In a simpler time, the internet was full of cats. Flooding message boards and YouTube with images of the web’s furry folk mascot was frivolous, perhaps, but harmless, a suitably nonsensical distraction—and what was one to post about online, if not cats? We soon found out. In a perilous turn in our political and technological history, the denizens of the web put down Whiskers and seized their pitchforks, pinned on their campaign buttons, and donned their tinfoil hats, the better to wage the ferocious political battles that had become ubiquitous both online and off.
