"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" is an
adage
A proverb (from ) or an adage is a simple, traditional saying that expresses a perceived truth based on common sense or experience. Proverbs are often metaphorical and are an example of formulaic speech, formulaic language. A proverbial phrase ...
and
Internet meme
An Internet meme, or meme (, Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''MEEM''), is a cultural item (such as an idea, behavior, or style) that spreads across the Internet, primarily through Social media, social media platforms. Internet memes manif ...
about
Internet anonymity which began as a caption to a
cartoon
A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently Animation, animated, in an realism (arts), unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or s ...
drawn by
Peter Steiner, published in the July 5, 1993 issue of the American magazine ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
''.
The words are those of a large dog sitting on a chair at a desk, with a paw on the
keyboard of the computer, speaking to a smaller dog sitting on the floor nearby.
Steiner had earned between $200,000 and $250,000 by 2013 from its reprinting, by which time it had become the cartoon most reproduced from ''The New Yorker''.
In 2023, the original was sold at
auction
An auction is usually a process of Trade, buying and selling Good (economics), goods or Service (economics), services by offering them up for Bidding, bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from th ...
for $175,000, setting a record for the highest price ever paid for a comic.
[ ]
History
Peter Steiner, a
cartoonist
A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comics illustrators/artists in that they produce both the litera ...
and contributor to ''The New Yorker'' since 1979,
has said that although he did have an online account in 1993, he had felt no particular interest in the Internet then. He drew the cartoon only in the manner of a "make-up-a-caption" item, to which he recalled attaching no "profound" meaning, seeing that it had received little attention initially. He later stated that he felt as if he had created the "
smiley face" when his cartoon took on a life of its own, and he "can't quite fathom that it's that widely known and recognized".
On October 6, 2023, the original artwork was sold at a
Heritage Auctions sale of illustration art for $175,000.
Context
Once the exclusive domain of government engineers and academics, the Internet was by then becoming a subject of discussion in such general interest magazines as ''The New Yorker''.
Lotus Software
Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM) was an American software company based in Massachusetts; it was sold to India's HCL Technologies in 2018.
Lotus is most commonly known for the Lotus 1-2-3 sprea ...
founder and early Internet activist
Mitch Kapor
Mitchell David Kapor ( ; born November 1, 1950) is an American entrepreneur best known for his work as an application developer in the early days of the personal computer software industry, later founding Lotus Software, Lotus, where he was instr ...
commented in a ''
Time
Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...
'' magazine article in 1993 that "the true sign that popular interest has reached critical mass came this summer when ''The New Yorker'' printed a cartoon showing two computer-savvy canines".
According to
Bob Mankoff, then ''The New Yorker'' cartoon editor, "The cartoon resonated with our wariness about the facile façade that could be thrown up by anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of
html
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...
."
Implications
The cartoon symbolizes the liberation of one's Internet presence from popular prejudices. Sociologist
Sherry Turkle elaborates: "You can be whoever you want to be. You can completely redefine yourself if you want. You don't have to worry about the slots other people put you in as much. They don't look at your body and make assumptions. They don't hear your accent and make assumptions. All they see are your words." This was a view that Steiner says he shares.
The cartoon conveys an understanding of
Internet privacy
Internet privacy involves the right or mandate of personal privacy concerning the storage, re-purposing, provision to third parties, and display of information pertaining to oneself via the Internet. Internet privacy is a subset of data privacy. P ...
that implies the ability to send and receive messages—or to create and maintain a website—behind a mask of anonymity.
Lawrence Lessig
Lester Lawrence "Larry" Lessig III (born June 3, 1961) is an American legal scholar and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvar ...
suggests that "no one knows" because
Internet protocols
The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...
require no user to confirm their own identity. Although a
local access point in, for example, a university may require identity confirmation, it holds such information privately, without embedding it in external Internet transactions.
A study by Morahan-Martin and Schumacher (2000) on
compulsive or troublesome Internet use discusses this phenomenon, suggesting the ability to represent one's self behind the mask of a computer screen may be part of the compulsion to go online. The phrase may be taken "to mean that
cyberspace
Cyberspace is an interconnected digital environment. It is a type of virtual world popularized with the rise of the Internet. The term entered popular culture from science fiction and the arts but is now used by technology strategists, security ...
will be liberatory because gender, race, age, looks, or even 'dogness' are potentially absent or alternatively fabricated or exaggerated with unchecked creative license for a multitude of purposes both legal and illegal", an understanding that echoed statements made in 1996 by
John Gilmore, a key figure in the history of
Usenet
Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...
.
The phrase also indicates the ease of computer
cross-dressing: representing oneself as of a different gender; age; race; social, cultural, or economic class, etc.
[ In a similar sense, "the freedom which the dog chooses to avail itself of, is the freedom to ' pass' as part of a privileged group; ''i.e.'', human computer users with access to the Internet".]
In popular culture
* The cartoon inspired the play ''Nobody Knows I'm a Dog'' by Alan David Perkins. The play revolves around six individuals, unable to communicate effectively with people in their lives, who nonetheless find the courage to socialize anonymously on the Internet.
* Cyberdog, an Internet suite
An Internet suite is an Internet-related software suite. Internet suites usually include a web browser, e-mail client (often with a news client and address book), download manager, HTML editor, and an IRC client.
The diversity of Internet suite o ...
by Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...
, was named after this cartoon.
* A cartoon by Kaamran Hafeez published in ''The New Yorker'' on February 23, 2015, features a similar pair of dogs watching their owner sitting at a computer, with one asking the other, "Remember when, on the Internet, nobody knew who you were?"
* It has become a frequently used refrain in discussions about the Internet and as such has become an Internet meme
An Internet meme, or meme (, Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''MEEM''), is a cultural item (such as an idea, behavior, or style) that spreads across the Internet, primarily through Social media, social media platforms. Internet memes manif ...
, perhaps iconic to Internet culture
Internet culture refers to culture developed and maintained among frequent and active users of the Internet (also known as netizens) who primarily communicate with one another as members of online communities; that is, a culture whose influence ...
.
See also
* Animal–computer interaction
* '' Dog with a Blog''
References
Further reading
*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:On The Internet, Nobody Knows You're A Dog
1993 quotations
1993 works
Adages
Animals on the Internet
Individual printed cartoons
Internet culture
Internet memes about dogs
Works originally published in The New Yorker
1990s in Internet culture