I absolutely love lolcats.
My brother once told me that they are the worst thing ever to befall the internet, and our disputes on the subject have done almost as much damage to our relationship as the time I broke his K’NEX tower when he was 8.
Lolcats, for the unfamiliar, are an internet phenomenon that consists of pictures of cats with captions in a big ugly font, posted on icanhascheezburger.com. Sounds simple, right? But the captions have their own weirdly specific grammar and vocabulary: a sort of babytalk combined with 1337—pronounced “leet,” short for elite, and is what hardcore computer gamers call themselves when they pwn n00bs.
Bad spelling, usually phonetically transcribed, is required. So are certain formats and popular tropes, like “I can has _,” “I’m in your _,” “_. You’re doing it wrong.” The word “nom,” which means to devour something, is a guaranteed laugh. References to cultural touchstones, from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy to Greek myths (Sisyphus cat!), are common, as are ongoing stories, like that of the walrus and his bucket, or “monorail cat”. And, of course, there are the lolcats that are just a really cute picture of a kitten with a vaguely appropriate caption.
As the trend continues, layers of references and in-jokes accumulate, themes reappear and pictures are used and reused with different captions and ideas. There are endless spinoffs: lolbots is robots or gadgets with captions, while lolsecret combines the lolcat idea with postsecret.com, the popular confessional website. Loltheorist gives you pictures of obscure scientists or academics with their popular theories in lolcat-ese, and loltheism explains that “blasphemy is teh funneh!” The LOLcat Bible Translation Project is underway to do exactly that: translate the Bible into lolcat, where God is known as “Ceiling Cat”, and blessings as “cheezburgers.” They have translated 61 percent of the Holy Book, and are going strong.
Personally, I check out the new lolcats whenever I need a pick-me-up or a distraction from paper-writing or whenever I need to feel some order and control in my world. What makes the site work is the mass collaboration, the references to references, the in-jokes. Hang out with lolcats for long enough and you begin to pick up on it. Like other internet memes, lolcats live a very finite and rule-governed existence, products of the ever-evolving and self-satisfied internet community, and that can be reassuring. I feel clever and aware when I get a lolcat joke, which is a feeling I don’t get often enough. And come on, what’s not funny about a smiling walrus?
