Homemade pet celebrities: the everyday experience of micro-celebrity in promoting the self and others

ABSTRACT

Pet influencers are rising stars on social media, and many everyday social media users also curate profiles for their pets for fun. This study established a cat Instagram account and uses ethnographic methods to investigate the phenomenon of pet Instagram as a kind of affective community co-habited by humans and nonhuman others. Recent studies of micro-celebrity have emphasised the practice of micro-celebrity – engaging in self-promotion and addressing followers as fans – as a calculating self-presentation strategy used by many successful influencers to update their status. In fact, as this study shows, many everyday social media users also perform as a celebrity to promote themselves and others, like rescue cats, without striving for money and their own status. This article reaffirms that the micro-celebrity is an ordinary, somewhat pleasurable experience for everyday social media users, whose selves constantly cross boundaries to build affinity with others, rather than merely presenting the extended self to serve one’s ego. Moreover, this case study of pet Instagram shows that the practice of micro-celebrity on social media as teamwork can affectively, productively, and playfully reaffirm how the self is always part of and constituted by multiple others, including nonhuman animal others.

KEYWORDS:

• Micro-celebrity
• self-presentations
• affects
• extended self
• posthumanism

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Susan Douglas, Peggy McCracken, Christian Sandvig, Ruth Behar, Infra.Lab members, and companion animals in the world for their inspiration and support in developing this project. I would like to pay tribute to the 2,000 pet hamsters culled in Hong Kong over Covid fears in January 2022. The IRB HSBS at the University of Michigan has reviewed the study and determined that it is exempt from ongoing IRB review.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. I asked their modes and frequency of engagement in the pet Instagram community, whether they would consider the opportunity to become a pet influencer if they are not yet one, things that they find the most and least enjoyable in running a pet account, and whether and why they find it important to have a pet account. Each interview lasts 45 to 120 minutes.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, University of Michigan.

Notes on contributors

Natalie Ngai

Natalie Ngai is a Ph.D. Candidate in Communication and Media at the University of Michigan. Her research interests include feminist media studies and celebrity culture, with a focus on cuteness.