The power of cuteness

Certain powerful traits have been highly esteemed by people of every culture over multiple generations: strength, stoicism, wisdom, compassion, generosity, intelligence and beauty, to name a few. But there's another trait that almost everyone of every generation has grossly undervalued: cuteness. Nobody ever takes cute seriously. Just as with a fuzzy kitten or a plush teddy bear, an adorably cute person usually activates primal human instincts to protect and coo and cuddle. And why not? Almost by definition, cute means harmless, right?

Not so fast.

In the years leading up to World War II, Imperial Japan was still a culture strongly influenced by the samurai aesthetic of the previous century. The Japanese military of the 1930s and '40s was known for being fierce, bloodthirsty and ruthless. (If you're in the mood to be horrified, read up on the Japanese invasion of Manchuria or its "annexation" of the Korean Empire.) During the war, Japanese pilots were known for their suicide attacks; even when deprived of their weapons, they would take as many of their enemies as possible with them into death by ramming their planes into enemy ships. The people of Japan were no less resolute; even Japanese citizens living away from their homeland on the island of Saipan were so convinced the advancing American soldiers would humiliate, rape and kill them that they jumped to their deaths in droves, rather than chance being taken alive by the enemy. Allied strategists believed that if the war were taken directly to Japan, Allied soldiers would have to fight not just from town to town, but from street to street to subdue the Japanese people.

And then the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Emperor of Japan surrendered, and everything changed. The postwar occupation of Japan provided no room for the old samurai spirit to flourish; indeed, under their new constitution, the Japanese people were not even allowed to defend themselves, ceding that task to American soldiers. Japan's method of surviving this identity crisis was to embrace kawaii, the culture of cuteness, and to raise it to an art form. Some of the very first trade goods created after the war, stamped "Made in Occupied Japan," were porcelain wares -- cute little tea sets for ladies to take their tea. These were followed by cute little consumer electronics, cute little anime and manga characters, cute little origami sets, cute little Sanrio mascots on dozens of cute branded products, cute little bento boxes and kitchen gadgets, cute little gas-sipping cars, cute little video games featuring cute little Italian plumber characters, cute little computers with cute little chips inside them, cute little maki-zushi, cute little fashion aesthetics, cute little craft projects, cute little sake containers -- you name it, really. And consumers all over the world swooned over the cuteness coming out of Japan, bought it all and begged for more. The power of cuteness made Japan into the economic juggernaut it is today. As musician John Forster once wryly observed about modern Japan, "Pain in neck to rule the world / Much more fun to own it."

The power of cuteness is practically weaponized by social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and others. Those of you who remember the early '90s might recall that savvy computer geeks and groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation were sounding the alarm about personally identifiable information, and how collecting PII would be the next gold rush. In a world where targeted marketing was becoming increasingly big business, collections of information about consumers would be the new currency -- and most hackers of the time were already bristling at the government and declaring, "From my cold, dead hands!" Nobody would ever force them to give their information, their privacy, their lives away.

But it's interesting -- when given the option to share pictures of their fluffy cats, stream videos of their adorable offspring, show off their fancy lunches or play super-cute games of Farmville and Candy Crush online, people willingly volunteered to numerous private companies the valuable information they swore they would never divulge to government entities -- and they did it for free. It worked because social media sites cultivated a friendly, casual, and above all CUTE atmosphere that lulled people into a false sense of security and never set off the alarm bells in their heads -- at least, not until it was too late.

Literal weaponized cuteness: a plush toy fashioned into an IED.

I could bring up several other instances to bolster my case, but let's just sum it up: in every instance, the power of cuteness stems from the fact that it's widely underestimated. Don't make that mistake. Just because something is fuzzy and adorable doesn't mean it's harmless. Even Hello Kitty has claws.