Why are cats so popular on the Internet? Miles Orvell, a cultural historian at Temple who specializes in visual culture, said that what the Internet has done is leverage a preexisting fascination. “There’s a contagious effect of the Internet where something that is there as a latent possibility can emerge at large in society,” he said. “It’s not so much creating this interest in cats, it’s more exploiting this interest that was already there.”
