On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog

Last updated May 26, 2024

Peter Steiner's 1993 cartoon, as published in The New Yorker Internet dog.jpg — Peter Steiner's 1993 cartoon, as published in *The New Yorker*

"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" is an adage and Internet meme about Internet anonymity which began as a caption to a cartoon drawn by Peter Steiner, published in The New Yorker on July 5, 1993.^[1]^[2] The words are those of a large dog sitting on a chair at a desk, with his paw on the keyboard of the computer before him, speaking to a smaller dog sitting on the floor beside him.^[3] Steiner had earned between $200,000 and $250,000 by 2013 from its reprinting, by which time it had become the cartoon most reproduced from The New Yorker.^[1]^[4]^[5]^[6]^[7]^[8] The original was sold at auction for $175,000, setting a record for the highest price ever paid for a comic.^[7]^[8]

History

Peter Steiner, a cartoonist and contributor to The New Yorker since 1979,^[6] has said that although he did have an online account in 1993, he had felt no particular interest in the Internet then. He drew the cartoon only in the manner of a "make-up-a-caption" item, to which he recalled attaching no "profound" meaning, seeing that it had received little attention initially. He later stated that he felt as if he had created the "smiley face" when his cartoon took on a life of its own, and he "can't quite fathom that it's that widely known and recognized".^[1]

On October 6, 2023, the original artwork was sold at a Heritage Auctions sale of illustration art for $175,000.^[7]^[8]

Context

Once the exclusive domain of government engineers and academics, the Internet was by then becoming a subject of discussion in such general interest magazines as The New Yorker. Lotus Software founder and early Internet activist Mitch Kapor commented in a Time magazine article in 1993 that "the true sign that popular interest has reached critical mass came this summer when The New Yorker printed a cartoon showing two computer-savvy canines".^[9]

According to Bob Mankoff, then The New Yorker's cartoon editor, "The cartoon resonated with our wariness about the facile façade that could be thrown up by anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of html."^[10]

Implications

The cartoon symbolizes the liberation of one's Internet presence from popular prejudices. Sociologist Sherry Turkle elaborates: "You can be whoever you want to be. You can completely redefine yourself if you want. You don't have to worry about the slots other people put you in as much. They don't look at your body and make assumptions. They don't hear your accent and make assumptions. All they see are your words."^[11] This was a view that Steiner says he shares.^[7]

The cartoon conveys an understanding of Internet privacy that implies the ability to send and receive messages—or to create and maintain a website—behind a mask of anonymity. Lawrence Lessig suggests that "no one knows" because Internet protocols require no user to confirm their own identity. Although a local access point in, for example, a university may require identity confirmation, it holds such information privately, without embedding it in external Internet transactions.^[12]

A study by Morahan-Martin and Schumacher (2000) on compulsive or troublesome Internet use discusses this phenomenon, suggesting the ability to represent one's self behind the mask of a computer screen may be part of the compulsion to go online.^[13] The phrase may be taken "to mean that cyberspace will be liberatory because gender, race, age, looks, or even 'dogness' are potentially absent or alternatively fabricated or exaggerated with unchecked creative license for a multitude of purposes both legal and illegal", an understanding that echoed statements made in 1996 by John Gilmore, a key figure in the history of Usenet.^[14] The phrase also indicates the ease of computer cross-dressing: representing oneself as of a different gender; age; race; social, cultural, or economic class, etc.^[15] In a similar sense, "the freedom which the dog chooses to avail itself of, is the freedom to 'pass' as part of a privileged group; i.e., human computer users with access to the Internet".^[15]^[16]

In popular culture

The cartoon inspired the play Nobody Knows I'm a Dog by Alan David Perkins. The play revolves around six individuals, unable to communicate effectively with people in their lives, who nonetheless find the courage to socialize anonymously on the Internet.^[1]
The Apple Internet suite Cyberdog was named after this cartoon.^[17]
A cartoon by Kaamran Hafeez published in The New Yorker on February 23, 2015, features a similar pair of dogs watching their owner sitting at a computer, with one asking the other, "Remember when, on the Internet, nobody knew who you were?"^[18]
It has become a frequently used refrain in discussions about the Internet^[19] and as such has become an Internet meme, perhaps iconic to Internet culture.^[20]

Related Research Articles

Cyberspace is an interconnected digital environment. It is a type of virtual world popularized with the rise of the Internet. The term entered popular culture from science fiction and the arts but is now used by technology strategists, security professionals, governments, military and industry leaders and entrepreneurs to describe the domain of the global technology environment, commonly defined as standing for the global network of interdependent information technology infrastructures, telecommunications networks and computer processing systems. Others consider cyberspace to be just a notional environment in which communication over computer networks occurs. The word became popular in the 1990s when the use of the Internet, networking, and digital communication were all growing dramatically; the term cyberspace was able to represent the many new ideas and phenomena that were emerging. As a social experience, individuals can interact, exchange ideas, share information, provide social support, conduct business, direct actions, create artistic media, play games, engage in political discussion, and so on, using this global network. Cyberspace users are sometimes referred to as cybernauts.

James Grover Thurber was an American cartoonist, writer, humorist, journalist and playwright. He was best known for his cartoons and short stories, published mainly in The New Yorker and collected in his numerous books.

The New Yorker is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for The New York Times. Together with entrepreneur Raoul H. Fleischmann, they established the F-R Publishing Company and set up the magazine's first office in Manhattan. Ross remained the editor until his death in 1951, shaping the magazine's editorial tone and standards.

In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but could refer to any piece of equipment or functional unit that is connected to a larger system. Being online means that the equipment or subsystem is connected, or that it is ready for use.

Lester Lawrence Lessig III is an American legal scholar and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. He is the founder of Creative Commons and Equal Citizens. Lessig was a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for president of the United States in the 2016 US presidential election but withdrew before the primaries.

Sherry Turkle is an American sociologist. She is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She obtained a BA in social studies and later a PhD in sociology and personality psychology at Harvard University. She now focuses her research on psychoanalysis and human-technology interaction. She has written several books focusing on the psychology of human relationships with technology, especially in the realm of how people relate to computational objects. Her memoir 'Empathy Diaries' received excellent critical reviews.

<i>The Future of Ideas</i> 2001 book by Lawrence Lessig

The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World (2001) is a book by Lawrence Lessig, at the time of writing a professor of law at Stanford Law School, who is well known as a critic of the extension of the copyright term in US. It is a continuation of his previous book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, which is about how computer programs can restrict freedom of ideas in cyberspace.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cyberdog</span> Suite of computer applications for Internet use

Cyberdog was an OpenDoc-based Internet suite of applications, developed by Apple Computer for the Mac OS line of operating systems. It was introduced as a beta in February 1996 and abandoned in March 1997. The last version, Cyberdog 2.0, was released on April 28, 1997. It worked with later versions of System 7 as well as the Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9 operating systems.

A virtual community is a social work of individuals who connect through specific social media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals. Some of the most pervasive virtual communities are online communities operating under social networking services.

Internet culture is a quasi-underground culture developed and maintained among frequent and active users of the Internet who primarily communicate with one another online as members of online communities; that is, a culture whose influence is "mediated by computer screens" and information communication technology, specifically the Internet.

John Gregory Markoff is a journalist best known for his work covering technology at The New York Times for 28 years until his retirement in 2016, and a book and series of articles about the 1990s pursuit and capture of hacker Kevin Mitnick.

In computing, an avatar is a graphical representation of a user, the user's character, or persona. Avatars can be two-dimensional icons in Internet forums and other online communities, where they are also known as profile pictures, userpics, or formerly picons. Alternatively, an avatar can take the form of a three-dimensional model, as used in online worlds and video games, or an imaginary character with no graphical appearance, as in text-based games or worlds such as MUDs.

The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society is a research center at Harvard University that focuses on the study of cyberspace. Founded at Harvard Law School, the center traditionally focused on internet-related legal issues. On May 15, 2008, the center was elevated to an interfaculty initiative of Harvard University as a whole. It is named after the Berkman family. On July 5, 2016, the center added "Klein" to its name following a gift of $15 million from Michael R. Klein.

"A Rape in Cyberspace, or How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society" is an article written by freelance journalist Julian Dibbell and first published in The Village Voice in 1993. The article was later included in Dibbell's book My Tiny Life on his LambdaMOO experiences.

<i>Fat Guy Stuck in Internet</i> Television series

Fat Guy Stuck in Internet is an American science-fiction comedy television series created by John Gemberling and Curtis Gwinn for Cartoon Network's late-night adult-oriented programming block Adult Swim; and ended with a total of ten episodes.

Identity tourism may refer to the act of assuming a racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, sexual or gender identity for recreational purposes, or the construction of cultural identities and re-examination of one's ethnic and cultural heritage from what tourism offers its patrons.

<i>Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace</i> 1999 book by Lawrence Lessig

Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace is a 1999 book by Lawrence Lessig on the structure and nature of regulation of the Internet.

Information technology law, also known as information, communication and technology law or cyberlaw, concerns the juridical regulation of information technology, its possibilities and the consequences of its use, including computing, software coding, artificial intelligence, the internet and virtual worlds. The ICT field of law comprises elements of various branches of law, originating under various acts or statutes of parliaments, the common and continental law and international law. Some important areas it covers are information and data, communication, and information technology, both software and hardware and technical communications technology, including coding and protocols.

Peter Steiner is an American cartoonist, painter and novelist, best known for a 1993 cartoon published by The New Yorker which prompted the adage "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." He is also a novelist who has published four crime novels.

I say it's spinach is a twentieth-century American idiom with the approximate meaning of "nonsense" or "rubbish". It is usually spoken or written as an anapodoton, thus only the first part of the complete phrase is given to imply the second part, which is what is actually meant: "I say the hell with it."

References

1 2 3 4 Fleishman, Glenn (December 14, 2000). "Cartoon Captures Spirit of the Internet". The New York Times . Archived from the original on December 29, 2017. Retrieved October 1, 2007.
↑ Aikat, Debashis "Deb" (1993). "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog". University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Archived from the original on October 29, 2005. Retrieved February 8, 2019.
↑ EURSOC Two (2007). "New Privacy Concerns". EURSOC. Archived from the original on January 26, 2009. Retrieved January 26, 2009.
↑ "Everybody Knows You're a Dog / Boing Boing". boingboing.net. 17 October 2013. Archived from the original on 2019-03-28. Retrieved 2019-03-28.
↑ Fleishman, Glenn (October 29, 1998). "New Yorker Cartoons to Go on Line". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 22, 2008. Retrieved October 2, 2007.
1 2 "Brown's Guide to Georgia". brownsguides.com. January 2011. Archived from the original on 2014-03-12.
1 2 3 4 Berlinger, Max (October 22, 2023). "Auctions: The Most Reprinted 'New Yorker' Cartoon Fetches $175,000 at Auction—the Highest Price Ever Paid for a Single Comic". artnetnews. Artnet, artnet.com. Retrieved October 24, 2023. The cartoon has been printed on mugs and T-shirts, and even inspired a 1995 play.
1 2 3 "Peter Steiner (American, b. 1940). On The Internet, Nobody Knows You're A Dog" . Heritage Auctions. October 6, 2023.
↑ Elmer-DeWitt, Philip; Jackson, David S. & King, Wendy (December 6, 1993). "First Nation in Cyberspace". Time . Archived from the original on February 5, 2009. Retrieved March 21, 2009.
↑ Cavna, Michael (July 31, 2013). "'Nobody Knows You're a Dog': As iconic Internet cartoon turns 20, creator Peter Steiner knows the joke rings as relevant as ever". Washington Post . Archived from the original on 30 August 2016. Retrieved 6 January 2015.
↑ Hanna, B.; Nooy, Juliana De (2009). Learning Language and Culture Via Public Internet Discussion Forums. Springer. ISBN 9780230235823 . Retrieved 4 June 2017.
↑ Lessig, Lawrence (2006). Code: Version 2.0. New York: Basic Books. p. 35. ISBN 0-465-03914-6.
↑ Taylor, Maxwell; Quayle, Ethel (2003). Child Pornography: An Internet Crime. New York: Psychology Press. p. 97. ISBN 1-58391-244-4.
↑ Jordan, Tim (1999). "The Virtual Individual". Cyberpower: The Culture and Politics of Cyberspace and the Internet . New York: Routledge. p. 66. ISBN 0-415-17078-8.
1 2 Trend, David (2001). Reading Digital Culture. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing. pp. 226–7. ISBN 0-631-22302-9.
↑ Singel, Ryan (September 6, 2007). "Fraudster Who Impersonated a Lawyer to Steal Domain Names Pleads Guilty to Wire Fraud". Wired . Archived from the original on October 21, 2008. Retrieved October 2, 2007.
↑ Ticktin, Neil (February 1996). "Save Cyberdog!". MacTech . 12 (2). Archived from the original on April 19, 2012. Retrieved September 3, 2011.
↑ Vidani, Peter (February 23, 2015). "The New Yorker - A cartoon by Kaamran Hafeez, from this week's..." The New Yorker. Archived from the original on September 20, 2016. Retrieved July 29, 2016– via tumblr.com.
↑ Friedman, Lester D. (2004). Cultural Sutures: Medicine and Media. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press. ISBN 0822332949. Archived from the original on 29 June 2019. Retrieved 4 June 2017.
↑ Castro-Leon, Enrique; Harmon, Robert (December 22, 2016). Cloud as a Service: Understanding the Service Innovation Ecosystem. Apress. ISBN 9781484201039 . Retrieved 4 June 2017.