Switched has a new home! Huffpost Tech.

Click here to visit the new home of Switched!

Hot on HuffPost Tech:

See More Stories
AOL Tech

Humans Creating Facebook Profiles for Their Pets

by Amar Toor on August 6, 2010 at 10:20 AM

Cats on Facebook
A sign that you might be losing your mind: You've created a Facebook profile for your cat. Don't get us wrong. We don't mind a little anthropomorphism every now and then. Hell, who doesn't get a hearty chuckle out of slapping a bow tie on a dog, and playing the Ginger Rogers to his Fred Astaire? But creating a Facebook profile for your dog? And writing in his non-existent voice? A little weird. For a lot of lonely people pet owners, though, it's totally normal.

Take Kirsty Worrall, a "crazy cat lady" and proud owner of a feline named Shiva. Worrall created a page for Shiva back in September, and regularly updates her cat's status to read things like, "Shiva Lingham is very upset that Mummy and Daddy have only been eating vegetarian food! ... Where's the Beef!" Another pet owner, this one of a parrot named Fruit Loop, recently felt compelled to write, "Fankyou everyone muchly for my wonderful Birthday msgs. Mumma ran out of Internet so I couldn't thankyou sooner.. My mumma made me some birdie muffins, yum yum. And I got a new toy! STOKED."

Many of these "people" claim they mean no harm in littering the social network with their kitty litter. In reality, though, they're running afoul of Facebook law. "People on Facebook want to interact with their real friends and the people they know in the real world," Facebook spokesperson Winnie Ko wrote in an e-mail to CNN. "Since accounts that impersonate anyone or anything can damage the integrity of this environment, Facebook doesn't allow fake profiles for pets." Feline fans, however, need not worry. You can still spend your day typing in tongues on pet-friendly social networks like Petzume. "Sometimes with other social networks, people feel pressure. They want to try and have important updates and make sure their image is protected," Petzume co-founder Anton Shepherd says. "But with a pet social network, you don't have to worry about that. You can just be yourself." [From: CNN]

Tags: animals, cats, dogs, facebook, pets, SocialNetworking, top, weird

Comments

1

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular