One of the interesting things about working in IT is that you are constantly exposed to the wonders of the ever evolving internet. It means there is always a new trend to learn about, or a new RSS reader to try, or a new social networking site to test out. The cycle is endless, but it serves the exciting purpose of keeping things fresh and interesting.
Part of that constant exploration of the interweb and its tubes means that you subject yourself to popular things that may not have anything to do with the next killer app or popular networking site. It means you become a part of the viral spread of totally inexplicable content. What kind of content? It could be anything really. But the one thing you can know for certain is that you'll never see it coming, and it will become more popular than you could ever possible imagine. Just ask The Star Wars Kid, or the Chocolate Rain singer (he was on Jimmy Kimmel?! HOW! HOW!!!)
One of the more well known phenomenons of today are the LOLcats of icanhascheezburger.com. Unimaginably stupid and verging on nonsensical, icanhascheezburger is basically a collection of pictures (usually of cats) in strange poses with accompanying phrases written in abysmal internet shorthand/ slang. For some reason... these cats are also very commonly seeking cheeseburgers. My personal favorite LOLcat image is neither a cat, nor in search of the cheeseburger, but rather the bucket walrus, who I can't look at without laughing.
I warned you it was stupid ;-) But you know you want to "lol" yourself right out of your chair.
Two questions come from all this. The first, is what in the world keeps you coming back to my blog? The second is how in the world do we explain the inexplicable popularity of things like the icanhascheezburger, which according to creator Eric Nakagawa is getting 1/2 a million page views a day.
The Wall Street Journal takes a stab at unveiling the mystery in an article by Aaron Rutkoff. Their conclusion? "What makes lolcats appealing is that it's simultaneously obscure and accessible. It's an inside joke told in an online lingua franca, but with a bit of effort anyone can become an insider."
Outside of my own personal amusement that a paper of the Wall Street Journal's caliber is devoting time to the LOLcats, the notion of such a phenomenon as a big inside joke is an interesting one. Do sites like icanhascheezburger catch on because we all want to be part of the "in" crowd that gets the "gimme mah bucket!" joke? Is it all about sharing some kind of bond with 100 million of your closest friends? Given the nature of social computing in our world today, it would make sense. We put our personal photos (Flick'r), our favorite websites (Del.iciou.us), our personal thoughts (blogs) and even our social networks (facebook/ myspace) out in front of the world for all to see, and comment upon. Why should it come as any surprise that we treat our humor, or "internet pop culture" any differently?
But then again... maybe a lot of people just enjoy laughing at cats with bad grammar and walruses with buckets.
Why do you LOL?
I disagree with the Time quote. There is actually a lot of internet meme humor out there, and there always has been. see: ytmnd and a host of other sites I will not mention. The difference is that lolcats and chocolate rain are getting a much wider audience.
I consider these multiple iterations of humor based on simple concepts (Gary mentions looking at hundreds of lolcats) participatory culture's comedic form. It totally fascinates me.
I've been obsessed all day with what could be in the walrus's bucket to make him react that way. Wuz it feesh? Ah beebe walruz? Keez 2 the hummr?
Dammit, Stubbs, this is what I get for procrastinating on writing stuff for my blog. I am fascinated by this as well, and you beat me to a blog post on it.
I think Time does a bit better job of capturing this phenom than the WSJ: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1642897,00.html
I agree especially with this:
The striking thing about lolcats--besides its amazing fecundity and variety and the fact that, unlike a lot of Internet cat humor, it's actually pretty funny--is how little else like it there is online right now. The great, weird Internet meme, which once thundered across the Net in vast herds, is becoming surprisingly scarce, which may be why lolcats has a distinctly old-school, early 1990s, Usenet feel to it. It's not based on a Saturday Night Live sketch, and nobody's using it to get famous or sell anything. Yet.
We may be witnessing a revolution in user-generated content, but the more mainstream the Web gets, the more it looks like the mainstream: homogenous, opportunistic and commercial. It's no longer a subculture; it's just the culture. And don't we have enough of that already? Are we facing a future without a weird, vital, creative phenomenon like lolcats? Say it with me: "Do not want!"
Anyway, this is my own favorite: http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/8210/callouscatnq1.jpg
I have it on my desktop. That's what she gets for the previous evening, apparently.
Cat macros are great. I added the icanhascheezburger feed to my rss reader a few months back, and they post at least one per day. This helps break up my normal reading routine with something different and possibly humorous. Though I do disagree that it is a fad as image macros have been around for years and lolcats have been around since well over a year. It a product of the Web 1.0 sites like livejournal communities, which can be even scarier than a Jerry Springer show, and internet forums. I have your feed added to my reader as well via the aggregator on the TLT Staff site.
LOL has even inspired it's own code called LOLCODE. Here is a sample..
HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
VISIBLE "Hello world!"
KTHXBYE
For me LOLcats are only funny after I've seen a bunch of them in a row. It's one of those jokes that's kind of funny (or odd)the first time, but after seeing it 100 times it becomes funny again. Also, after you've viewed a couple dozen, you actually do start to develop an appreciation for some of the more original ones. The "invisible" LOLcat variations (invisible bicycle, etc) are great, because they're creative and an extension on the originals.
Alright, enough of this nonsense. Best of luck getting the bucket back...
"what in the world keeps you coming back to my blog?"
I saw the word "cat"! I also just in the last couple weeks saw that one of our fine colleagues had the LOLCat app installed in Facebook (I'm only a newbie there the last couple weeks.) That was my first exposure to LOLCats.
Something like this or my other favs like Stuff on My Cat or mycathatesyou.com appeals to my offbeat sense of humor, my appreciation of cat attitudes/behavior, and my love of playing around with words. As for me, this sort of thing catches on because I'm so pleased and relieved that I have fellow perverse humor soulmates in the abyss of people who take themselves way too seriously and/or don't appreciate weirdness or silliness as a fine art. Sometimes I can be so down about the fate of the world and then looking at silly photos and captions like this just makes me laugh out loud (LOL, yes.)
I really wouldn't agree it's *all* about being in the in crowd. ("Never been there, but the brochure looks nice." -Sheryl Crow) I highly doubt anyone thinks I'm cool because I look at a certain site or feed. On the other hand, in the case of some such Web phenomena, I am sort of recognized in the group of "regulars" who post comments on the pics of the day or the message board topics of the day, and who have developed a sort of cumulative history and subculture, like, you had to be there for a thread way-back-when to "get" it.
OK, it's a way to feel you are at least a part of "a" crowd, even when you live alone like me and don't have anything approaching a "crowd" in First Life!