Lolcat

A lolcat is an image combining a photograph, most frequently a cat, with a humorous and idiosyncratic caption in (often) broken English—a dialect which is known as "lolspeak", or "kitteh". The name "lolcat" is a compound word of "LOL" and "cat". Another name is cat macro, being a type of image macro. Lolcats are created for photo sharing imageboards and other internet forums. Lolcats are similar to other anthropomorphic animal-based image macros such as the O RLY? owl.

The term lolcat gained national media attention in the United States when it was covered by Time, which wrote that non-commercialized phenomena of the sort are increasingly rare, stating that lolcats have "a distinctly old-school, early 1990s, Usenet feel to [them]." The superimposed text is usually assumed to be uttered by the cat in the photograph. There are parallels between the language used in lolcats and baby talk, which some owners of cats often use when talking to them.

Format

These images usually consist of a photo of a cat with a large caption characteristically set in a sans serif font such as Impact or Arial Black. The image is, on occasion, digitally edited for effect. The caption generally acts as a speech balloon encompassing a comment from the cat, or as a description of the depicted scene. The caption is intentionally written with deviations from standard English spelling and syntax, featuring "strangely-conjugated verbs, but a tendency to converge to a new set of rules in spelling and grammar." The text parodies the grammar-poor patois stereotypically attributed to Internet slang. Frequently, lolcat captions take the form of phrasal templates. Some phrases have a known source (usually a well-known Internet meme, such as All your base are belong to us or Do not want), while others seem to be specific to the lolcat form.

Common themes include jokes of the form "Im in ur noun, verb-ing ur related noun." This construction is a snowclone stemming from the phrase "I'm in ur base, killing ur doodz," which became a common meme in several real-time strategy computer games. "subjects: i has dem" show the cat in possession of multiple, identical objects, whereas "I has a noun" pictures show a cat in possession of an object. "Invisible noun" show pictures of cats apparently interacting with said invisible object. The related "flavor" (spelled "flavr" or "flavur" in lolcat) shots specifically show a cat (or another animal) licking/eating an item, person or animal (including sometimes themselves) and remarking how "[noun] haz a flavr." "My noun, let me show you it/them" pictures are accompanied by cats apparently presenting or offering an object. Another common lolcat displays a cat with a specific look, which is described by adjective, and the text, "[adjective] cat is [adjective]", "[adjective] cat is not [adjective]" or "Your offering pleases [adjective] cat." A version of this is also stated as "adjective cat is not amused", or "[adjective] cat has run out of [adjective]."

History

Many of the first lolcats originated from the anonymous imageboard 4chan sometime around 2005. The word "lolcat" is attested as early as June 2006, and the domain name "lolcats.com" was registered on June 14, 2006. The News Journal states that "some trace the lolcats back to the site 4chan, which features bizarre cat pictures on Saturdays, or 'Caturdays'." Ikenburg adds that the images have been "slinking around the Internet for years under various labels, but they didn't become a sensation until early 2007 with the advent of I Can Has Cheezburger? The first image on "I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?" was posted on January 11, 2007 and was allegedly from the Something Awful website. Lev Grossman of Time wrote that the oldest known example "probably dates to 2006", but later corrected himself in a blog post where he recapitulated the anecdotal evidence readers had sent him, placing the origin of "Caturday" and many of the images now known by a few as "lolcats" in early 2005. The domain name "caturday.com" was registered on April 30, 2005.

Offshoots and parodies

• The LOLCat Bible Translation Project is attempting to translate the Bible into lolcat speak.
• The syntax of lolcat captions was used as the basis for LOLCODE, an esoteric programming language with interpreters and compilers available in .NET framework, perl, etc.

See also

• List of Internet phenomena
• LOLCODE
• O RLY?
• Internet Meme
• Padonki, a Russian Internet subculture with slang similar in format to Lolspeak

References

Inline

General

• With 'LOLcats' Internet Fad, Anyone Can Get In on the Joke, Wall Street Journal, 25^th August 2007
• Can Green Make Green?: New Media, New Methods, New York Times, 21^st July 2007
• If you give a cat a keyboard, Minneapolis Star Tribune, 26^th July 2007
• Bloggers Bring in the Big Bucks, BusinessWeek, 13^th July 2007
• Oh Hai! Cats, the internet, and tactical communities., Joshua Green in receiver magazine, Autumn 2007