Pluto Living

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Part of a series on Dogs. [View Related Entries]

About

Pluto Living refers to the social media accounts of Pluto the dog, a viral Schnauzer known for videos in which, using video effects, he speaks English with a high-pitched voice.

Origin

On March 15th, 2020, Facebook Nancie Wright published the first Pluto video. In the video, Pluto speaks to people about the toilet paper crisis brought upon by the coronavirus outbreak. The post received more than 4.6 million views, 228,000 shares, 53,000 reactions and 11,000 comments in less than two months (shown below).

Spread

Two days later, an official Pluto Living Facebook^[1] account. Within two months the account has amassed more than 300,000 followers and 192,000 likes. That day, the owners of the Facebook page launched an Instagram ^[2] and YouTube ^[3] account for the dog. The first YouTube post received more than 2.3 million views in less than three months.

Over the next week, Pluto continued to publish on these platforms. On March 19th, they published "Pluto Service Announcement," receiving more than 220,000 views, and on March 20th, for example, the page posted "Pluto FAQ," which received more than 358,000 views (shown below, left and right, respectively).

On March 25th, NPR^[4] published a profile on Pluto.

On May 13th, Deadline^[5] reported that Pluto had been signed with the Gotham Group agency and Sterling Lord Literistic literay agency. In a statement, "Pluto" said:

"In the face of a global pandemic, it became quite evident to me that the entire two-legged population was acting out in strange and unusual ways. There was a crisis with the toilet paper, and people were losing their minds. My involvement in keeping people informed and engaged started innocently enough. I just wanted to reach out and remind people that they should not panic. My advice was simple--keeping the bum hairs clipped really, really, really short worked exceptionally well for me. Mentioning where to find snacks, and reminding everyone to social distance (and refrain from sniffing crotches) seemed like pretty standard stuff, but it must have touched some heart chords. By the end of five days, millions of people (and I mean more than 10M!) watched. My mom set me up on the social dog parks so people could adopt the Pluto Living lifestyle."