Patrick Simpson

Sky reports on the rising trend of social ‘petworking’. As the term suggests, this is social networking, for pets. The article offers Sasha as an exmple. Sasha’s updates say: I am the laid back one of the family. I love sunning myself on the swing in the back garden. Now this may seem like a harmless bit of fun, but it is fraught with dangers.

One such danger is dognapping, enabled by the detailed information on walking routes on the online profiles.  According to wikipedia, this is one of the fastest growing forms of crime in the UK. This, however, is the least of the problems caused by social petworking. As documented earlier, social networking can cause a lack of concentration and a general maladjustment to modern society. There is no reason to believe that the effects will be any less serious for pets. And the results of this are already visible. For example, this year no dogs are expected to take any A-levels in maths, dashing any hopes of a future career. The pets’ social skills are also being affected. In many dog-walking parks the level of conversation has reached deplorable depths, often not consisting of more than an incoherent collection of grunts, growls and barks.

This may also be a good time to point out that there does not seem to be a consensus on whether dogs can, in fact, speak or type at all. After my post about my plant, several psychiatrists pointed out that speech is the exclusive preserve of humans. Though for all I know, these psychiatrists are just figments of my imagination. However, if these dogs are incapable of speech, something sinister is going on. It must mean their ‘owners’ are updating these profiles, under the spell of their pets. This is not a big problem when the dog is just ‘telling’ its owner that it is very laid back and loves sunning itself, but what if the dog starts telling the owner it is a thirteen-year-old girl? Horrible things happen to thirteen-year-old girls on the internet! And for all I know, the dog is actually a middle-aged predator pretending to be a thirteen-year-old girl! We must do something about this threat! And what if the dog tells the owner to go on a killing spree? Do you want that blood on your hands? Thought not! The solution is obvious: there needs to be a global surveillance system that monitors all dogs for suspicious behaviour. Now! The longer we wait, the more thirteen-year-old girls will die!