Quote of the day: “The number one thing internally we’ve come to is that they’re cute.”
This comes from Chris Ham, CEO of Ustream.TV, talking to People magazine. It’s our “quote of the day” for two reasons: first, because of its delightful obviousness, and second, because of its understatement. Because Ham is talking about The Puppies Seen ‘Round the World–literally: the litter of Shiba Inu pups–yep, the ones profiled in The Guardian, the ones who are the subject of what may well be, due to its more than 3 million viewers to date, the most popular live-streaming video of all time–the puppies whose rompy, chompy, almost painfully adorable antics are being streamed, live and 24/7, on the Web. The ones who, because their sheer adorability makes them perfect procrastinatory fodder for office workers the country over, are probably single-handedly (okay, single-pawedly) endangering our already imperiled GDP. The ones whom we’ll forgive for that, though, because they’re just so freakin’ cute.
If you haven’t seen them yet, here’s the link to the PuppyCam. But beware: If you click, you won’t merely be opening a Web page; you will be opening yourself up to the likelihood that, at best, you will be completely unproductive for the next couple of hours, unable to look away from the train wreck of cuteness streaming before you. You will, at worst, find yourself sucked into a cuddly vortex that, upon your emergence from it, will have reduced your once smart, savvy, somewhat cynical self to a quivering mass of gelatinous optimism about the world and its potential.
You have been warned.
Megan Garber is an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. She was formerly a CJR staff writer.