Nyan Cat is a
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
video uploaded in April 2011, which became an
internet meme
An Internet meme, commonly known simply as a meme ( ), is an idea, behavior, style, or image that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. What is considered a meme may vary across different communities on the Internet ...
. The video merged a
Japanese pop
J-pop ( ja, ジェイポップ, ''jeipoppu''; often stylized as J-POP; an abbreviated form of "Japanese popular music"), natively also known simply as , is the name for a form of popular music that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in the 1 ...
song with an animated cartoon cat with a
Pop-Tart for a torso flying through space and leaving a
rainbow
A rainbow is a meteorological phenomenon that is caused by reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a spectrum of light appearing in the sky. It takes the form of a multicoloured circular arc. Rainbows c ...
trail behind. The video ranked at number five on the list of most viewed YouTube videos in 2011.
Origin
Animated GIF
On April 2, 2011, the
GIF animation of the cat was posted by 25-year-old Christopher Torres of
Dallas
Dallas () is the third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and seat of Dallas County ...
,
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
, who uses the name "prguitarman", on his website ''LOL-Comics''. Torres explained in an interview where the idea for the animation came from: "I was doing a donation drive for the
Red Cross
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million Volunteering, volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure re ...
and in-between drawings in my
Livestream video chat, two different people mentioned I should draw a 'Pop Tart' and a 'cat'." In response, he created a hybrid image of a
Pop-Tart and a cat, which was developed a few days later into the animated GIF.
Nyan Cat was based on a real cat: Torres' pet cat Marty, who died in November 2012 from
feline infectious peritonitis.
Song
The original version of the song "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!" was uploaded by user "daniwell" to the Japanese video site
Niconico on July 25, 2010.
[ニコニコ動画(原宿).【初音ミク】Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!【オリジナループ】. Fro]
nicovideo.jp
July 25, 2010. Retrieved May 30, 2011. The song features the
Vocaloid
is a singing voice synthesizer software product. Its signal processing part was developed through a joint research project led by Kenmochi Hideki at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, in 2000 and was not originally intended to b ...
virtual singer
Hatsune Miku
, also called Miku Hatsune, and officially code-named CV01, is a Vocaloid software voicebank developed by Crypton Future Media and its official anthropomorphic mascot character, a 16-year-old girl with long, turquoise twintails. Miku's pers ...
. The Japanese word is
onomatopoeic
Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', ''m ...
, imitating the call of a cat (equivalent to English "
meow
A meow or miaow is a cat vocalization. ''Meows'' may have diverse tones and are sometimes chattered, murmured or whispered. Adult cats rarely meow to each other, so an adult cat meowing to human beings is probably a post-domestication exten ...
").
The song was later included in the
rhythm game
Rhythm game or rhythm action is a genre of music-themed action video game that challenges a player's sense of rhythm. Games in the genre typically focus on dance or the simulated performance of musical instruments, and require players to press ...
''
Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F'', released by
Sega
is a Japanese multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are headquartered in Irvine, California and London, respectively. Its division ...
in August 2012.
On January 30, 2011, a user named "Momomomo" uploaded a cover of "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!" featuring the
UTAU voice Momone Momo.
[
【UTAU】Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!【桃音モモ】【ミクカバー】 ‐ ニコニコ動画(原宿). Fro]
nicovideo.jp
, January 31, 2011. Retrieved May 30, 2011. The voice source used to create the Momone Momo voice was a Japanese woman named Momoko Fujimoto.
YouTube video
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
user "saraj00n" (whose real name is Sara June)
combined the cat animation with the "Momomomo" version of the song "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!", and uploaded it to YouTube on April 5, 2011, three days after Torres had uploaded his animation, giving it the title "Nyan Cat".
The video rapidly became a success after being featured on websites including
G4 and
CollegeHumor
CollegeHumor is an Internet comedy company based in Los Angeles. Aside from producing content for release on YouTube, it was also a former humor website owned by InterActiveCorp ( IAC) until January 2020, when IAC withdrew funding and the websi ...
. Christopher Torres said: "Originally, its name was Pop Tart Cat, and I will continue to call it so, but the Internet has reached a decision to name it Nyan Cat, and I'm happy with that choice, too."
In March 2019, ownership of the YouTube channel hosting the original Nyan Cat video was transferred to
Means TV
The Means Cooperative, or ''Means'', is an American anti-capitalist mass media worker cooperative. Means was founded in 2019 by filmmakers Naomi Burton and Nick Hayes in Detroit, Michigan as an expansion of their video production company Means of ...
, a
worker-owned
A worker cooperative is a cooperative owned and self-managed by its workers. This control may mean a firm where every worker-owner participates in decision-making in a democratic fashion, or it may refer to one in which management is elected by ...
video streaming service.
Remastering and sale as an NFT
In February 2021, it was reported that the gif's original creator, Chris Torres, had created an updated version and sold it as a
non-fungible token (NFT) for 300
ether
In organic chemistry, ethers are a class of compounds that contain an ether group—an oxygen atom connected to two alkyl or aryl groups. They have the general formula , where R and R′ represent the alkyl or aryl groups. Ethers can again ...
, the equivalent of US$587,000 at the time of sale.
Reception
The Nyan Cat music video reached ninth place in ''
Business Insider
''Insider'', previously named ''Business Insider'' (''BI''), is an American financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Insider''s parent company Insider Inc. has been owned by the German publ ...
''s top ten
viral video
A viral video is a video that becomes popular through a viral process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites such as YouTube as well as social media and email.Lu Jiang, Yajie Miao, Yi Yang, ZhenZhong Lan, Alexander H ...
s of April 2011, with 7.2 million total views. The original
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
video has received 199 million views . Nyan Cat won a
Webby Award
The Webby Awards are awards for excellence on the Internet presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over two thousand industry experts and technology innovators. Categories includ ...
in 2012 for "Meme of the Year".
Due to the video's popularity, many new
remix
A remix (or reorchestration) is a piece of media which has been altered or contorted from its original state by adding, removing, or changing pieces of the item. A song, piece of artwork, book, video, poem, or photograph can all be remixes. The o ...
es and cover versions have been made, some several hours long. There are also
ringtone
A ringtone, ring tone or ring is the sound made by a telephone to indicate an incoming call. Originally referring to and made by the electromechanical striking of bells, the term now refers to any sound on any device alerting of a new incoming ...
s,
wallpapers
Wallpaper is a material used in interior decoration to decorate the interior walls of domestic and public buildings. It is usually sold in rolls and is applied onto a wall using wallpaper paste. Wallpapers can come plain as "lining paper" (so ...
and
applications
Application may refer to:
Mathematics and computing
* Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks
** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...
created for
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...
s and devices, including a
substitute for
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...
which would show up in various places such as the file transfer progress indicator in
Windows Explorer
File Explorer, previously known as Windows Explorer, is a file manager application that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface for accessing the file ...
, following a request on the
subreddit
Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images ...
"Somebody Make This". Video games were developed for
iPhone,
iPad
The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, ...
,
Symbian
Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...
,
Android,
Windows Phone
Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design lan ...
, and
HP webOS,
and a variety of
flash game
A browser game or a "flash game" is a video game that is played via the internet using a web browser. They are mostly free-to-play and can be single-player or multiplayer.
Some browser games are also available as mobile apps, PC games, or on co ...
s such as "
Snake
Snakes are elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more ...
" replicas using the cat's rainbow tail. "Nyan Cat Adventure", by
21st Street Games, is an officially licensed game.
An officially licensed
cryptocurrency
A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. It i ...
entitled "Nyancoin" with the domain name nyanco.in (later nyan-coin.org) was launched in January 2014.
Website
Christopher Torres initially criticized the website www.nyan.cat, which originally featured a similar-looking cat with the pop tart replaced by a slice of toast, and the same background music. The site, which uses the
.cat
.cat (pronounced in Catalan: ''punt cat'' ) is a sponsored top-level domain intended to be used to highlight the Catalan language. Its policy has been developed by ICANN anFundació puntCAT It was approved in September 2005.
History
Before . ...
sponsored top-level domain A sponsored top-level domain (sTLD) is one of the categories of top-level domains (TLDs) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use in the Domain Name System of the Internet, alongside country-code top-level domains (ccTLD) ...
, was described by Torres as "plagiarized". Since 2012 the website has been operated by Torres, and shows the authentic version of the cat.
Temporary DMCA takedown
On June 27, 2011, the original YouTube video was taken down from the site following a
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or ...
complaint from someone claiming to be Torres. Torres immediately issued a statement on his website ''LOL-comics'' denying that he was the source of the complaint, and contacted Saraj00n and daniwell, who hold the copyright for the video and the song, in order to file a counter-complaint to YouTube. During the period that the video was unavailable for viewing, Torres received numerous abusive e-mails from people who wrongly believed that he had filed the DMCA complaint. On June 28, 2011, the Nyan Cat video was restored to YouTube.
Lawsuit
In May 2013, Christopher Torres and Charles Schmidt, the creators of Nyan Cat and
Keyboard Cat respectively, jointly sued
5th Cell
5th Cell is an independently owned video game developer founded in 2003 as 5th Cell Media, LLC. led by Jeremiah Slaczka and Marius Falhbusch. The company is most well known for creating the '' Drawn to Life'' and '' Scribblenauts'' series.
Overv ...
and
Warner Bros. for
copyright infringement
Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, ...
and
trademark infringement
Trademark infringement is a violation of the exclusive rights attached to a trademark without the authorization of the trademark owner or any licensees (provided that such authorization was within the scope of the licence). Infringement may ...
over the appearance of these characters without permission in the ''
Scribblenauts'' series of video games. Torres and Schmidt have
registered copyrights on their characters and have pending trademark applications on the names.
Torres released a statement saying that he had tried to obtain compensation from 5th Cell and Warner Bros. for commercial use of the character, but was "disrespected and snubbed" multiple times.
The suit was settled in September 2013, with Torres and Schmidt being paid for the use of the characters.
See also
* ''
Robot Unicorn Attack
''Robot Unicorn Attack'' is an endless running video game released by Spritonin Media Games on February 4, 2010. In the first week after its release, the game garnered one million plays. Following Robot Unicorn Attack, Adult Swim released three ...
''
* ''
Techno Kitten Adventure
''Techno Kitten Adventure'' is a side-scrolling video game developed by 21st Street Games and published by creative design studio Elite Gudz for the iOS App Store, Xbox Live Indie Games market, Android Market and Windows Phone market. In the game ...
''
*
Cats and the Internet
Images and videos of domestic cats make up some of the most viewed content on the World Wide Web, particularly image macros in the form of lolcats. ThoughtCatalog has described cats as the "unofficial mascot of the Internet".
The subject has ...
*
List of Internet phenomena
Social and cultural phenomena specific to the Internet include Internet memes, such as popular themes, catchphrases, images, viral videos, and jokes. When such fads and sensations occur online, they tend to grow rapidly and become more wides ...
References
External links
*
Nyan Cat on ''LOL-Comics'' the original GIF animation by prguitarman (Christopher Torres), April 2, 2011.
* {{youtube, QH2-TGUlwu4, Nyan Cat, saraj00n (April 5, 2011)
2011 YouTube videos
2011 works
Fictional cats
Fictional characters introduced in 2011
Internet memes introduced in 2011
IOS games
Viral videos
Webby Award winners
Xbox 360 games