Welcome to today's Deep Dive. We have a really
incredibly specific mission today, and I am just
thrilled you are joining us for it. We are going
to look at a single, seemingly simple image.
Yeah, just one single image. Right. An image
published in 1993 that... entirely by accident
managed to predict the entire psychological and
social architecture of the modern internet. It
really serves as a profound piece of cultural
history. And it's completely disguised as a passing
magazine joke. Our stack of notes for today's
deep dive comes directly from the Wikipedia page
dedicated to the legendary adage and meme. You
probably know it. On the internet, nobody knows
you're a dog. Oh, absolutely. That phrase has
permeated modern culture so deeply that... I
mean, almost everyone has heard it, or at least
they've felt the sociological effects of it,
even if they have no idea where it actually originated.
To understand the origin, I want you to put yourself
back in time. Picture this. It is July 5th, 1993.
A very different era. Completely different. You
open up a fresh copy of the New Yorker magazine.
As you flip through the pages of dense articles
and cultural commentary, you pause at a cartoon.
Just a standard black and white drawing. Exactly.
It's a drawing of a large dog. He is sitting
upright on an office chair at a desk with one
of his paws resting casually on a computer keyboard.
Looking very professional. Yeah. He's looking
down, speaking to a smaller dog who is just sitting
on the floor nearby. And the caption at the bottom
reads, On the internet, nobody knows you're a
dog. OK, let's unpack this. Because the best
place to start is actually with the creator of
the image, Peter Steiner. He was a cartoonist
who had been contributing to The New Yorker since
1979, I believe. Right. And the ultimate irony
of this massive cultural touchstone is that Steiner
did not care much about the Internet at all.
Yeah. The sources mention he actually had an
online account in 1993, but he felt no particular
interest in the medium. He was not, you know,
some cyber pioneer trying to make a grand sweeping
statement about the digital. future of humanity.
Not at all. He drew the cartoon essentially as
a standard make up a caption exercise. He just
sketched out the dogs, attached absolutely no
profound meaning to the joke, and sent it off
to his editor. Just another day at work. Right.
And he later recalled that it received very little
attention when it was initially published. It
was really just another cartoon in a magazine
that's famous for publishing dozens of them every
single week. But the cultural simmer took a little
time. Once it caught on, it began to take on
this totally unstoppable life of its own. It
eventually became a staple of early cyber culture.
Which was a huge surprise to him. Oh, Steiner
himself was shocked by the trajectory. He later
remarked that he felt like he had accidentally
created the smiley face. Which is just the perfect
metaphor, honestly. Yeah. The smiley face is
an image so ubiquitous that it belongs to the
global consciousness rather than a single artist.
Yeah, it's bigger than the person who drew it.
Exactly. Steiner admitted he could not fathom
how a simple drawing of two dogs talking at a
desk had become universally recognized. And the
financial reality of that recognition is just
staggering. I mean, by 2013, 20 years after the
cartoon was published, Steiner had made between
$200 ,000 and $250 ,000. That is incredible for
a single panel. Right. And that revenue was generated
purely from the reprinting fees. It went on to
become the single most reproduced cartoon in
the entire history of The New Yorker. Considering
the thousands of iconic cartoons that particular
magazine has published over nearly a century,
taking the top spot is a monumental achievement.
It really is. The image ended up on coffee mugs,
T -shirts, presentation slides, textbooks. And
the financial milestones continued well past
the initial print run, too. Oh, yeah, I saw those
numbers in the notes. In October of 2023, the
original physical artwork went to a heritage
auction sale of illustration art. It sold for
$175 ,000. That specific auction set the record
for the highest price ever paid for a single
comic. What's fascinating here is how a throwaway
sketch managed to capture a massive societal
shift at the exact moment it was happening, even
if the artist was completely unaware of the gravity
of the technological revolution occurring around
him. To really grasp that societal shift, we
have to look closely at the landscape of 1993.
The Internet was not the colorful, video -heavy,
app -driven ecosystem we know today. Not even
close. Before 1993, the Internet was largely
an exclusive, invisible club. It was the domain
of government engineers, military researchers,
university academics. It was incredibly niche.
Very niche. The interface was entirely text -based.
You were staring at glowing green or amber text
on a black screen, typing out command lines.
It was highly technical and completely off the
radar of mainstream pop culture. But 1993 was
the year the foundation started to crack. The
Internet was just beginning to transition into
the public sphere. General interest magazines
were suddenly publishing articles trying to explain
this this information superhighway to everyday
people. Right. That buzzword was everywhere.
Yeah. And the sources include a great observation
from Mitch Kapoor, the founder of Lotus Software
and a very early digital activist. He provided
a quote to Time magazine in December of 1993,
reflecting on the cultural momentum of that specific
year. He argued that this New Yorker cartoon
was the true sign that popular interest in the
Internet had reached critical mass. Which makes
perfect sense. It does. When a mainstream, highbrow
literary magazine can publish a joke about a
niche computer network and the general public
actually understands the punchline, a major threshold
has been crossed. And a large part of what the
public was beginning to understand was the very
specific, almost theatrical nature of this new
digital world. Theatrical is a great way to put
it. Bob Mankoff, the cartoon editor for The New
Yorker at the time, offered a brilliant perspective
on why the joke landed so perfectly. He noted
that the cartoon resonated with the collective
wariness about the facile facade that could be
thrown up by anyone with a rudimentary knowledge
of HTML. That phrase, facile facade, really jumps
out. HTML, or hypertext markup language, is the
basic coding language used to build web pages.
Right, the building blocks. And Mankoff is pointing
out that if you knew just a little bit of that
code in the early 90s, You could build a digital
storefront that made you look like a massive,
legitimate corporation. Or even in a text -based
chat room. Exactly. You could present yourself
as a wealthy socialite, a renowned expert, or
literally anything else you desired. This phenomenon
was not just a psychological quirk of early users,
though. It was baked directly into the technical
architecture of the Internet. I feel so. To understand
why this facade was so easily constructed, the
sources point to the work of legal scholar Lawrence
Lessig. He breaks down the actual mechanics of
this anonymity. Okay. The fundamental protocols
that run the internet, the underlying rules that
dictate how computers talk to each other, simply
do not require a user to confirm their own physical
identity. Wait, let me make sure I understand
the mechanics of that. If I log on to a computer
at a university lab in 1993, I still have to
type in my student ID, right? The school knows
exactly who is sitting at that terminal. How
does the internet strip that identity away? That
is the crucial distinction Lessig makes. The
local access point, like your university computer
lab, does require you to log in. They know who
you are locally. Right. But that local system
holds your identity privately. It does not embed
your physical identity into your external internet
transactions. When your message or your data
request leaves the university network and travels
out into the wider web, the personal identity
tag is stripped away. The underlying TCP IP protocols
are just moving packets of data from point A
to point B. They do not carry your driver's license.
The architecture itself creates the mask. So
what does this all mean? We suddenly have this
new, globally connected system where you can
communicate with anyone, anywhere, and the system
is actively designed to hide who you really are.
It's a huge shift in human interaction. How did
society react to being handed that kind of power?
The initial reaction, particularly among early
adopters and sociologists in the 1990s, was highly
optimistic. This technological mask was viewed
as a profound, unprecedented liberation. The
sources highlight the perspective of sociologist
Sherry Turkle, who studied human -computer interaction.
Her take paints a fascinating picture of those
early days. She was very influential in this
area. Very. She saw the dog cartoon as a symbol
of total liberation from real -world prejudices.
Think about it. In these early text -based spaces,
you have no physical body. You have no vocal
accent for people to judge. Right, no visual
cues at all. None. Other users cannot see your
race, your gender. gender, your physical age,
or your physical abilities. All they have to
judge you on are the words you type on the screen.
Turkle elaborated on the psychological freedom
of that environment. She noted that you could
be whoever you wanted to be. You could completely
redefine yourself without having to worry about
the societal slots other people automatically
put you into based on your appearance. Even Peter
Steiner, the cartoonist who admitted he didn't
care much about the Internet, later said he shared
this optimistic interpretation. It's a very appealing
idea. It is. The appeal of escaping the snap
judgments that happen the second someone looks
at you in the physical world is universally understood.
This. specific freedom led to a behavior that
the sources refer to as computer cross -dressing.
Computer cross -dressing. Yes. Yes. John Gilmore,
a pioneer of Usenet, which was an early distributed
discussion system that basically served as the
grandfather to modern forums like Reddit, he
spoke about this concept. Okay. Because your
physical self is completely absent from the interaction,
it can be alternatively fabricated or heavily
exaggerated. You are handed an unchecked creative
license over your own identity. If you wanted
to fabricate your gender, your age, or your economic
class, you could do it effortlessly. You could
theoretically log into five different chat rooms
and be five completely different people exploring
different facets of your personality in each
one. There is a deep, nuanced interpretation
of the cartoon mentioned in the sources that
highlights the power dynamics of this unchecked
license. The cartoon is not merely a joke about
a dog learning to type. Right. It goes deeper
than that. It is about the specific freedom the
dog chooses to avail itself of. The dog is utilizing
digital anonymity to pass as a member of a privileged
group. And in the context of the cartoon, the
privileged group is human computer users. Precisely.
It serves as an allegory for how the Internet
allowed marginalized groups to shed the physical
markers of their marginalization. They could
pass and have their voices heard in spaces where
they might otherwise be ignored, dismissed, or
actively discriminated against in the physical
world. While that utopian vision of liberation
is beautiful, giving human beings a magical,
consequence -free mask of anonymity inevitably
leads to complications. It always does. There's
a darker side to having unchecked creative license
over your identity. The sources bring in a fascinating
psychological study from the year 2000 conducted
by researchers Morahan Martin and Schumacher.
They were investigating the mechanics of compulsive
or troublesome Internet use. Looking at what
was drawing people in too deep. Exactly. They
wanted to understand what specific elements of
the digital world were driving severe addiction.
What were they actually looking for in that study?
Were they looking at the games or the chat rooms?
They were looking at the psychological hooks
of the medium itself. They suggested that this
exact phenomenon, the ability to represent oneself
behind the mask of a computer screen, might actually
be a core compulsion driving troublesome Internet
use. So the mask itself is the drug. Yes. The
intoxicating power of that facile facade Mankoff
described can become highly addictive. Consider
a hypothetical scenario. If someone's real life
is incredibly difficult, if they feel powerless
at their job or socially isolated in their physical
community, the ability to log onto a server and
instantly become a powerful, respected, or completely
different entity offers a massive psychological
escape. That makes total sense. The compulsion
to stay online, where you control the narrative
of who you are, can easily overpower the desire
to participate in the physical world. where you
lack that control. If we connect this to the
bigger picture, the very architectural feature
that made the Internet feel so freeing and utopian
to sociologists in 1993 is the exact same feature
that makes it psychologically dangerous. A double
-edged sword. You can hide your physical vulnerabilities
from prejudice, but you can also use that exact
same mask to hide malicious intent or to completely
detach from reality. Absolutely. Here's where
it gets really interesting. just stay confined
to sociology papers or the pages of the new yorker
the joke rippled outward into the broader culture
in incredibly surprising ways society was actively
trying to process this new mode of human interaction
and you can see that reflection in the arts like
the play yes in 1995 a playwright named alan
david perkins wrote a stage play directly inspired
by the cartoon literally titled nobody knows
i'm a dog The premise of the play aligns perfectly
with the Morihan Martin and Schumacher study
we just talked about. It revolves around six
individuals who are completely unable to communicate
effectively with the people in their real physical
lives. Because they're paralyzed by their physical
world insecurities. Exactly. But they find the
courage to socialize, connect, and express themselves
anonymously on the internet. It is the sociological
debate played out on stage. And the tech world
embraced the cultural milestone as well. Apple
Inc. developed an internet suite, which in the
mid -90s was essentially an all -in -one software
package combining a web browser, email client,
and newsreader. A big deal at the time. Huge
deal. And they named the entire project CyberDog,
specifically to honor Steiner's cartoon. The
image became an iconic meme before the general
public even really used the word meme. That's
very true. But the Internet of 1993 did not stay
the Internet of 1993. As the technology matured,
we moved away from the anonymous text based chat
rooms of the early days and entered the modern
era of social media, data tracking and algorithmic
surveillance. That evolution brings us to a brilliant
full circle moment detailed in the sources. In
February of 2015, The New Yorker published another
cartoon. This one was drawn by Kamran Hafiz,
acting as a direct sequel to the original. It
is a devastatingly accurate update. The 2015
cartoon also features two dogs, but this time
they're not the ones sitting at the keyboard.
The dynamic completely flipped. They're sitting
on the floor, looking up and watching their human
owner sitting at the computer. One dog turns
to the other and asks, Remember when, on the
internet, nobody knew who you were? It perfectly
captures the death of the very anonymity Steiner
was originally joking about. By 2015, the concept
of true, effortless anonymity on the mainstream
Internet was largely a relic of the past. It
really was. Between tracking cookies, following
your browser history, sophisticated algorithms
analyzing your behavior, social media profiles
tied directly to your legal name and facial recognition
software, the Internet no longer simply knows
you are a dog. It knows way more than that. It
knows what specific brand of dog food you prefer,
how many blocks you walk every Tuesday, and the
demographic profile of the other dog. you associate
with. The facile facade Mankoff described hasn't
necessarily disappeared, but it has been heavily
commercialized, tracked, and monetized by the
platforms hosting it. Exactly. The facade is
now a product. To summarize the incredible journey
outlined in these sources, a throwaway magazine
caption drawn by an artist who barely utilized
the technology managed to perfectly define the
sociology, the privacy debates, and the cultural
compulsions of the entire digital age. It's wild
to think about. It began as an optimistic joke
about liberation, evolved into a clinical study
of psychological compulsion, and eventually became
an elegy for the digital privacy we surrendered
along the way. It functions as a perfect encapsulated
time capsule. of our relationship with technology.
So think about your own digital footprint today.
When you open a browser, post on a forum, or
scroll through a feed, how much of a dog are
you actually able to be? That's a great question.
How much of your true, unvarnished self are you
putting out there? And how much is still a carefully
constructed, albeit highly tracked, facade? This
raises an important question. Because while human
anonymity might be vanishing under the weight
of data tracking, the concept of the mask itself
has not gone away. No, it hasn't. It is simply
being worn by entirely new entities. I want to
leave you with a final thought to mull over,
drawing on a fascinating concept mentioned right
at the end of our sources, tucked away under
the see also section. It is a concept known as
the dead internet theory. A very unsettling theory.
It really is. The original 1993 - joke relied
on the freedom of hiding the fact that you are
a dog typing at a keyboard but today as online
anonymity has evolved and the architecture has
been flooded with massive automated networks
of bots and ai algorithms designed to drive engagement
the context has shifted entirely the whole paradigm
has changed When you read a comment, debate a
stranger, or consume a piece of digital content
today, the most pressing question is no longer
whether the user hiding behind the screen is
secretly a dog. It's whether the user behind
the screen is even a living, breathing entity
at all. A complex and lingering thought to navigate
as we continue to build this digital world. Thank
you for joining us on this deep dive. We'll catch
you next time.