There are very few things that surprise me anymore in life. Rising crime? I called that at the beginning of the pandemic. Authoritarian attacks on democracy? Ha! I lived through the Bush junior years for crying out loud. Conspiracy theories becoming mainstream narratives? Yawn, I used to be a right winger for crying out loud. With all that I have been through it is difficult for me to even believe that I can be surprised anymore. I mean, I got thrown off a train after falling ill and left for dead in liberal San Francisco for crying out loud. It does not get much more surprising than that! Or does it? The biggest surprises are the ones that you would never see coming, the kind of surprises that shatter your reality and force you to reevaluate the life you are leading. Well, consider me surprised. It is not that I ever really liked cute animal pictures and videos. To be completely honest, I was rather indifferent about them. People love animals and so they are always shoving some phone in your face with a picture or video of a cat or dog or elephant or whatever. Apart from being mildly annoyed about this modern phenomenon (excuse me for not wanting to see some video about some goofy animal slobbering all over the place while I eat my dinner; I sincerely do not apologize), I never really gave it a second thought. And why would I? I mean, it is just an adorable animal, and there is nothing wrong with finding animals adorable…unless the people who are posting those videos have ulterior motives. On the internet cute animals are big business. You cannot go on social media without having a sleepy cat or a curious seal flopping across your screen. These pictures and videos effortlessly receive thousands and even millions of likes and comments, which makes them some of the most popular content on the internet. Content creation means big money and so we must follow that money to find who is profiting from all of these videos. It turns out most of them, about 70%, are distributed by two companies: Junkin Media and Viral Hog. And wouldn’t you know it, neither of these companies has any policy in place to prevent the spread of misinformation, more commonly known as conspiracy theories. But cute animals pictures and videos cannot spread conspiracy theories, right? Wrong. All a content creator needs to do to get you to keep consuming their content is to get you to like it once or twice. After that point, your social media feed will automatically recommend all of their content to you. You do not have to sign up for this process; it happens every time you like something. So, what kind of content are you exposing yourself to when you like those cutesy animal videos? It turns out that one of the largest producers of such content is a little paper known as The Epoch Times, a far right conspiracy rag owned by a follower of a religious cult, which just happens to be Trump supporter’s favorite newspaper. Though The Epoch Times, like all news organizations today, promotes itself as unbiased, the pro-Trump rag has relentlessly spread false information about voter fraud in the 2020 election, pushed the unproven idea that China invented Covid-19 in a lab as a plot to destroy democracy, and unabashedly publicized the January sixth pro Trump rally that turned into an attempted coup. Unbiased you say? Sure, if you consider far right extremism to be without bias. Another promoter to cute animal videos is none other than the world renowned quack himself, Dr. Joseph Mercola. Mercola, a snake oil salesman who has advised patients to engage in unproven "natural" therapies as opposed to taking real medicine, has supported the false claim that twenty-two of the vitamins that he sells on his website can prevent, treat and even cure Covid-19, though no evidence for this exist. Mercola has made several false claims about the medicinal value of supplements he just happens to sell. I think I'll pass on your next animal video. I'd rather live past thirty.