"The relationship between a pet and an owner is an inherently limited one, both by simple realities of cognition and by the animal’s status as property. DOGTV is born from the same loveless system of dehumanization as most other products today, a flawed component in a machine that’s increasingly inclined to use our bond with dogs to define and enforce new inhumanities. It was never for the dogs. Like most non-essential pet products, it exists for the owners, those that feel insecure in their relationship to their pets, hoping that mutually consuming enough content will fundamentally deepen and secure their connection. To make a very long story short, money can certainly help in finding love, but it still cannot buy it, even from a dog."
I’ll be honest, the timeline section REALLY undermined the piece for me. Arranging facts in sequence isn’t the same as demonstrating a causal connection, and is the structure of conspiracy thinking even when individual facts check out. Pavlov, Pinochet, Abu Ghraib, and IDF dog units are all real, but juxtaposing them with a dog streaming service doesn’t make DOGTV a node in a system of dehumanization. You could apply the same method to argue that Garfield (the cat comic strip) is a Pentagon psyop: it was launched in 1978 during the Cold War, its creator Jim Davis has said in interviews that he designed it for mass merchandising rather than artistic expression, and its passive lasagna-eating protagonist arguably normalized American consumer complacency during the Reagan era. Every fact there is true but the connection is invented.
The consumer criticism in the first half made some solid points but the geopolitical scaffolding felt like the Charlie conspiracy meme from Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and seeing as you (off the bat) admitted to having a short attention span, it’s clear to me that the entire thought needs a lot more discipline.
The timeline isn't supposed to be demonstrating a causal connection, it's demonstrating contrastive histories. You're also conflating explicit and implicit influences here with your Jim Davis comparison -- sure, so far as we know, Jim Davis wasn't a CIA asset or something, but the market-forward approach of Garfield obviously emerges from capitalist American ideology, and I don't see what problem there is with at the very least seeing Garfield's passive lasagna-eating as mimetic of American consumer complacency. The connection is not "invented," culture emerges from these conditions, it reflects aspects of the society that created it.
As for "conspiracy thinking"... you may have come to the wrong place with that language as a put-down, because this is an ardently and openly pro-conspiracy blog:
"The relationship between a pet and an owner is an inherently limited one, both by simple realities of cognition and by the animal’s status as property. DOGTV is born from the same loveless system of dehumanization as most other products today, a flawed component in a machine that’s increasingly inclined to use our bond with dogs to define and enforce new inhumanities. It was never for the dogs. Like most non-essential pet products, it exists for the owners, those that feel insecure in their relationship to their pets, hoping that mutually consuming enough content will fundamentally deepen and secure their connection. To make a very long story short, money can certainly help in finding love, but it still cannot buy it, even from a dog."
damn man
And don’t even get me started about cats!
Hilarious and disturbing. And encyclopedic. Thanks.
That’s the trifecta I typically shoot for, thank you.
Glad you enjoyed!
The brown.edu link is broken, I need to know how the pet food lords killed Allende that's CRAZY
They had a chicken feed processing plant down there that was apparently one of the first American companies expropriated.
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/itt-actions-cause-suspicion-involvement-chilean-coup#:~:text=3.%20Most%20of%20the%20key%20cabinet%20posts%20went%20to%20communists.%20On%20November%2020
Slightly better detail here
https://library.brown.edu/create/modernlatinamerica/chapters/chapter-10-chile/figures-in-chilean-history/#:~:text=Corporate%20executives%20from,the%20Chilean%20economy.
Was missing the "L" in library!
james this rocks
I’ll be honest, the timeline section REALLY undermined the piece for me. Arranging facts in sequence isn’t the same as demonstrating a causal connection, and is the structure of conspiracy thinking even when individual facts check out. Pavlov, Pinochet, Abu Ghraib, and IDF dog units are all real, but juxtaposing them with a dog streaming service doesn’t make DOGTV a node in a system of dehumanization. You could apply the same method to argue that Garfield (the cat comic strip) is a Pentagon psyop: it was launched in 1978 during the Cold War, its creator Jim Davis has said in interviews that he designed it for mass merchandising rather than artistic expression, and its passive lasagna-eating protagonist arguably normalized American consumer complacency during the Reagan era. Every fact there is true but the connection is invented.
The consumer criticism in the first half made some solid points but the geopolitical scaffolding felt like the Charlie conspiracy meme from Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and seeing as you (off the bat) admitted to having a short attention span, it’s clear to me that the entire thought needs a lot more discipline.
Peace and love.
The timeline isn't supposed to be demonstrating a causal connection, it's demonstrating contrastive histories. You're also conflating explicit and implicit influences here with your Jim Davis comparison -- sure, so far as we know, Jim Davis wasn't a CIA asset or something, but the market-forward approach of Garfield obviously emerges from capitalist American ideology, and I don't see what problem there is with at the very least seeing Garfield's passive lasagna-eating as mimetic of American consumer complacency. The connection is not "invented," culture emerges from these conditions, it reflects aspects of the society that created it.
As for "conspiracy thinking"... you may have come to the wrong place with that language as a put-down, because this is an ardently and openly pro-conspiracy blog:
https://www.discordiareview.com/p/is-one-of-americas-most-beloved-authors