Grumpy Cat (David Livingston / Getty Images)
The world’s come a long way since 1993, when the New Yorker published Peter Steiner’s cartoon of two canines above the caption: “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” making us laugh at the absurd notion of household pets on the World Wide Web. Now, almost two dozen years later, your dog — or cat or hedgehog or pot-bellied pig — is a nobody unless it’s got an Instagram account, Twitter feed, Facebook page — or all three. Here’s a look at some of the animal kingdom’s current social media standouts.
For the Record
2:47 p.m., June 20: An earlier version of this article used an incorrect time frame when referring to a 1993 New Yorker cartoon. The cartoon appeared nearly two dozen years ago, not a dozen years ago.
Twitter’s most-followed feline is Sockamillion, a gray-and-white domestic shorthair from Waltham, Mass., whose @Sockington Twitter feed has 1.34 million followers.
Grumpy Cat
Lil Bub
Internet celebrity cat Lil Bub known for her unique appearance is held by owner Mike Bridavsky at the inaugural CatConLa event in Los Angeles.
Lil Bub (Mark Ralston / AFP / Getty Images)
Share your photos: Show us your pets, and tell us how you “met”
When it comes to canines, Twitter’s top dog is a 12-year-old Shih Tzu named Marnie with 99,300 followers, but @Kermit_Thedog (owned by YouTube personality Jenna Marbles) is a chew toy’s toss away at 98,100.
On Facebook, it’s Grumpy Cat that rules the kitty-cat club, with an official page clocking in at 7.62 million “likes” — or about 846, 667 for each of her nine lives.
Dog-wise, Boo the Pomeranian is Facebook’s social media standout with a follower base of 17 million.
Among Instagram’s most-followed pets are a Siamese-tabby mix named Nala with a cool 2 million and a dog named Maru, a Shiba Inu breed with 1.7 million on leash — though Marnie the Dog, already a Twitter star, is within fetching distance at 1.4 million
California’s first dog, Sutter Brown, and deputy first dog, Colusa Lucy Brown, both have Twitter accounts at @SutterBrown and @ColusaBrown.
A tiny, white chinchilla named Mr. Bagel wages a one-man (make that one-chinchilla) online war against wearing fur, spreading his message to 84,800 Instagram followers.
We’re not sure exactly what hedgehogs do when they’re out in the wild, but on Instagram a super-cute one named Biddy keeps 652,000 followers entertained by wearing silly party hats and posing alongside a range of nearly as cute stuffed (and sometimes live) animals.
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Visit The Los Angeles Times’ pets page
Share your photos: Show us your pets, and tell us how you “met”