I originally joined Reddit in 2011, and in the beginning it was dominated by cat content. It was rare to see a post about dogs. Sometime in the mid 20-teens this phenomenon reversed. It’s always been a “pet theory” of mine that this reversal was due to Reddit becoming mainstream, and that it’s initial nerdy/techie user base preferred cats to dogs.
I think my theory is further supported by Lemmy. It’s pretty clear that most of Lemmy’s user base are techies, and currently it’s dominated by cat content. Just a shower thought. May be wrong.
NOTE: I love dogs and cats. This post isn’t arguing favoritism.
I dont know, all my non techie friends have cats because they arent home enough or dont have a yard for a dog even thought they wish they could, so they settle for a house cat. I wonder if there is a connection with the economy and percentage of dog/cat owners
Dam this gives us a whole new tool to study society and economy, dogs are defintely more expensive to own than cats right, just in general? Not just in terms of money, but time also.
I recently read a theory that house plant ownership rises with poor economy performance as well, for this same reason.
Houseplants are the new pets. Pets are the new children, and children are the new exotic pets.
the world is rebalancing in the wake of our new AI overlords and lack of sustenance
I would disagree with that. Had both most of my life. Cats live much longer on average and tend to have health problems that go longer term, especially kidney and bladder issues. But I’m just going off my own experience, I have no idea what the numbers would look like overall.
My current ratio is 2 cats:1 dog
deleted by creator