If you're someone who frequents Twitter, you may have caught yourself reading a certain short story published this weekend by The New Yorker.
The article, titled "Cat Person" by Kristen Roupenian, is a fictional story that went viral for reasons that don't necessarily scream "Internet gold." It's not a sci-fi story about a mutant cat-turned-human, nor is it a clickbait-y article full of cat memes.
Instead, "Cat Person" is a lifelike story about a college girl, Margot, who has bad sex with an older man called Robert. They meet at the theatre where she works, start texting and eventually go on a date that doesn't end well — after cringe-worthy conversations and a bad kiss, Margot guilts herself into enduring sex that she really doesn't want to partake in.
So why has the story struck a chord with so many people?
The story comes at a time when news feeds have been flooded with stories of sexual harassment and assault allegations against some of the most powerful men in Hollywood and beyond.
Although the story doesn't involve assault, it questions "people’s inability to read each other, inability to read each other sexually,” New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman told The Huffington Post on Monday.
Just like the #MeToo movement, a viral hashtag that people have used to share their own stories of harassment and assault, the story also invokes a realness that many can relate to, adding to the likability of the piece and sparking discussions online.
In an interview with The New Yorker, Ms Roupenian said that the story was inspired by her own "small but nasty encounter" with someone she met online, and later told The New York Times that "many of the details and emotional notes come from life, they were accumulated over decades, not drawn from a single bad date."
People took to Twitter to share their thoughts on the story, many writing about how it resembled some of their own experiences.
I just read Cat Person and if it had ended instead with her seeing that guy a billion more times after anyway bc she hates herself that would be my experience
— Jess Dweck (@TheDweck) December 11, 2017
Maybe if you can't relate to 'Cat Person' it's because you are not a woman who has ever been on a date with a man.
— Meghan Murphy (@MeghanEMurphy) December 11, 2017
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