Last Will & Testament
You're familiar with the Lolcat internet trend, or meme? No? Ok, go check out this page first, then come back here to find some more links. Go ahead - really. I'll wait.
[Queue Jeopardy music]
Back yet? Good!
The lolcats meme isn't just for cats. The whole silly meme (trend) has been adopted for everything from geeks to squids, to presidents to Star Trek, and everything in between, including my creation for the day,
Oh Hai! We Iz LOLbones! just in time for Halloween & the Day of the Dead.
What does it take to create a lolniche or macro? not much, really...
"Some internet trends are destined for greatness: movie spin-offs and billion-dollar sponsorship deals. But not all of them. As you read this, hundreds of geeks are hunched over laptops wasting their valuable young brain cells making LOLcats. [and others] It's very simple. Find a picture of a cat (or other cute creature). Add a stupid caption in large white text. [Misspell everything,] Post the image on a message board..."
Times Online
There's a bit more to it than that, but if you're looking for some plain old silly fun, check out some of the lolcat sites and galleries, make a few of your own, try writing in lolcat. There's even a site that will teach you how. Click for full details!
Once you've finished with that, check out the Lol Trek episode, "We Has Tribbles and Also Troubles".
Here are some of the more notable lolsites. If you have one to add, feel free to let us know about it.
- lolcats explained - The Wikipedia explanation for lolcats.
- I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER - ... which really got the ball rolling.
- lolcat Builder - Build your own lolcat images. I found the site clunky and slow, but if you don't have a graphics program, it's easy enough to use.
- lol President - Oh hai! Wehn can we sai bai?
- Tehs Holiez Bibul - Yes, you're reading that right.
Lolcats have been around for a year or two, gaining great grounds in popularity this year when they received a lot of press from Times Online, Time Magazine, and others.
Take a picture of a cat doing something cute. Then make up a caption--something witty that the cat would be saying if cats could talk. Bear in mind that cats can't spell all that well and that they're not so hot on subject-verb agreement either. Photoshop the caption onto the image, and post your creation on a blog. What you get is lolcats: lol for laugh out loud, cats for cats.
What you also get is the reigning instance of an Internet meme, a running gag that won't stop running but instead reproduces and mutates in the petri dish of the Net's collective imagination. A Google search for lolcats returns 3.3 million results. The website icanhascheezburger.com the definitive lolcats archive, gets 200 to 500 submissions a day. "The breadth of cultures [lolcats] has spread to is mind-boggling," says one of the site's two curators, who prefer to remain anonymous. "We think it has evolved beyond Internet subculture and is hitting the mainstream."
Time
The WSJ finally caught up with them in August of this year. It's hard to be an old stick in the mud, yet feel compelled to write about a trend that just doesn't seem to go away. I think they were almost embarrassed, but if lolcats are indeed hitting the mainstream, then they need to be right there with the... ahem... Times.
It's possible to use the Internet every day and never encounter a lolcat. - Wall Street Journal
Well, it's possible, but not really very likely.
