If you are internet-functional enough to be able to load this page on a browser, you have almost certainly seen a LOLcat before… probably forwarded a link to one and maybe made a few of your own. The phenomenon is fairly old in Internet terms: about two or three years as normal human beings reckon time. It has since spread out beyond its initial audience of geeks: the ecosystem has broadened to include lolhamsters, LOLCorgans (for fans of the Smashing Pumpkins frontman), and, o yes, lolgays.
LOLcats have two essential elements: a picture of a cat, and a caption in a sort of slang dialect sometimes referred to as LOLspeak (others use the pseudo-scientific term kitty pidgin). LOLspeak derives heavily from leetspeak and internet memes (as well as the bastard cousins of those two folkways: txt shorthand and image macros). embedding these wordlets, words and phrases into a loopy syntax that sort of smacks of engrish (which is, of course, another internet meme). LOLspeak is sufficiently mature that it makes sense to think of it as a language or dialect all its own: as one observer puts it, it is possible to get LOLspeak wrong.
Human society uses dialects, slang and argot as a way of establishing who’s in and who’s out, and as a way of maintaining connection among those in the in-group. Anybody who speaks a regional dialect has noticed that jokes (even ones that aren’t that good) are usually funnier when they’re said in dialect. In addition to the a-ha of the joke itself – the source of the humor – there’s the recognition of seeing your own subcultural signifiers.
LOLcats themselves, of course, have an appeal that transcends online geekiness. Even to those outside the subculture (say, your Mom), there’s enormous cuteness value to a picture of a cat with a caption, however cryptic (“Im in ur noun, verb-ing ur related noun”). In this way, much as sports culture, say, or the movies have fed back into the broader culture, so too has LOLling become increasingly part of the modern experience.
LOLcats are immediately recognizable as a type: self-aware, crazed with hunger, improbably mischievous, and terrible liars. They are, in short, quite possibly the template for 21st century American society, kulturbärers of our time. LOLSpeak sounds perfectly natural coming out of George Bush’s mouth, and as we lose faith in the power of our institutions to manage the chaos of the world, we find a kind of solace in the buffoonery of loleconomists and lolgeeks.
In sum, there are clues we can draw from a scorned subculture with a weird ethos and a private set of symbols and signifiers: the early Christians of the first few centuries A.D. As the fish, the lamb, and utlimately the crucifix passed from secret sign to universal symbol, it carried the Christian message to millions.
LOLcat religion? DO NOT WANT. But, on the other hand… we could certainly do worse than to venerate Ceiling Cat.
kthxbai
