On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a Dog

In 1993, the New Yorker published a cartoon that has become famous: "On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

This felt like prophecy. In digital space, people only see what you show them. The markers that sorted you in the physical world—your body, your background, your credentials—could be left at the door. A new meritocracy, finally. Right?

The early internet was built by people who had been overlooked. Nerds. Outsiders. The kids who got picked last, who found power in systems that didn't care what you looked like or who your parents were. For them, the internet wasn't just a communication tool. It was vindication.

And the internet delivered on its promise—for them. Dogs could become gods here. Unknown people built empires. Outsiders became insiders. Power flowed to those who understood the new rules, regardless of the old ones.

But here's the thing about dogs who become gods: they don't like giving it away. So the new gods built worlds. Platforms. Algorithms. Systems that said they rewarded merit, openness, anyone-can-make-it. But systems reflect their creators. And their creators were people who had finally escaped being powerless—and never wanted to go back.

The old hierarchies didn't disappear. They got abstracted, automated, and harder to trace. The same dynamics, new infrastructure. Power still accumulated. It just became invisible. And now nobody knows who the real gods are. They don't look like the old ones—no crowns, no titles, no offices. They don't look like anything. We can't tell dogs from gods without relying on systems the gods themselves designed.

Which raises the question: how do we learn to see again?