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Just don't call it an orgasmic squee.

Not long ago, I was dining with some comedians who were working with a non-profit on a campaign to humorously explain to the layperson why Internet privacy is important, since most people figure that, since they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to worry about. Being both comedians and not idiots, they decided the best approach was through porn, i.e., appealing to everyone’s sense of shame for viewing porn online. And besides, they reasoned, even if people aren’t actually watching scary German poop alligator sex or whatever, everyone has their own “porn” they want to hide. I didn’t really know what they meant until I started Tivo’ing episodes of Too Cute and Unlikely Animal Friends, which plays to a different sort of primal need, but is still shameful and just as poorly written and the German stuff.

Like porn, you really don’t care what the “story” is/the fake Bill Kurtis narrator is saying on Too Cute, i.e., “plots” they’re constructing around the struggles of the shy Doberman runt or the sibling rivalry between the baby racing wiener dogs (an actual thing). You just want the endless money shots of cute, from baby hedgehogs, known as hedgehoglets (!!!), getting their heads stuck in an empty toilet paper roll to the baby Labradoodle who’s afraid of water and cries tiny puppy whines until they put him in a teeny lifejacket.

Unlikely Animal Friends is just as clunky (the intro narration to every segment seems to include the words “unlikely friends”), but after a brief setup of why the baby hippo ended up living with the 130-year-old tortoise, you get the good stuff, i.e.: shots of the hippo lovingly cleaning the tortoise’s neck with his big hippo face, the tortoise slowly nipping the hippo’s tail to let him know it’s time to play, and it all leads up to a shot of the two snuggling in a sleepy pile.

Unlikely Animal Friends isn’t just a cute fix but also has the added bonus of the catharsis of a sappy ending without the burden of an lengthy beginning, because hey, you know what the show’s called—they remind you about the premise a few times per show if you don’t—so once the orphaned elephant gets a sheep companion, it’s all adorable from there.

It’s not that these shows are a porn replacement (and if you are actually turned on by baby animals, seriously, see a doctor), but if your mood is so low and your day is so crappy that some pithy Slow Loris clip on YouTube is going to seem like slapping a Band Aid on a gunshot wound, these shows are the best way to fulfill that very specific need. There’s also a similar stigma attached since watching cutesy animal shows is maybe not something anyone over 11 years old wants to be caught doing, although in the age of Bronies and such, having someone walk in while you’re cooing over Too Cute is nowhere near as bad as being caught in front of actual porn, genital-handed.

For me personally, if my dog “catches” me watching these shows he loses his mind, because, as he is equal parts smart and dumb, my dog sees the animals on TV, recognizes what they are, and barks like crazy because he thinks I suddenly have a bunch of hedgehoglets in a magic box that I won’t let him play with. So I really do have to watch these shows in secret (or just watch them like a weirdo at other people’s homes), and even if my dog can’t check my browser history, I can only imagine what Homeland Security would think (probably that I had a head injury and need to buy more feet before I even look at another weird shoe website, which is actually fair).

Either way: as porns go, cute animal programming isn’t so bad, unless you’re my puppy, for which, I just now realize, such shows might actually be porn, in which case at least our shame is shared.