Lolcats?!?

Well, I'm going to admit it now--I think lolcats are hilarious. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but there's something about skewed grammar and spelling and inside nerd jokes, superimposed on funny pictures of animals (particularly cats), that really makes me laugh.

What is a lolcat? Basically, it's a picture of a cat (sometimes another animal, like a walrus or a gerbil) that is often funny in and of itself, made even better with a humorous caption that often draws on programming or gaming inside jokes. One of the more popular lolcat jokes involves cheeseburgers; this is due to one of the first (if not the first) lolcats shown on the left, with a can asking, "I can has cheezburger?" Wikipedia has a basic history of the lolcat; Slate has an informative pictorial guide, if you want to know more. (And why wouldn't you? They're lolcats!) There are some very dumb ones out there, but there are also quite a few that are very clever and well-done.


If you still don't get it, here are a few of my favorites...

Sure, they're kind of silly, but they're also a lot of fun. Maybe what fascinates me about them the most is the way they show how quickly the Internet allows for changes, and how pervasive certain memes have become because of this.