Most of the time, the Internet is a terrible, scary place where everyone’s mean and miserable. Very occasionally, it is not, and the result is really heartwarming.
Imgur, the photo-sharing site that’s somehow even bigger than Reddit, has just announced they’ll spend the entire month of December raising funds for San Francisco’s Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SF SPCA). As a post on Imgur’s blog explained:
Throughout the month of December, Imgur & SPCA will be bringing adorable, heartwarming, educational and otherwise excellent pet-based content to User Submitted. We hope to inspire Imgurians to donate to this important cause and maybe drop some educational bombs while we do it. This is huge–if everyone visiting Imgur this month donated $1, we could contribute $140 million to the fight against animal cruelty and overpopulation.
The post also adds that for the first week of the month, Imgur “will be matching all Imgurian donations up to $5,000.”
“Nearly half of all animals that arrive in U.S. shelters are euthanized because there is a lack of space and adopters,” the post says. “We wish we could adopt every animal that needs a loving home, but since we can’t, we’re doing the next best thing–Imgur is adopting the SF SPCA!”
We get that the kitten-centric fundraising efforts no doubt give Imgur some excellent PR, but hey, we can’t really criticize anyone who’s helping save adorable, healthy animals from euthanasia (the SF SPCA started the “no-kill” movement back in 1947). And during a time when the tech world’s been feeling especially hostile, it’s nice to see a company doing something that doesn’t make us want to unplug the Internet forever and move out to the Canadian tundra.
Plus, Imgur’s already what—98 percent animal photos? Who’s going to complain about—or even notice—a few more?