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 A lolcat (pronounced LOLL-kat, with the "lol" not being an initialism), is an image combining a photograph, most frequently of a cat, with a humorous and idiosyncratic caption in (often) broken English—a dialect which is known as "lolspeak" or "kitty pidgin" and which parodies the poor grammar typically attributed to Internet slang. The name "lolcat" is a compound word of the acronymic abbreviation "LOL" and the word "cat".[1] A synonym for "lolcat" is cat macro, since the images are a type of image macro.[2] Lolcats are designed for photo sharing imageboards and other internet forums. The term lolcat gained national media attention in the United States when it was covered by Time,[3] 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]".
Format These images usually consist of a photo of a cat with a large caption characteristically set in a sans serif font such as Impact or Arial Black.[4] The image is, on occasion, digitally edited for effect. The caption generally acts 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 syntax,[4] featuring "strangely-conjugated verbs, but a tendency to converge to a new set of rules in spelling and grammar."[4][5][6] The text parodies the grammar-poor patois stereotypically attributed to Internet slang. Frequently, lolcat captions take the form of phrasal templates.[6] 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,[7] while others don't. There are parallels between the language used in lolcats and baby talk, which some owners of cats often use when talking to them.[8] Common themes include jokes of the form "Im in ur noun, verb-ing ur related noun."[9] 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"[10] and "I Can Has Cheezburger."[11] History Images portraying cats in human-like situations with captions date as far back as the 1860s, when a Brighton photographer named Henry Pointer began publishing a carte-de-visite series[citation needed]. Later, in the early 20th century, Harry Whittier Frees published novelty postcards and children's books with such images of animals dressed in human clothing.[12][13] The first recorded use of the term "lolcat" is from the anonymous imageboard 4chan circa 2005.[14][15][16] The word "Lolcat" is attested as early as June 2006, and the domain name "LOLcats.com" was registered on June 14, 2006.[17] Their popularity was spread through usage on forums such as Something Awful.[18] 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?"[19] The first image on "I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?" was posted on January 11, 2007, and was allegedly from the Something Awful website."[20][21] Lev Grossman of Time wrote that the oldest known example "probably dates to 2006,"[22] but later corrected himself in a blog post[23] where he recapitulated 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. Offshoots and parodiesThe syntax of lolcat captions was used as the basis for LOLCODE, an esoteric programming language with interpreters and compilers available in .NET framework, perl, etc.[1] Ceiling Cat and Basement Cat"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." [24] There followed numerous image macros 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 character is also featured in a project to translate the Bible to lolspeak. "Ceiling Cat" and the corresponding "Basement Cat" (a black cat who lives in the basement) have been said to represent God and Satan in the lolcat universe.[25][26][27] See also
Notes
References This audio file was created from a revision dated 2008-04-04, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. (Audio help)
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