I CAN HAS LOLCATS?
Sean Lambert, Staff Writer
December 9, 2009
Filed under Commentary, Top Stories
It can be officially said that cats have invaded the internet. While perusing the pages of the web one is bound to find a picture consisting of a cat in a silly pose with block text chock full of strange spelling and erroneous syntax. Or perhaps one might come across a video buried in the pages of YouTube with a cat engaged in some bizarre act. Cats, as it would seem, have become the obsession for the eccentric culture of the internet.
The origin of this craze is lost in the vast forest of message boards and email chains, but as time has gone on the frenzy has grown and continues to do so. However one particular site can be attributed to be the major source for the popularity: icanhascheezeburger.com. Most people fluent enough in the culture of the internet will recognize the site as a source for copious amounts of cat related humor. The pictures are always accompanied by bold block lettering in the voice of what the creator prospects to be the possible voice of the cat. This sort of humor may not be shared by most people, but in terms of the people who surf the web, it is comedic gold. The trend has even gone as far as to have made an entire bible retold with cats. Has it gone too far? Maybe.
The term “LOLcats” has been used to generalize this type of comedy, the origin of the phrase is from a comic strip entitled “laugh out loud cats” from 1912. The strip was short lived but influential enough to remain in the American mind for nearly a century. In the comic strip, two hobo cats named “Kitteh” and “Pip” find themselves in various sorts of comic mischief with the occasionally misspelled caption. The comic has been recently revived in a modern rendition with internet meme’s throughout.
Pictures are far from the only area of the internet where cats are prevalent, YouTube and other video sharing sites are teeming with cats. Some of the most famous are keyboard cat, ninja cat, spaghetti cat (video seems to be down temporarily), dramatic cat, very angry cat, and many more. These videos have gone viral - keyboard cat has over 4.3 million views on YouTube. To make that number a small bit more digestible, since the video was uploaded to YouTube two years ago 4.3 million views equates to about 8 views a minute or about eight years and three months of viewing time.
The cats craze might have gone a little too far, but it seems far from slowing down. You might as well get used to a stuffed inbox with nothing other than cats.