A lolcat (pronounced ), or LOLcat, is an

image macro An image macro is a piece of digital media featuring a picture, or artwork, with some form of text superimposed. The text frequently appears at the top and bottom of the image. Image macros are one of the most common forms of internet memes, an ...

of one or more cats. Lolcat images' idiosyncratic and intentionally grammatically incorrect text is known as lolspeak. Lolcat is a compound word of the

acronymic An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

abbreviation LOL (laugh out loud) and the word "cat". A synonym for lolcat is cat macro or cat meme, since the images are a type of

and also a well-known genre of

meme A meme ( ) is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural i ...

. Lolcats are commonly designed for photo sharing imageboards and other Internet forums.

History

Harry Whittier Frees - What's Delaying My Dinner

British portrait photographer Harry Pointer created a

carte de visite The ''carte de visite'' (, visiting card), abbreviated CdV, was a type of small photograph which was patented in Paris by photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri in 1854, although first used by Louis Dodero. Each photograph was the size o ...

series featuring cats posed in various situations in the early 1870s. To these he usually added amusing text intended to further enhance their appeal. Other notable early figures include Harry Whittier Frees and (using mounted animals) Walter Potter. The first recorded use of the term "lolcat" was used on

4chan 4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from anime and manga to video games, cooking, weapons, television, ...

, an anonymous imageboard. The word "Lolcat" was in use as early as June 2006; the domain name lolcats.com was registered on June 14, 2006. Their popularity was spread through usage on forums such as Something Awful. '' 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?" 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 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. The term ''lolcat'' gained national media attention in the United States when it was covered by '' Time'', which wrote that non-commercialized

phenomena A phenomenon ( : phenomena) is an observable event. The term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which ''cannot'' be directly observed. Kant was heavily influenced by Gottfried W ...

of the sort are increasingly rare, stating that lolcats have "a distinctly old-school, early 1990s, Usenet feel to hem. Partial scan of the print edition
fcrunk.wellimean.com
'' 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." "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". In December 2014, the word ''lolcat'' entered the '' Oxford English Dictionary'', appearing in its online version.

Format

Lolcat is a compound word made from "lol" and "cat". " Lol" stands for "Laugh out Loud" or "Laughing out Loud"; hence, lolcats are intended to be funny and to include jokes. Lolcats images comprise a photo of a cat with a large caption characteristically set in a heavy 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 Speech balloons (also speech bubbles, dialogue balloons, or word balloons) are a graphic convention used most commonly in comic books, comics, and cartoons to allow words (and much less often, pictures) to be understood as representing a char ...

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, featuring "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 Internet slang (also called Internet shorthand, cyber-slang, netspeak, digispeak or chatspeak) is a non-standard or unofficial form of language used by people on the Internet to communicate to one another. An example of Internet slang is "LOL" m ...

. Frequently, lolcat captions take the form of phrasal templates. Some phrases have a known source, usually a well-known

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 ...

, such as All your base are belong to us or

Do not want Do, DO or D.O. may refer to: Languages * The English verb, ''do'', which may serve as an auxiliary verb; see do-support * ''Do'' (kana), a mora symbol in Japanese writing * Ditto mark People * Đỗ, a Vietnamese surname * Do (surname), inclu ...

, while others don't. The language of lolcats has also been likened to baby talk, however it draws on a variety of linguistic resources, not just the imitation of baby talk. Common themes include jokes of the form "Im in ur oun erbing ur

elated noun Elation is an emotion of happiness. Elation may also refer to: *''Carnival Elation'', cruise ship * A type of ''collineation'' in perspective geometry where the center lies on the axis * ''Elation'' (album), a 2012 studio album by the band Great ...

" Many lolcat images capture cats performing characteristically human actions or appearing to use modern technology, such as computers. 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) and " I Can Has Cheezburger" (a portrait of a blue British Shorthair). Another popular format is " djectivecat is djective/noun"

Recurring characters

"Ceiling Cat" is a character spawned by the meme. The original image was an

with a picture of a cat looking out of a hole in a ceiling, captioned "Ceiling Cat is watching you masturbate." 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 A black cat is a domestic cat with black fur that may be a mixed or specific breed, or a common domestic cat of no particular breed. The Cat Fanciers' Association (CFA) recognizes 22 cat breeds that can come with solid black coats. The Bombay b ...

who lives in the basement) represent good and evil in the lolcat universe, and in some cases God and Satan, as in the LOLCat Bible Translation Project. ''Ceiling Cat'' by Eva & Franco Mattes, a 2016 taxidermy cat installation mimicking the meme, is in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Offshoots and parodies

Variations on the lolcat concept include captioning photos of other animals in a similar style (e.g. ''loldogs'' for dogs, etc.). The syntax of lolcat captions was used as the basis for LOLCODE, an esoteric programming language with interpreters and compilers available in

.NET Framework The .NET Framework (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a proprietary software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It was the predominant implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) until bein ...

, Perl, etc. In the Java edition of the video game Minecraft, there is an option to change language settings to LOLCAT. Another example is

Polandball Countryballs, also known as Polandball, is an art style and internet meme used in online comic strips in which countries are typically personified as imperfect spherical characters (there are some exceptions, such as Israel, Nepal, Kazakhstan ...

, which uses broken English, reminiscent of the lolcat meme. lolcat, a variant of the Unix utility cat, outputs text in rainbow colours.

Notes

References

With 'LOLcats' Internet Fad, Anyone Can Get In on the Joke
'' The Wall Street Journal'', August 25, 2007
If you give a cat a keyboard
'' Minneapolis Star Tribune'', July 26, 2007
Bloggers Bring in the Big Bucks
'' BusinessWeek'', July 13, 2007 * *

External links

* * * {{Internet slang Cats in popular culture Animals on the Internet Internet slang Internet humor Photography by genre 4chan phenomena Internet memes introduced in 2006 2006 neologisms he:תופעת אינטרנט#Lolcat