Animal Videos

I love them, my wife loves them, and we're not going to hide our love anymore.

Confession time: I have, of late, become one of those men who shares cute animal videos with his wife. This is a new development and one I am still working through, so I ask for your understanding as I sort through my feelings regarding this highly embarrassing matter.

The whole thing with my generation - the generation that used to be known as Generation Twitter before Elon Musk bought and renamed it - is that we don’t go in for simple and earnest enjoyment. We’re the shrug generation, the eyeroll generation, the whatever generation. That was fine in the days before video streaming. Once that happened, though, it was only a matter of time before the animal videos came along.

For years, I resisted. No, I don’t want to see a turtle riding a skateboard. No, I’m not interested in the video of a bear fixing a traffic cone. Not my bag, I would say. A blind elephant listening to Back? I’m only so strong!

First, it was just temptation. I might linger on a still frame for a moment or two. I might watch a few seconds before shutting my laptop in shame. Eventually, though, I succumbed. Now, I’ve got animal videos showing up on every timeline of every app I frequent and I will admit to you now that I frequent a lot of apps.

I remember my first – a deer kicking a soccer ball. I tried to scoff when the deer seemed to celebrate the goal it scored, but my laughs were hollow. The fact is, I was happy for that horse, and more than anything, happy for myself being happy for the horse. That wondrous, soccer ball-kicking deer. In that moment, I knew I had a choice to make. I could either learn to love these animal videos in earnest or I would have to turn my back on them forever.

Animal videos cannot be enjoyed ironically. There’s no The Room of animal videos. You either love them or you don’t and, frankly, if you don’t love them, I don’t want to know you.

Martha and I were watching animal videos independently, in secret, before we started swapping. It started the way these things usually start - with a cat video or two. Eventually it progressed to other domesticated species: piggies, cows. Lately, though, it’s basically anything goes. Shetland ponies, weird-looking fish, even dogs riding surfboards for God’s sake. We love them all and we’re proud to love them; we don’t give a shit anymore.

The thing about animals is that they have no idea they’re on camera. There’s no professional animal actors. That’s why animals are always the best part of any movie; they don’t know they’re in a movie. They’re just in it for the treats. Except for Eddie, the dog from Frasier, who was, in fact, a classically trained actor. He attended RADA on full scholarship and was the first dog to perform the title role in Titus Andronicus. Reviews were mixed, but everybody agreed that the simple act of a little Jack Russell Terrier memorizing all that complicated dialogue was a remarkable achievement in and of itself.

Animals are guileless. Their reactions are honest and without self-consciousness. Animal videos enthrall us, not because of what they tell us about the animals, but what they tell us about themselves. We recognize ourselves in the problem-solving crow, the flailing panda bear, the curious humpback whale. That’s why the videos are so delightful, because we recognize our shared experiences on this planet.

“They’re like people,” we say when what we really mean is, “We’re like animals.”

Because, after all, that’s what we are.

Ok, I’m going to make another confession: I became a vegetarian in November of last year. I don’t talk about it because the last thing anybody wants to hear about is somebody else’s diet. The reason I mention it at all is because my enjoyment of animal videos has increased exponentially since I stopped devouring the subjects of those videos. A pig giving hugs is a lot cuter when I don’t have to wrestle with the guilt of knowing the subject of the video might end up in my BLT.

Then again, Martha continues to ruthlessly consume the flesh of our animal friends and she seems to enjoy the videos just fine. Did I marry a sociopath? Almost certainly.

It is kind of weird to consider how many millions of species with whom we share this planet, even weirder that we’re the only ones that pass animal videos back and forth. This is almost certainly a result of the fact that animals don’t have iPhones, but I still find it a curious phenomenon, one that merits further study. Maybe we could recruit a bunch of animals, give them iPhones loaded with the most adorable animal videos we can find, then we sit back and watch what happens. Can you imagine? Otters with iPhones! Baby chimps! Dolphins watching videos of playful giraffes! I’m getting a little overwhelmed just thinking about it. Obviously, the entire experiment will be filmed so we can share it with our loved ones.