Hey, I'm Kate Lindsay, and you're listening to I-C-Y-M-I, or in case you missed it, Slate's podcast about internet culture.

And today on the show, I am joined by Christiana Silva. Welcome.

Thank you so much. Happy to be here.

Christina is an internet culture reporter.

She also tests and recommends various gadgets as part of that. I've noticed from your coverage. And there's one gadget in particular that we are talking about on today's episode. But first, as this is your I see why my debut, we must know. What was your first internet memory? I love this question so much. So when I was a little

kid, I was obsessed with cats and I had to change the kitty litter. And there was like a pamphlet

in the kitty litter when I was like nine that was like, if you want to talk about cats,

go to this online forum. And so I went to this forum. I have no, I've tried to find it

since then and it doesn't exist online anymore, which is a real shame. But it was probably the

first time I lied on the internet also because you had to be 18 to enter the forum.

You had to be 18 to talk about cats. Yep. And I was nine and I logged on. I lurked for a while. I became a very

avid poster as a nine-year-old. What would you post about? Advice. Okay. For full adults for what

to do with their cats. It was a dangerous time of misinformation for me. I'm sure. You would give your advice. You would be like, oh, try this. That's so funny. I didn't even know. I was a nine year old. No, and it was a nine year old. You said you tried to look for it. Do you remember like what it was called? No. No. I knew, I'm pretty sure. I knew what kind of litter we had. It was like fresh something. Yeah. something. So I've, but this was before I even spent time on like,

me. I knew what kind of litter we had. It was like fresh something, fresh something. But this was before I even spent time on like neopets. Yeah. This was my first real internet community was the kitty litter community. That's so funny. Yeah. Okay. Well, the media thought I have is because I was also, and still I am obsessed with cats. And so that also colors a lot of my early computer usage. This isn't quite internet yet, but this is like a

computer game that I would play that it sounds like a fever dream to kind of describe it. And the

visuals are fever dreamy, but it was like the franchise

was called Pets with a Z. And so there was like dogs and a cat. And you would just kind of have

them in a room, like you would adopt one and they'd be in a room. And I don't even know if it was

advanced enough that like they had like, you know, like hunger levels

you had to meet or anything, but you could like feed them treats or like pet them. And to me,

it was the coolest thing in the world. Like I loved this game. But as I'm describing it,

it sounds like not unlike a screensaver at this point. It does sound like a screensaver.

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