Why we’re all in love with a little hippo named Moo Deng

The internet loves cute animals. (Shocking, I know.) But more than a fact of life, it's practically a pillar supporting the weight of the online world's entire infrastructure. Some of the earliest internet moments — Keyboard Cat, for instance — centered on critters. And that hasn't changed, even as the internet grew infinitely more complex and vast. The online world today is hardly what it was in 2020, let alone what it was in its infancy. Yet, all this time, cute animals have been a