How the Rat Became An Internet Icon
We're all literally just rats scurrying around.
Writer’s note: These remind me of the Author’s Notes we would have at the beginning of our fan fics, anyone else? I’ve just started a few new gigs so I’ve had less time to write my newsletter but here’s my latest essay. Enjoy!
If you enjoy this essay, consider subscribing. Right now, as I build out my plan for this newsletter, everything is free, but if you’d like to support my venture as a writer who is trying to contribute good to social media, consider buying me a coffee.
Rats are taking over our streets, our trends, and our boyfriends.
Summer 2024 has been declared a “Rodent Man Summer” in which everyone is comparing their favorite male celebrities to rats and rodents. From Jeremy Allen White to Barry Keoghan (though I find him more Reptillian) and Challenger’s own set of sexy tennis rats, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor who were the featured image behind this Dazed article.
Characterized by angular faces, messy unbrushed hair that falls into their beady little eyes, long noses, and slender builds, these men are “unconventionally attractive.” But that’s just nonsense, especially with people claiming Timothée Chalamet is King of the Rodent Men. They’re really not so different from the hot indie boys of the early 2000s, but then again everything is cyclical.
As I read more about rodent boyfriends, I wondered, “Hey, how come men are hot when they’re rats but women don’t get to be hot little gophers or hamsters?” Well turns out, I was wrong, because it was actually declared “Rat Girl Summer” just a year ago after a video by Lola Kolaide, where she coined the term “Rat Girl,” went viral.
“We're scurrying around the streets, we're nibbling on our little snacks and generally finding ourselves in places we have no business being in,” she explained. A second video followed where “Rat Girl Summer” rules were defined, like being outside and not rotting in bed, eating little snacks and cheese, and generally just getting into mischief.
I don’t find it surprising that so many women took to being defined as a “Rat Girl,” especially with the unrealistic beauty trends that are always circulating on TikTok. Are you “that girl” or a “clean girl” who wakes up at 6 am for an early morning gym sesh in Lululemon and a slicked-back bun? Are you Cat Pretty, Deer Pretty, Bunny Pretty, or Fox Pretty, which are niche ways of describing what type of aesthetic and features you had, whether you were more doe-eyed, had darker features, or whatever else those quantifiers even meant?
For girls who weren’t ultra-feminine or organized or normally wake up at 6 am, the rat made more sense, and when you think about it, rats and creatives are both just little city-dwellers. Big cities like Los Angeles, Toronto, and New York have both an influx of creatives and rats, including the most famous rat of them all: Pizza Rat who hit the Internet in 2015.
On September 21st, a video was uploaded of a rat carrying a slice of pizza the same size as him down the steps of a subway in New York City. The video has 12 million views at the time of writing and solidified the moment as an internet meme called “Pizza Rat.”
“A true New Yorker,” one comment said. “Have you ever seen anything more quintessentially new york in your life?” another commented. We ate it up. We loved it. And I believe this was the start of the internet’s obsession with rats; living among them, being them even.
In recent years, news headlines about the “rattiest city” have also been a hot topic. Chicago has been ranked the rattiest city over NYC for the ninth year in a row, with a recent new article even calling back to Pizza Rat in the headline. Articles ranking the top 50 rattiest cities have been trending across sites after a survey by Orkin gained traction. And daily searches for the term rats on Google has increased from around 40 to 100 in May.
Step aside, cats, the rat is the perfect internet icon. In the end, aren’t we all kind of like rats, scurrying around big cities looking for snacks and fun, pawns for Big Tech and Capitalism to experiment on?
Artist Augustin Lunier’s art installation, Selfie Rats, painted an even clearer line between us and the rat. For his art piece, he trained rats to associate taking selfies with pleasure by giving them sweet treats every time they pushed the camera button in his makeshift photo booth. Eventually, the rats began to do it just for the pleasure and dopamine it induced.
We’re in it for the silly little memes and trends just for the fun of it all, and I can’t predict when the era of the rat will end and reemerge. For now, let’s enjoy a little rodent summer until the latest experiment comes to see us squirm.