Pete was a true believer. ICQ. AIM. Friendster. MySpace. A Twitter ID below four thousand. He didn't just use the early social web — he helped build it, one weird forum and one enthusiastic post at a time. And then, somewhere between the algorithmic timeline and the fourteenth terms-of-service update, something got taken. Cory Doctorow has a word for what happened. Pete has feelings about it. This is that conversation.The thing about pet influencers is that they shouldn't work. The $24 billion pet influencer industry — a phrase that should not exist — is built entirely on content created by creatures who cannot consent, cannot read the comments, and are legally classified as property in most jurisdictions. And yet. Science has thoughts on why this is, and Pete has thoughts on what it says about everything we built on the internet and watched get taken apart. The dog, it turns out, never updated the terms of service.Tommy is here to make the affirmative case: pets are genuinely, measurably, peer-reviewedly good for you. He also has an origin story for his dog Foster that involves July 4th, a rescue organization, three rules he broke immediately, and what the scientific community refers to as a "foster failure." Pete's dog Gambit has a headcanon that is both extremely funny and, per Pete, incredibly derogatory. Both dogs are excellent.
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