3
\nTerry Pratchett = 1
\nHP Lovecraft = 2
\nDr Who = 3
\nAvengers = 1
\nCalvin & Hobbes = 1
\nHarry Potter = 2
\nProbably a pop culture reference but I couldn’t identify it = 2<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember that social media experiment I did a few months back, in which I measured the “Diversity Quotient” of my social media feeds? Well, this afternoon I went back to my original dataset, and this time counted up all the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}