Your lives and the world you inhabit have now been reduced to ones and zeros. Make no mistake about it, the rise of the internet and the evolution of media in all its forms has shifted the documenting of everything from analogue to digital. The most obscure questions from the depths of existential thinking are just a nano-second from being answered and news is no longer just reactionary to an event, it can now be enjoyed as it happens.

This obviously applies to the (apparently) developed parts of our planet and I don’t want to fall in line with the inherent failures of these places by placing too much importance on our ‘first world problems’. Anybody reading this that deals with real issues, like poverty, famine and political oppression, may find more pointlessness here than truths. I don’t think it’s too drastic a guess to assume that the themes here apply to those who may read this due to the digital nature of its publication.

However, I may have offended YOU now. Think about it, if I hadn’t pointed out that the issues being raised here mean nothing when compared to the plight of millions of our fellow humans you might not have given thought to punishing me for being so privileged and ignorant in the comments section below. You might now. I’ve rather dangerously put an idea in your head that will affect how you view the rest of this article. You may read on (I hope you do) or you may get straight off this page and find a charity to donate to (do it, but read this first yeah?). Upon completing this small piece of admin you can take to the smug world of social networking to share your good deed with the world but, you know, using a picture of a cat.

You could put your computer or your phone away and spend some time on the real world, which I concede looks a bit like the real world in The Matrix. Either way I’ve coerced a reaction without knowing the first thing about you. Here lies the anonymous power of the internet.

So how do you get your news? The news media and journalism in general is one industry that lends itself perfectly to the Internet. Like the retail industry or ‘cat-portrait-accompanied-by-a-not-very-funny-attempt-at ironic-humour-caption’ industry, blogging has become a viable thing. It’s not a particularly reliable source but then as a medium it’s never interested in facts, just opinion. But before you turn your nose up at blogging for being the arena of the hipster, even if that‘s nearly true, don’t forget that almost every major news publication is now online and comes equipped with a blog section. Blog, the former moniker for modern day fruitless endeavours, now has recognisable and respected participants.

In reality the masses imbibe the news not from reliable places like news websites but from social networking and specifically their friends. There are those people in the world who seemingly sit at home with news on and a laptop and provide their own as it happens updates on what they’re seeing like they are providing a service to those without a television. It doesn’t occur to them that their online audience has just as much access to this information as they do.

But people are lazy especially when it comes to the news. They take the sensationalist way in which this information is being translated as gospel and do no research for themselves. Of course it’s overly sensational. It’s not shared in a concerned citizen sort of way and even if intentions here are honourable it’s still self gratifying to the point of being exploitative. Raising awareness is not as important as raising the number of congratulatory notifications.

The tangents followed here become the consciousness in which facts become misrepresented by hyperbole. In another step towards total weirdness the stories last longer here than they do in the normal sanctioned outlets. Whilst news moves on and new obsessions are found daily social networking concludes its involvement later by mocking that which it pretended to be so indignant about. This is achieved with the cunning use of pictures that can involve anything the fertile digital imagination can conjure but, like the untapped possibilities in the fraping world, usually end up using cats.

How did we evolve to this as a species and by evolve I mean something like the opposite of that. The most horrific or life altering events that occur daily are condensed to a hastily put together image. At the top of the picture will be something that depicts the horrors of the subject matter and at the bottom an underwhelmed feline displaying his disgust through the medium of facial expressions. Those with more time on their hands can add acronyms in the Internet style.

This is just the beginning. Soon we’ll inhabit a world where the news is read by cats or at least translated to the singular language spoken in the (apparently) developed world – cat facial expressions + caption. We’re dangerously putting the power in the hands of the most misunderstood pet to have ever existed. Think about it, where does your cat go at night? Why does your cat come and go at his own pleasure when your dog needs waste removal accompaniment just to empty his bowels? They’re plotting to rule us and they’ve started by taking over the news.

Phil Watson