TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Pet influencers: Furry stars and 'pawrents' find symbiotic fame, fortune
Pets have always been a staple of the internet, which has been seeing a growing rise in pet influencers that rake in millions – earnings that these Indonesian "pawrents" use to give their beloved pets the best life they can offer.
Change Size
Canine trickster: Duffy the poodle learned to do tricks and pose before his 'pawrent' Veronica Kurniawan began posting his videos online. (Courtesy of Veronica Kurniawan) (Personal collection/Courtesy of Veronica Kurniawan)
S
ocial media thrives on unique content that pulls at the heartstrings, and pets provide a nearly inexhaustible supply. Instagram hashtags such as #dogsofinstagram has 250 million posts globally while #catsofinstagram has 168 million, and #petfluencer had garnered more than 819,000 posts at the time of writing, with each individual post racking up thousands of likes.
One such pet influencer is Kaori von Nicholl, known by her username Kaori or handle @fluffykaori, a 1-year-old gray and white Alaskan Malamute that belongs to Angela Benita Budiman, a 19-year-old law student at Pelita Harapan University in Tangerang, Banten.
Angela shares snippets of Kaori's daily life and adorable shenanigans on TikTok, where the white fluffy pooch has gained 2 million followers. She also has 183,000 YouTube subscribers and 25,500 Instagram followers.
"The first time I posted a video of Kaori was when Kaori had just arrived at my house. I posted the video on TikTok and it was just for fun at first. But it turned out that the video immediately went viral, and people gave positive responses such as 'cute', 'adorable' and the like," recalled Angela.
"Some people asked me to post videos about Kaori [more regularly] and some asked me about dogs [in general], so my TikTok account became more active. As time went by, I [realized] that Kaori’s [personality] was unique and adorable, so I frequently took videos of Kaori being herself," she continued.
Duffy is another pet influencer, a red fawn toy poodle that uses the handle @duffythepoodle, who has been active since 2018 and now has 9,760 Instagram followers.
His "pawrent", or pet parent, is Veronica Kurniawan, a 37-year-old entrepreneur who also lives in Tangerang.
