The internet is a strange place full of the most ingenious yet worthless developments. One of these is a recent release which allows you to install a chrome extension that will then replace pictures of Tony Abbott on web pages with pictures of cute kittens.
At one level such software is banal in the extreme although when you think about it this software will make looking at Australian news sites considerably less stressful and so at this level it is actually a very helpful piece of software.
This is an interview with one of the creators from the Guardian:
Stop Tony Meow is an extension that replaces pictures of Tony Abbott with cats. Can you explain what made you decide to build it?
A few months ago Matt (@mattro) tweeted that he was “sick of looking at pictures of Tony’s face” and wanted to replace them with kittens. Ben Taylor (@taybenlor) put together a concept, and Matt asked me to build it into a browser extension. It was honestly just a little bit of fun that seems to have really resonated with people.
How does it work?
It’s a script that looks for the name “abbott” and then drops in a cute kitten photo from placekitten.com. It’s super, super simple and the simplicity seems to be why people are liking it so much.
Why cats? Aren’t there already enough on the Internet?
It’s not like there’s a level of saturation for them online. There can never be enough cats on the internet. We think of it as repurposing existing cat photos so that you can have a bit of joy brought to your day, instead of politics-linked stress. If you don’t like cats … well, that’s your own personality failing, it’s not on us.
I wonder if there is a John Key version being contemplated?
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