Why Are We So Obsessed With Ugly Dogs?
The era of the gorgeous golden retriever is over. Today’s most coveted pooches have frightful faces bred to tug at our hearts.
5 min
Play, a four-year-old French bulldog, waddled down the street in Noho. Squinting in the morning sun, she had bat ears, a downturned mouth and the mien of a pissed-off mother-in-law.
“People tell me she’s ugly all the time,” said her owner Nakisha Lewis, 41, a stylist and impact strategist. “I think the little round face is absolutely adorable…but every parent thinks their baby is adorable.”
You can’t go around calling human babies ugly, but thankfully the rules are more lax with dogs.
I’ve been patrolling downtown Manhattan to find singularly unattractive breeds—then asking their owners why they chose them. (I haven’t asked if any believe the urban legend that dogs resemble their masters.)
As a superficial snob who grew up with golden retrievers that deserved Pantene commercials, I had to know: Why are we so into ugly dogs now?
In recent years, man’s best friend has plummeted from a 10 to a 2. Sure, you see lots of gorgeous doodles, but at the end of every second leash lurks a rat with an overbite or a popeyed goblin with ears so monstrous they make King Charles III’s seem not that big.
French bulldogs lead the charge for character-actor canines.
Celebs cradle the Yodalike pups, and millennials love them even more than a tasteful beige wall.
For 31 years Labradors topped the American Kennel Club’s purebred rankings, which are based on more than one million annual registrations.
But since 2022 Frenchies have been top dog, with Labs and golden retrievers settling for silver and bronze. It’s like the quarterback and homecoming queen losing a popularity contest to a wheezing weirdo.
Dr. Carly Fox, a senior veterinarian at New York’s Schwarzman Animal Medical Center, said that flat-faced dogs—they’re “brachycephalic” for people in the know—have been ascendant in the past decade.
Other popular members of this snub-nosed club include English bulldogs, Boston terriers, pugs and Brussels griffons.
A rival gang—more niche but no prettier—is the rat pack.
Think chihuahuas, hairless xoloitzcuintles and Chinese cresteds, a mostly hairless breed with wispy tufts on its head that the American Kennel Club called a “mover and shaker” and I call “a dog that got left in the microwave.”
This summer, a Chinese crested in a pink gown shivered through a starring role in Lena Dunham’s Netflix show “Too Much.”
The Victorians sparked the modern obsession with engineering “lots of different looking dogs to fit different human wants,” said Dr. Rowena Packer, senior lecturer at the University of London’s Royal Veterinary College.
The malleability of the dog genome allows for enormous physical variety, she explained, meaning that breeders can push features to extremes—squashing snouts, piling on wrinkles.
To evaluate a dog’s alterations, said Packer, consider how much it deviates from the original archetype: the wolf. I’d wager a wolf would sooner recognize a sheep as one of its own than a grinning pug.
Hal Herzog, a professor emeritus of psychology at Western Carolina University who studies human-animal relationships, said dog breeds become popular in the same way fashion trends do.
We look to movies and celebrities and, above all, copy each other. Chance plays a huge role in a breed going viral, he said, but it helps to have some inherent appeal.
The allure of wackadoo breeds? For starters, most skew small. That suits postpandemic demand for apartment dogs that can also travel, said Paula Fasseas, founder of PAWS Chicago, a no-kill animal welfare organisation.
But the big draw of brachycephalic (brachy) dogs is their cheek-squeezing cuteness.
When owners gushed that their Frenchies and pugs resembled human babies, I took offense on behalf of all parents.
Yet studies show that flat-faced dogs possess “kindchenschema” or “baby schema,” a term coined by ethologist Konrad Lorenz to describe infantile features that elicit caregiving reactions.
With wide eyes, small noses and bigger, rounder heads, a brachy dog’s face “is far more human than, say, a Labrador’s,” said Packer.
Those looks come at a high cost. Packer said that Frenchies, pugs and English bulldogs are more prone to chronic eye disease, skin-fold infections and spinal problems, as well as breathing issues caused by truncated airways—and exacerbated by faces that are often flatter than in the past.
Fox, the vet, owns a Frenchie but called extreme brachy breeds “nightmares” from a medical perspective. (Love the look? Packer recommends a healthier mix like a jack russell-pug, the superbly named “jug.”)
Some experts argue that brachy dogs’ health problems can make them more desirable to owners.
Authorities such as James Serpell have suggested that these dogs’ neediness brings out our maternal instincts, Herzog noted.
Forget about throwing a stick; as one young woman told me while her wet-nosed darling relieved himself in the park, you must wipe a Frenchie’s butt . Packer called this phenomenon “the parentification of dogs.”
The oversharing park-goer compared her Frenchie to a Labubu.
A cynic might say that, like those hideous-slash-adorable dolls, brachy pups are a trendy accessory for young urbanites to parade about and post on Instagram. Less debatable: Like those grinning monsters, dogs with scrunched faces are hilarious.
“There’s a tragicomedy aspect” to Frenchies’ appearance, said the Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, who owns a rescue, Colette.
“They look like something out of a Cervantes novel…they have this lost soul thing.” They also remind him of the late comic actor Marty Feldman, whose googly eyes shot off in different directions.
“They’re not beautiful like a greyhound,” he added, “but, you know, we’re not dating dogs.”
A Frenchie owner expects to field compliments like, “Oh my god, that’s hysterical,” said Will Thrun, 27, who works in finance. At a Halloween dog parade in the East Village, Poppy, Thrun’s Frenchie, lay in the sun dressed as a taco while the ancestral gray wolves howled in their graves.
Elias Weiss Friedman, who shares his photos of New York dogs with the nearly 8 million followers on his Instagram account, the Dogist, said people increasingly want pooches that stand out.
A weirdo dog lets you “show your individuality,” said Terence Nelson, 38, an influencer marketing strategist in New York whose fuzzy Brussels griffon, Sue, is a dead ringer for an Ewok. (I kept my mouth shut when Frenchie owners praised their dogs’ “uniqueness” with literally dozens of other Frenchies snorting about nearby.)
Brian Lee, founder of Way of the Dog, a dog-behaviour program in Southern California, offers another explanation for the prevalence of odd-looking pups: the rise in rescue-dog adoptions. People may think “I want to help this innocent animal” rather than focus on looks, said Lee.
When people call Eve-Marie Kuijstermans’s dog ugly she considers it a compliment. Edgar Allan Pup (“Eddie”), her Chinese crested-chihuahua mix, is mostly hairless, with old-mannish tufts on his head.
“He could be 100 years old,” said Kuijstermans. (He’s five.) “Kids are very confused by him,” added the 41-year-old SVP for a communications firm.
Lately, Kuijstermans has spotted more Brussels griffons, Chinese cresteds and “interesting mixes”—a revenge-of-the-nerds backlash to the flocks of fluffy doodles.
“For me, Eddie’s cuteness lies in the fact that he’s kind of a weird little guy,” she said, as her pooch scrambled onto my knee to survey the dog park.
Suddenly, this golden-retriever lifer began to fall for a sweet little thing as cuddly as a broom.
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From auction floors to TikTok — the professionals who made property education a public good
6 min
Australian property has always been a national obsession, but the way Australians learn about it has changed fundamentally. Where previous generations relied on a real estate agent’s advice and a bank manager’s approval, today’s buyers and investors are walking into the market with suburb-by-suburb data, auction strategy insights and valuation knowledge that would have required a professional consultation five years ago.
The ten creators on this list are the reason why. What distinguishes them from the broader landscape of property content is not their following size but the professional substance behind what they publish. Most have spent years doing the work, valuing, buying, negotiating, financing, before they ever picked up a camera. The audience can feel that difference, even when they cannot articulate it.
Today’s buyers are walking into the market with knowledge that would have required a professional consultation five years ago. These ten creators are the reason why.
1 –Tom Panos: Founder, Real Estate Gym
Tom Panos is the highest-profile real estate trainer in Australia, which is a distinction earned over more than two decades of working directly with agents, auctioneers and principals across the country. The content he publishes, on auction strategy, market psychology, agent mindset and the mechanics of negotiation, is backed by a career that predates social media by years.
What makes his presence exceptional is that he speaks to both sides of the transaction simultaneously. Agents follow him for craft. Buyers and investors follow him for intelligence. It is a rare position, and it explains why his audience has grown consistently through every market condition since he began publishing.
2 – Belinda Botzolis: Certified Practising Valuer; Founder, “The Valuer”
The gap that Belinda Botzolis identified and occupied is one that, in retrospect, seems obvious: professional property valuation, made accessible on social media. With seventeen years of practice as a Certified Practising Valuer, more than 15,000 individual property valuations completed, and over $12 billion in real estate assessed, she brought to social media something most content creators in this space cannot fake, a professional opinion.
The response has been significant. Over 20 million TikTok views for valuation content is not an accident. It reflects an audience that has long wanted access to qualified property analysis and found it, for the first time, without having to pay for a report.
3 – George Markoski: Founder, Positive Property
The credibility order matters in property investment content. George Markoski built a portfolio of more than 100 investment properties and retired at thirty-seven on passive income before he built a social media following. That sequencing, wealth first, content second, is the foundation of why his audience trusts him with decisions that carry six and seven-figure consequences.
His content covers RBA decisions, APRA changes and property cycles with the kind of strategic depth that comes from having navigated them personally. He is not forecasting the market from a position of theory. He is reporting from a position of ownership.
4 – Ravi Sharma: Founder, Search Property
Ravi Sharma‘s differentiator is structural: he runs an actual buyer’s agency. The suburb analyses, growth projections and investment frameworks he publishes on YouTube and social media are not constructed for content, they are the methodology his business uses to advise paying clients on real transactions. With more than 114,000 YouTube subscribers and a Bachelor of Business in Real Estate, his content sits at the intersection of professional advice and public education.
The result is content that reads like genuine analysis rather than commentary, because in most cases it is.
5 – Damien Cooley: Director, Cooley Auctions
Damien Cooley has called more auctions on live television than almost anyone in the country, a five-time premiere auctioneer on The Block, and 2015 Auctioneer of the Year. As Director of Cooley Auctions, his authority comes from decades on the rostrum in front of real buyers and real stakes, not from a studio.
His social presence extends that same on-the-ground credibility online, breaking down auction strategy and market sentiment for an audience that wants to understand the mechanics of a sale, not just the result.
6 – Ella Cas: Buyer’s Agent
As a buyer’s agent operating across Melbourne and its surrounding suburbs, Ella Cas brings professional transaction experience to a TikTok presence that covers market trends, price predictions and first home buyer strategy in the Victorian market. What distinguishes her content from general property commentary is its specificity: she is talking about markets she works in, for outcomes she is paid to deliver.
For Melbourne buyers navigating one of Australia’s most competitive property environments, that local professional knowledge, delivered in an accessible format, is exactly the kind of content that earns genuine audience loyalty.
7 – Gavin Rubinstein: Founder, The Rubinstein Group at Ray White TPG
Gavin Rubinstein built The Rubinstein Group at Ray White TPG into one of Sydney’s highest-performing individual real estate practices, and his Instagram engagement outranks every major franchise account in the country. That distinction matters: he is not a media personality who sells property, he is a top-performing agent whose content reflects live transactions in one of Australia’s most competitive markets.
For buyers and sellers trying to understand how Sydney’s top end actually moves, his day-to-day content is closer to a transaction diary than a highlight reel.
8 – Robbo Roper: Mortgage expert & home buyer connector
Robbo Roper‘s content sits at the junction of property aspiration and mortgage reality, which is precisely where most first home buyers get stuck. As a mortgage expert and home buyer connector, he publishes short-form video that walks Australian buyers through the finance side of property ownership: what to expect from a broker, how to prepare for a loan application, what the common mistakes look like.
His placement in Favikon’s Top 20 Australian real estate influencers for 2025 reflects an audience that is not just watching but acting, the kind of content engagement that distinguishes an education account from an entertainment one.
9 – Michael Biviano: Property developer; business coach & real estate strategist
Michael Biviano built his platform on the strategy side of the business, working as a speaker, business coach and property developer before turning that experience into content for agents and investors navigating the industry. His focus sits less on individual listings and more on the frameworks behind sustainable success in real estate.
That distinction, teaching the business of property rather than just showcasing it, is what places him among the professionals worth following rather than just watching.
10 – Consulting by PK: Investment property educator
The property content space has no shortage of people telling audiences what to buy. What is rarer, and more valuable, is someone teaching them how to decide. Consulting by PK builds investment theses from actual data: top 5 per cent growth property analysis, cashflow modelling, suburb research methodology, the frameworks behind the conclusions rather than just the conclusions themselves.
With more than 60,000 YouTube subscribers, the audience that follows this content is a specific and self-selecting one, investors who want to understand the process, not just receive the output. That is a harder audience to build and a more durable one.
What this list reflects, taken together, is a professionalisation of property content in Australia. The era of anonymous property spruikers making market predictions without credentials or accountability is being displaced, slowly, but measurably, by practitioners who are willing to put their professional reputation behind what they publish. That is good for the industry. It is better for the buyers.
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