Cute economy is one of the economies that emerged from the creation of new technologies. It is an economy that is reputed for curating and disseminating animals’ images by their owners or passersby who developed interest in their (animals) “cuteness” on social networking sites with the purpose of having financial reward or helping others feel their essence in human life. In this piece, our analyst discusses Maddox’s (2020) recent empirical paper which explores the economy through the views of selected Pet Instagram account users and also connect the scholar’s outcomes with Nigeria’s cute economy, establishing how people also participate in it which leads to mixed outcomes as exemplified by Maddox.
To justify the emergence of the economy due to technological revolution, using various scholars and responses of the interviewed pet owners, Maddox conceptualises mediated pets as 19th century Industrial Revolution driven culture of sharing human-pet relationship images in which “individuals often have intense emotional attachments to their furry companions.”
This position is further explored from the responses of 23 individuals who run Instagram accounts for their pets. Self-representation and humanistic pet ownership, politics of pet photos and, imperative and problem of joy emerged as dominant themes for understanding the “cuteness” of animals, benefits curators and their followers are getting from viewing the images.
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According to the Pet Instagram account owners, engaging in the economy afforded them the opportunity of digitally constructing self-image through animals. This is similar to what some Nigerian celebrities, who believe in sharing pet images, are getting. In some cases, they have literarily used babies of their pets to indicate that they (celebrities) are proud mothers. This manifests most often when the owners are also in the images.
In other words, owners feel that they are being concerned with the ways animal live and showing others that they could as well make the world enjoyable for animals. However, Maddox seems to be warning us that we should not be complacent with the furry of being making animals “Cuteness” through images dissemination on social networking with the finding that “Pet Instagram images may reveal more information about the poster than the pet.” This is in consonance with Nigerian celebrities, who use animal images for establishing their presence in particular locations with the intention of letting their fans know what they have achieved instead of revealing animal’s contributions to humanity.
Therefore, curators could be accused of playing politics with pet images. Politics of pet photos, the second theme, found by Maddox expatiates this submission through weighing animal images in terms of monetary values they (images) could bring to the curators, how followers joke with the animals and also get frustrated when seeing pictures of the same animal. While our analyst has never experienced the case of negotiating the price of images in Nigeria, there are cases of joking about personality and essence of some animals on various online communities or forums such as Nairaland.
For instance, referring to his dog’s prowess, one commented thus: “He kills every live chicken he comes across angrily.” Another person says: “When she is unchained and outside the compound with me or anybody, no dog passes her territory without a fight.”
With all these, it is easier to conclude that both the curators and followers are oppressing animals. Taking images and negotiating price without getting the animals’ consent and to state their worth represents some of the cruelties of man against animals in the economy. Joking about them, our analyst submits that, could be due to the poor representation by the Pet Instagram owners. If followers, as documented by Maddox, know the essence of animals in their health management, they would not be using derogatory words to describe them because life in the digital sphere is “not all about doom, gloom and capitalism.”
Therefore, it is essential that pet owners take quality photos and describe the values of their animals in positive terms. The emphasis should be on how to communicate animal values to relieve people of their psychological problems, especially mental health challenges, as the world still faces many negatives as a result of various socioeconomic and political challenges.
Despite giving animals a sense of belonging in the digital age through sharing of their images, from Maddox’s (2020) findings to my experience, our analyst notes that cute economy is more beneficial to man than animals. Therefore, it is hard to accept the concept of “more than human”, which expects man to be respectful of animal rights and include them while working towards managing the environment sustainably.