A Brighton Cats carte de visite by Harry Pointer, c. 1870s
British portrait photographer Harry Pointer created a carte de visite series featuring cats posed in various situations in the early 1870s. To these he usually added amusing text intended to further enhance their appeal.[5] These souvenir cards were known as Brighton Cats. Other early figures include Harry Whittier Frees and (using taxidermied animals) Walter Potter.[6]
The first recorded use of the term "lolcat" was used on 4chan, an anonymous imageboard.[7][8][9] The word "Lolcat" was in use as early as June 2006; the domain namelolcats.com was registered on June 14, 2006.[10] Their popularity was spread through usage on forums such as Something Awful.[11]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 did not become a sensation until early 2007 with the advent of I Can Has Cheezburger? "[12] The first image on "I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?" was posted on January 11, 2007, and was allegedly from the Something Awful website."[13][14] Lev Grossman of Time wrote that the oldest known example "probably dates to 2006",[15] but later corrected himself in a blog post[16] where he recanted his statement based on 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.[17]
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]".[18]Entertainment Weekly put them on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list, saying, "Da cutest distractshun of da decaid? Y, lolcats of corse! We can neber haz enuf of deez capshioned pics of cuddlie kittehs."[19] "Lolcat" was also a runner-up under the "Most Creative" category under the American Dialect Society Word of the Year Awards, losing out to
"Googlegänger".[20]
Format
A lolcat image on the icanhascheezburger.com website in 2007[21]
Lolcat is a compound word made from the acronym "LOL" and "cat". Lolcat images comprise a photo of a cat with a large caption characteristically superimposed onto the image in a heavy, sans-serif font such as Impact or Arial Black.[22] Such images and memes following the format are often digitally edited for comedic effect.
Captions act 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 grammar,[22] featuring "strangely-conjugated verbs, but a tendency to converge to a new set of rules in spelling and grammar".[22][23][24][failed verification]
The text parodies the grammar-poor patois stereotypically attributed to Internet slang. Frequently, lolcat captions take the form of phrasal templates.[24] 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,[25] while others don't. The language of lolcats has also been likened to baby talk,[26] however it draws on a variety of linguistic resources, not just the imitation of baby talk.[27]
Common themes include jokes of the form "Im in ur [noun], [verb]-ing ur [related noun]."[28] Many lolcat images capture cats performing characteristically human actions or appearing to use modern technology, such as computers.[citation needed]
There are several well-known Lolcat images and single-word captions that have spawned many variations and imitations, including "Ceiling Cat" (see below). Others include Fail (a cat with a slice of processed cheese on its face)[29] and "I Can Has Cheezburger" (a portrait of a blue British Shorthair).[30] Another popular format is "[Adjective] cat is [adjective/noun]."
Recurring characters
"Ceiling Cat" is a character spawned by the meme. The original image was an image macro with a picture of a cat looking out of a hole in a ceiling, captioned "Ceiling Cat is watching you masturbate."[31] There followed numerous examples with the format "Ceiling Cat is watching you [verb ending in / rhyming with -ate]" with Ceiling Cat superimposed in the upper left hand corner of an image macro depicting the appropriate action. The underlying theme is that the cat is looking down on one, almost in a form of judgment.
"Ceiling Cat" and the corresponding "Basement Cat" (a black cat who lives in the basement) are said to represent good and evil in the lolcat universe, and in some cases God and Satan, as in the LOLCat Bible Translation Project.[1][32][33]
The sculptural recreation of the "Ceiling Cat" meme, created in 2016 by artists Eva & Franco Mattes
^Lev Grossman (July 12, 2007). "Creating a Cute Cat Frenzy". Time. Archived from the original on July 16, 2007. Retrieved July 16, 2007. this has also spawned the digg dog which is part of the popular site titled digg.com
^Annalee Newitz (April 27, 2007). "I'M IN YR X Y-ING YOUR Z – A Grammar of Lolcats". Table of Malcontents, a Wired blog. Archived from the original on April 30, 2007. Retrieved April 29, 2007. These images ... usually include a cute cat saying something related to buckets, cheeseburgers, or whatever else with strangely-conjugated verbs.
^Svensson, Peter (April 24, 2008). "Lolcat site needz ur skillz". Associated Press. Archived from the original on December 12, 2008. Retrieved October 15, 2008.
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