February 17, 2012

The ultimate tool in marketing

The Atlantic has a long article "How Your Cat is Making You Crazy" on an old Cochranian bug-a-boo: germs that take over the volition of their hosts and make them do stuff that passes along the germ but don't do the host any good, to put it mildly, like making mice attracted to cats.

The crazy cat lady syndrome where a woman ends up with dozens of cats might have something to do with viruses in the cats colonizing her mind and telling her to provide lots of hosts for themselves.

That seems like the ultimate frontier in advertising and marketing. Who knows? Maybe Apple bioengineered a virus that makes people crave shiny Apple products?

29 comments:

Anonymous said...

"How Your Cat is Making You Cray"

How your cat is making you into a supercomputer?

Hunsdon said...

Your intro sentence lists the article title as "How Your Cat is Making You Cray" and I rejoiced! The felines will bring on the singularity! I shall now be a supercomputer! Alas, it was simply a typo---my dreams, crushed. Say, do feline supercomputers dream of electric mice?

Anonymous said...

It already exists.

It's memetic parasitism.

Fran said...

I don't get this post. Please elaborate. Too subtle if there is a subtle point there.

Gilbert Ratchet said...

I thought the word for that was "meme"

dearieme said...

If the infective agent makes men more tolerant of the smell of cat pee, I'd expect them to favour Sauvignon Blanc when feeling like a glass of wine. Please may I have a grant of, oh, half a million bucks to investigate this crucial hypothesis? Please.

AllanF said...

Hmmm, now there's an interesting re-make of the Manchurian Candidate...

Mad scientists in CIA black-op spread a virus at CPAC. Neo-cons have inscrutable urge to invade the world.

Anonymous said...

Here's a funny paradox. The fact that women are politically more liberal means they are naturally more conservative. If conservatism means 'conforming with community standards and prevailing orthodoxy', then people who are naturally more conservative will be more likely to bend before prevailing rules of 'correctness'.
Since liberal PC prevails in our culture, media, and schools, and since more women than men are PC, it means women are naturally more conservative. (It's like in a communist system, people of conservative bent are more likely to be arch-communists. Similarly, though Christianity began as a revolutionary movement resisted by Jewish/Roman conservatives, once it became the prevailing orthodoxy, conservative-minded people became the most ardent Christians.)

Anonymous said...

"germs that take over the volition of their hosts and make them do stuff that passes along the germ but don't do the host any good, to put it mildly, like making mice attracted to cat"

Shiite, sounds like multi-culti PC virus.

Clinton: in a few decades, all we whites folks gonna be minorities in our own country.

White graduates: yippee yeah!!!

AllanF said...

Upon further reflection, I think the Likud Candidate would make a better movie title.

swimming swan said...

"Here's a funny paradox. The fact that women are politically more liberal means they are naturally more conservative. "

You've gone a paradox too far. Being pro-establishment when the government supports traditional lifestyles and institutions would appeal to those with conservative bents, not so much when the government tears families apart or threatens religion. You've confused totalitarianism, which might appeal to insecure, fearful females, with liberalism.

dogzma said...

I've had two neighbors who were cat lovers. Both were crazy as loons. Not to mention, those two and a third crazy cat host I knew were all middle aged, ectomorphs with beak noses and "mousy" brown hair.

You could be on to something.

Anonymous said...

ectomorphs with beak noses and "mousy" brown hair.

Anti-Semite!

Anonymous said...

Very interesting article, Steve. One of the reasons I read your site.

There definitely could be something to this. I know a woman with schizophrenia who keeps several cats. Another cat loving woman I know is depressed and has considered suicide.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

The cat-ownership/schizophrenia connection has been known for over a decade. Small but persistent. Childhood exposure to cats seems to be a bigger issue than adult contact, though that one's more uncertain.

Hunsdon said...

AllanF said: Upon further reflection, I think the Likud Candidate would make a better movie title.

Hunsdon replied: Candidate, singular?

Carrie White said...

Another cat loving woman I know is depressed and has considered suicide.

Why? Because she was turned down for a date when she was 16 years old? Talk about a grudge!

Anonymous said...

My cat has instructed me to inform you folks that the magazine article is all nonsense, & not to pay any attention to it. You're welcome.

RKU said...

Well, I'd certainly say that today's America is one of the most heavily parasitized societies in recent history. But I don't think the cat-virus is the main culprit...

dogzma said...

"ectomorphs with beak noses and "mousy" brown hair.

Anti-Semite!"

To be fair, this could describe any number of women of German, English or even Scots-Irish descent. I'd bank on Germanic for this trio, however.

Anonymous said...

Actually when you think about it the whole pet cat thing is pretty weird. Aliens looking down might conclude they rule us by mind control.

Anonymous said...

"You've gone a paradox too far. Being pro-establishment when the government supports traditional lifestyles and institutions would appeal to those with conservative bents, not so much when the government tears families apart or threatens religion."

That's why I made a distinction between 'naturally' and 'politically'. It doesn't matter what the system is, left or right, democratic or totalitarian. People of naturally more conservative bent will support the system they were born into and/or indoctrinated into.
This is why many 'conservatives' today are naturally more rebellious.

Anonymous said...

When I have kids, I think I'll become a dog person.

Gene Berman said...

Toxoplasmosis gondi is the infective agent (I think it's a single-cell animal, as an amoeba,
but don't really remember).

It's spread usually, not by contact with cats themselves but by ingestion of tiny particles of dry surface soil contaminated with cat feces. I also seem to remember that a couple of the most frequent spreaders are bird flocks--especially starlings and grackles.

Supposedly, in the U.S., about 45%
of the entire adult population are infected including cat owners, of whom more than 95% are infected.

The infection has no established effect on humans--other than to make them like cats. Very lately, there's been research showing (purportedly) such infection cause or allow formation of certain tumors.

Norman Normal said...

Now let's add parasites and schizophrenia to the cats-books-beards-brains Axis of Evil.

Dr. Anonymous said...

T. gondii's manipulation appears to alter the rat's perception of cat predation risk, in some cases turning their innate aversion into an imprudent attraction. The selectivity of such behavioural changes suggests that this ubiquitous parasite subtly alters the brain of its intermediate host to enhance predation rate.

Source: Fatal attraction in rats infected with Toxoplasma gondii. By Oxford University Veterinary Services. August 7th, 2000.

These women and children are seriously mind controlled by viruses. Pretty terrifying and disgusting, my natural disdain for cats could be an evolutionary defense mechanism.

NOTA said...

Toxoplasmosis does have known effects on humans in the case of a serious infection, but that only happens if you don't have much of an immune system. I think unborn children can be exposed (doctors always tell pregnant women not to handle cat litter) with pretty bad effects, and it can kill AIDS patients.

I wonder if people can give the parasite (not a virus, a single-celled parasite) back to cats. A gene in the parasite that encouraged people to own more cats would become more widespread, but it would take some time--the cats have to get infected with a parasite containing the same genes, and then spread it around to other cats who then spread it back to other humans.

Gene Berman said...

NOTA--

No--the spread of infection to other cats wouldn't be nearly as tenuous as you've inferred.

Even presumably uninfected cats would be exposed to other cats' litter (and the occurrence of the
parasite externally--microscopic
bits of fecal material on the cat itself) and, what I've read is the greatest source of infection--cat feces spread throughout surface soil. That's in addition, mind you, to the infected birds and mice--intermediary hosts--who've become infected through the surface soil route and, less risk-averse, become prey to those previously uninfected cats.

collette said...

"Pretty terrifying and disgusting, my natural disdain for cats could be an evolutionary defense mechanism."

Cats, like most domestic animals, are capable of extreme devotion to humans. I've been in awe of what I've seen in both cats & dogs. Their ability to forgive and forget--sometimes I wonder how animals can forgive what humans do to them.
If you "disdain" them, you have no clue.

I once had a Hungarian psychology teacher who'd been a medical doctor during wwii. He himself liked cats and pointed out studies linking fondness for cats (extremely common among artists, writers, and to some extent, scientists) with a certain "other oriented" personality. Dictators have an extreme aversion to cats. He cited Napoleaon, and Hitler, who was famous for fearing cats.