There's a cat on the internet right now, and it is not a real cat.
It is a blob of pixels that some guy spent actual money on, and now it's glowing at me through a screen like a cursed nightlight.
If you missed it, welcome to the one corner of the internet that isn't arguing about politics today.
For the uninitiated, "RGB Mew" started as a joke render of the Pokémon Mew, except somebody strapped it to a lighting rig, so now it cycles through the entire color spectrum like a gaming keyboard that achieved sentience.
Red, green, blue, purple, and back again.
And people are losing their collective minds over it.
Here's where it gets deeply normal: folks are apparently bidding on this thing.
A digital image of a pink psychic cat that now looks like it's been dipped in unicorn diarrhea.
Some listings have reportedly hit numbers that would cover my rent, my car insurance, and probably a small vacation I'll never take.
The comment sections are doing exactly what you'd expect.
Half the replies are people saying "society is over" with zero irony, and the other half are people who genuinely think this is the funniest thing since sliced bread.
Both groups are correct, which is the most American sentence I've written all week.
We're in an economy where eggs cost more than my first car, and the hot new investment is a glowing fictional creature you can't hold, can't eat, and can't sell for gas money.
There's something depressingly on-brand about the fact that our generation's version of a Beanie Baby is literally not there.
Every few months the internet invents a new thing to hoard, and every time we all pretend this is the one that'll actually be worth something in twenty years.
My uncle still has a garage full of baseball cards and a dream.
And before the crypto crowd shows up in my replies: yes, I know art is subjective, and yes, I know people have spent dumber money on dumber stuff.
A banana taped to a wall sold for six figures.
We live in a timeline where duct tape is a better financial advisor than most people I know.
The real winner here isn't the buyer or the seller.
It's the algorithm, which figured out months ago that we will click on literally anything that glows and moves.
RGB Mew is just the final boss of that discovery.
Now it's blinking at us in 16 million colors and asking for our wallet.
If you can convince a stranger on the internet that your pixel cat is worth more than a used Honda, you've won capitalism and shouldn't be allowed near a keyboard again.
Final Thoughts
Just please, for the love of everything, don't tell my kid.