It was a cultural moment when social networking company Facebook held its initial public offering (IPO) in May last year. The IPO was one of the biggest in the IT industry, and certainly the biggest in Internet history. There's still no clear evidence that advertizing on social media really works, but everybody feels pressure to be there, so Facebook had a peak market capitalization of over $104 billion the first day it traded. Now, its market capitalization is $66.29 billion, or 64 percent of its peak, confirming once again that Internet hype does not translate well into financial might. That is, at least not for those losers who got the IPO allocation.

Perhaps the poor stock performance has to do with all the cats on Facebook. Cats proliferate on Facebook, and they are propagating like crazy in recent times. You will not doubt that if you know what a "news feed" is. Forget about Catmoji, the social network site for cats, Facebook has them all.

Last year, Facebook reported that it had 955 million active users, but admitted that 8.7 percent of these accounts were fake. Among the 83 million bogus accounts, 2.4 percent of the monthly active user accounts were "misclassified accounts," such as a pet.

While a pet account is "misclassified", if it assumes the form of a personal account, it is perfectly legitimate for cats to have their "pages", and many of them do. Some even achieve international fame, like the Snoopy Cat. Aka Hong Xiaopang, the Snoopy Cat actually comes from Sichuan - another testimony to the freedom of China's Internet.

When we have a shared identity as cat lovers, collective actions easily follow, and in cyberspace we have social movement of the fingers and collective clicking actions. Around the world, when kids nag for a cat, time and again stupid parents tried to dodge the request by asking them to get 1,000 likes on Facebook. The kids usually end up with 10 times that number of likes, and of course, their cats.

Our city has its fair share of cat activism. Last November a stray cat was brutally abused by five people in Sau Mau Ping and put down after being found to have suffered severe internal bleeding. The incident caused much public attention and anger after the photo of the wounded cat was uploaded to Facebook. Numerous Facebook groups were immediately formed calling for dedicated animal police and tougher laws.

More often than not, cats are deployed to depoliticize and to void online exchanges of meaning. My favorite cat photo caption says "Look, I'm posting a cute picture of my cat to distract you from the fact I have nothing of interest to say." During the last US presidential election, someone even developed a browser extension called Unpolitic.me to replace political posts on Facebook and Twitter with various pictures of cats.

Cats are awesome pets to have, but what is the big deal with all these cute, mean, fat, and crazy cat photos on Facebook, and why does everyone like them? On top of the reason that they are so darn cute, people love cats because they are "independent". In the words of a cat enthusiast, "they are lovers, but they're not overly affectionate like pooches. They will beg you for attention at times and after a few minutes become bored with your petting. Each one has its own unique personality and it won't be afraid to show it."

By constructing an "ethos of independence" to cats, we appeal to the prevalent sense of what is politically correct. Dogs are not cool because they are subservient, while cats are cool because they are self-determining. While one may doubt whether or not anthropomorphism makes any sense outside of literature, this conceptual device nevertheless frees cat owners from the burden of guilt of being benevolent dictators. If I were those cat torturers, my defense would be that every cat has a different personality and that a stray cat was a masochist.

Cat owners often like to say their cats are their masters. This inversion is another device serving the same purpose of masking the real nature of the relationship. Paternalism is not necessarily bad, but denial is not a solution to this dilemma. If you can accept nothing short of an equal and consensual association, give your cat away.

The author is a current affairs commentator.

(HK Edition 03/20/2013 page1)