On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog

Last updated November 03, 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 July 5, 1993 issue of the American magazine The New Yorker .^[1]^[2] The words are those of a large dog sitting on a chair at a desk, with a paw on the keyboard of the computer, speaking to a smaller dog sitting on the floor nearby.^[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]
Cyberdog, an Internet suite by Apple Inc., 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]

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References

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