Nobody did this better than Doge. The photo of a Shiba Inu named Kabosu was taken by her owner, Atsuko Sato, and shared on a personal blog in 2010. A few years later, multicolored Comic Sans captions turned that sideways glance into a rambling inner monologue, and Know Your Meme went on to name it the top meme of 2013.
Grumpy Cat took a different route. Her permanent scowl came from an underbite and feline dwarfism rather than a bad mood, but it did not matter. The internet recognized that expression instantly, mostly from Monday mornings, and the cat became a mascot for everyone who has ever been asked to act excited about a meeting.
There may even be a small bonus for all this scrolling. When Indiana University researcher Jessica Gall Myrick surveyed nearly 7,000 people, they reported feeling more energy and positive emotions after watching cat videos, along with less anxiety and sadness. The same research noted that YouTube hosted more than 2 million cat videos in 2014, with almost 26 billion views, so the audience is hardly small. She even suggested the emotional payoff might help people tackle tough tasks afterward, which is excellent news for anyone currently avoiding an email.
So the recipe is simple. Take a face our brains are wired to adore, add a human sized emotion we all recognize, and let a short caption do the rest. The animals never know they are the stars, and that obliviousness is the final ingredient. A raccoon that thinks it is invisible while sitting in a trash can is not trying to be funny, which is exactly why it is. Scroll on, and try not to squeeze your screen.
