By Francessca Griffin
Hello everyone, my name is Francesca and I have a very guilty online pleasure. Every day, I search the Internet for new video thrills that make me laugh out loud and some that make me go a little bit tingly.
Talking dogs and laughing babies
But no, I am most certainly not talking about porn, I am talking about my undeniable daily need to see footage of skateboarding kittens, talking dogs and laughing babies.
Under my ‘suggestions’ section on YouTube, you won’t find the latest music videos or fascinating documentary clips. No. Instead I have a selection of cute puppy video options to scroll through.
At 21 years old this is how I spend my free time and put the Internet to best use.
I’m not alone!
But it seems it’s not just me- I casually threw the topic into conversation at a bar the other night to a grown, beer ordering, sport playing ‘lad’, as to whether he too had seen ‘Yeah Dog’. He had.
His following discussion and quite impressive knowledge of the subject confirmed to me that, he too, was wrestling with this addiction and fascination with all things cute and crazy in the cyber world.
It doesn’t stop there, every Saturday one of my girlfriends, who would prefer to remain anonymous, revealed that she organises her Saturday evenings around ‘animals do the funniest things‘.
Addiction?
So, what are the reasons behind this compulsion that seems to be sweeping the country?
Maria Bulley, a counsellor who specialises in addiction, explained that all addictions are driven by escapism and are a way of evading daily stresses such as work or money problems.
Are we really so stressed by our realities that we need to plunge ourselves in a world where kittens talk and toddlers sing pop songs? This could just be the case, with such videos appearing on tv shows such as ‘Russell Howard’s Good News’.
Furthermore, scientists also found that looking at happy baby pictures triggers a ‘happy’ chemical in our brain.
With this justification for my addiction, I want to share with you my top 5 YouTube clips to calm your cutesy cravings.
Top five YouTube videos:
1) Talking Dog (see below)
2) Cat gets annoyed with a printer
4) Kids rap to Nicki Minaj ‘superbass’
5) Ninja baby