Sex, cats and the internet

It It is tempting to tell the history of the internet the way we tell the history of the worldmdashas the testosterone soaked actions of dudes Elon Musk being the latest But everyone knows the internet is really made by two things Sex and catsThe thesis dialogue of the series Pam and Tommy Hotstar about the leaked Pamela AndersonTommy Lee sex tape is Have you heard of the World Wide Web underlining that this is also the story of what sex and the Internet did to each otherTechnologymdashphotography to the internetmdashhas always been a weapon of mass seduction often invented for war and repurposed in the service of sexualness Pam and Tommy chronicles how many of the internetrsquos fundamental enginesmdashclickable advertisements online credit card payments and streaming videomdashwere developed and leveraged by the porn industryIn truth the internet gave expanded space to the entire world of sexualnessmdashselfexpression intimate connections for women and queer people romance flirtation carnality excitement sexwork eroticism dance song beautymdashof which pornography is just one the profitable part It is morality that creates the binary of love spiritual and sex base It is morality that also creates another binary about sex On one end mainstream pornography with its mechanical depictions of sex and sexism sleazy On the other the slightly colourless clinical conversations about sexpositivity as technical information on sexual health and mechanical definitions of consent and gender uplifting Sexualness is a swirling mass of sensation feeling desire good and bad poetry pleasure thrill power commerce objectification longing and humanness not easy to categorise into politically correct or incorrect We cannot easily separate the sensual from the consensual Pam and Tommy is not only a story of retrotech In Pam and Tommyrsquos relationship we also glimpse the raunch and heat of sex and the sweet of romance unselfconsciously intertwinedWell what man has cast asunder cats are online to put back together The first catvideo Pajamas and Nick Drake on YouTube was uploaded by its cofounder Steve Chen in 2005 2594329 cat images had been manually annotated in flickrcom by users In 2015 over 2 million cat videos had the highest average viewing of any content on You TubeThis weekend I received one video from this historic catvideo year 2015 Directed by a Chinese filmmaker He Xiaope Gay Cats describes itself as A three minute film from China showing how it is natural to be gay a cat and Christian Two cats He and He groom gambol lick nip make out fornicate make love lsquoprayrsquo as Celine Dion soars that My Heart Will Go On interspersed with their mewls and cries and solemn captions like ldquowe prayrdquo ldquosincererdquo and the exhortation ldquono matter who you have sex with safety is paramountrdquo ending with ldquocouple for a day grace in liferdquo Love is love and sex is se and ever the twain shall meet sometimes for an hour sometimes eternity consensual safe and sexyThe videorsquos humour irreverence sexual frisson hot funny romantic clever swirling in one cheerfully naughty place filled me with laughter and delight It has over 446000 views and was sent to me by a friend saying ldquohelp it reach half a million views and cheer up the director living through COVID in Beijingrdquo I say we do it for sex cats and the internetParomita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at paromitavohramiddaycom