Cats Can Has Grammar
April 23, 2007
If you spend any time at all observing net culture, then you'll have been unable to miss the recent explosion in popularity of lolcats. This relatively recent phenomenon is the convention of taking pictures of cute animals, most frequently cats, and overlaying absurdist captions on the images.
The core behavior has existed for some time; "Image macro" is a generic term for this kind of folk art, and cats have always featured heavily in these types of Internet in-jokes. But a few distinct categories have sprung up that have helped amplify and popularize the phenomenon.
- I'M IN UR X Ying your Z. This construct, based on i'm in ur base, killin ur d00ds has morphed into a catch-all structure for annotating cat pictures.
- Invisible Item. Variations on the seminal Invisible Bike, these are images of cats, usually in midair, with captions that prompt us to fill in imaginary objects or actions that complete the scene. There's something brilliant to these images, speaking to our mind's ability to intuitively extrapolate unseen details.
- Kitty Pidgin. And finally, the newly dominant lolcats, of the family I Can Has Cheezeburger? These seem to be spawning nearly infinite variations, and have exploded in popularity since being named "lolcats" instead of the more general "image macro" or "cat macro".
The rise of these new subspecies of lolcats are particularly interesting to me because "I can has cheezeburger?" has a fairly consistent grammar. I wasn't sure this was true until I realized that it's possible to get cat-speak wrong.
Incorrect kitty pidgin jumped to my attention the first time I saw a reference to Dune being used with a lolcat image. The caption on the linked version of the image, "The spice must flow." is fine, if not particularly cat-like. But the caption on the version I saw first was much more verbose: "I are dunecat. I controls the spice, I controls the universe." Besides being an awkward attempt at overexplaining the punchline (I've never read Dune or seen the film, but the joke is obvious) this was just all wrong. The fact that we can tell no cat would talk like this shows that kitty pidgin is actually quite consistent.
I was having a conversation with Ben and Ben a few weeks ago where I suggested this consistent grammar for lolcats could be a "cweeole". Knowing a bit more about such things now, I realize this isn't a creole but more likely a pidgin language, used to help cats talk to humans. And since "pidgin" is already a cutesy spelling of a mispronunciation, there doesn't seem to be any really cute way to rename it to reflect its uniqueness. "Kitty pidgin" might be the closest thing we have to a name for this new language.
There's a consistent visual vocabulary to the construct, as well. If it ain't Impact or Arial Black or some other nondescript sans serif font, it ain't lolcat. White letters with a black outline are a must. But codifying a design guide for lolcats is well beyond my abilities.
Unfortunately, the evolution of these grammars online can be very difficult to track down; This kind of nascent web culture is generally frowned upon by Wikipedia (witness the deletion of the I'm in ur base article since the Ask MetaFilter thread just a few months ago) and there are no other sites designed to collect definitive collaborative reference material. It's going to take time to document kitty pidgin with any degree of accuracy.
I've just started bouncing the idea of kitty pidgin off of Erin and Grant, two of my favorite word experts, but I'm confident that someday we'll have kitty pidgin dictionaries. Perhaps we'll even get all the niceties that Klingon and Elmer Fudd-speak enjoy, like a Google translation, a Microsoft Word dictionary, or a cat-native version of the Bible or Shakespeare.
I has a links
Okay, go out and look at some of the finest kitty-related content:
- Kitty pidgin's already made its way into business communications -- our last LiveJournal news post had lots of references to our team-up with Photobucket under the heading "We has a Photobucket". I was especially proud of my quick-and-dirty PhotoShop work in that thread.
- Gordon McNaughton's created a LolCat Build(e)r. A fantastic and essential app, though I have to take issue with the use of CamelCase InterCaps in the word "lolcat".
- Cute Overload is likely the seminal site for taking the "cute culture" aspect of online behavior seriously. Meg Frost always has fun with the content, but I haven't seen any high-profile definitive collections of these genres that predate Cute Overload.
- Choire Sicha is a genius, but if you needed more proof, you can now just head to lolgays.com to be redirected to his Gawker post on lolgays. It's exactly what you think it is.
Update: This post has gotten an amazing reaction, and inspired a number of follow-up posts, including a look at MeowChat and PetSpeak and my thoughts on Cats, Comics and Closure. I've also collected responses to the popularity of lolcats in a few posts:
- Inadvertent Lazymeme Clearinghouse Lamentations shows some of the best early responses to the meme
- Pidginholed shows lolcats gaining popularity in mainstream media, including a Houston Chronicle cover story
- And perhaps most amusingly, The LOL Street Journal marks the milestone of lolcats making their way, yes, into the Wall Street Journal.
- If you enjoy this sort of stuff, you'll want to join me at ROFLCon, an event being held at Harvard just to celebrate silly online memes like lolcats.
11 TrackBacks
Are you hip to lolcats, pictures of pets with amusing captions written in the vocabulary of gamers? If not, then check out i can has cheezburger because you're missing out on a lot of references. They're all over the place... Read More
http://www.dashes.com/anil/2007/04/23/cats_can_has_gr... Read More
John Pederson (“Javert” in We Know) gave a terrific presentation yesterday at the WiscNet Future Technologies Conference — I’m hoping that he posts some notes at his blog (sadly, no recording of the presentation itself). Because... Read More
Following up on Cats, Comics and Closure, Meowchat and PetSpeak (which, surprisingly, came up during a panel on race and class on Friday), and of course Cats can has grammar, I've rediscovered the bizarre things that happen after a couple hundred thous... Read More
Not long after Al Gore invented the internet, his wife Tipper uploaded a picture of the family cat launching one of the most ubiquitous trends in web culture. But over the past year, a strange subgenre called "lolcats" or "cat... Read More
Already seen some excellent TechEd LOLCats following my earlier request Nick Hodge : i can has teched, Read More
I’ve been holding off on updates about lolcats and related memes for a while because it’s easy to get burned out and probably as boring for you as it is for me. But there are still some interesting parts to it. As I alluded to in Inadverten... Read More
The Wall Street Journal has been tracking the evolution of Leetspeak, a subject I have blogged about before and remain very interested in. The Internet is radically affecting our language, and leetspeak (or l33t 5p34k) is adding new words to our lexico... Read More
Hey, remember how Anil Dash overanalyzed LOLcats and sucked all the fun out of a perfectly vapid internet meme? Well, the internet killjoy has done it again, this time with last night's epic Yo Momma Intergalactic Political Smackdown, which took place ... Read More
Anil Dash has a thoughtful essay up today. Snip: Sarah Palin has been unsurprising in her criticisms of Barack Obama's credentials and policies, fulfilling the traditional role of the vice presidential candidate being the most aggressive and pointed rh... Read More
Sarah Palin has been unsurprising in her criticisms of Barack Obama's credentials and policies, fulfilling the traditional role of the vice presidential candidate being the... Read More
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- Earlier: Pidgins and Creoles
- Next: MeowChat and PetSpeak
"Kidgin", surely. There is the possibility of confusing it with a pidgin for children, but "kittgin", while it reads more clearly as something related to kitties, urges the pronunciation "kiht-jin" instead of "kih-jin".
And speaking of combining sci-fi language and lolcats language, a pug.
Don't forget http://Threadbombing.com (slightly NSFW)
Ah, posts like this are exactly why I read your blog. I hope you write a book on internet culture someday. :-)
Oh, wait... you're kinda doing that now. We just have to assemble it on our own.
Do check out We3 to see a ruthless cyborg cat speaking thusly.
Collection of all three issues on Amazon:
http://tinyurl.com/2qd2v2
A few images of the animal speak in this interview:
http://www.newsarama.com/pages/DC/We3.htm
Actually, kitty pidgin has a long and fine history: I'd imagine that it's a descendant (either direct, or rediscovered) of meowchat.
Meowchat was the pidgin that cats talked to other cats on the usenet group rec.pets.cats, until the owners on that group got incredibly annoyed with them, and voted to split the group into rec.pets.cats (which consisted of humans talking about cats), and rec.pets.cats.community (which, ostensibly, was cats posting about humans).
http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/meow_faq.htm gives a reasonably good breakdown of that story, though unfortunately in heavily accented meow.
Hi Anil, thank you for explaining why we're so enjoyable! Lol* ar a very interesting phenomena!
Many of these come from the community 4chan. macrochan.org serves as the ultimate taxonomy for all such images from 4chan, and it is an awesome thing to behold. Don't miss the "I has a bucket" walruses.
Although Wikipedia isn't a friendly place for this info, Encyclopædia Dramatica very much is. http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
snif
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
dude!
you lolcatted me into conniptions. i don't know who's the biggest nerd : you for writing the post or me for laughing AND agreeing that indeed, it is a kitgin and not cweeole.
Didn't this type of language originally stem from the combination of 1337-speak and "All your base are belong to us"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us
i can has erudite blog?
nice.
I second the authoritative nature of Encyclopedia Dramatica for all things that Wikipedia won't allow:
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/
im in ur blogz typing u commentz.
PS: You should write that book Jeremy's talking about. I'll even tolerate a chapter on Prince!
I has thankz 4 ur halp
but therein is the value for the next generation of speech.. similar to iminlikewithyou.com !!!
The value chain is propagating itself to generation that we don't understand fully because we are not part of it.
I think companies are moving to attract and understand this space, is by recruiting new age talent ..
this clip sez it all. Anil maybe you should visit CVlabs and then blog your finding on this trend.
http://www.vimeo.com/clip:173714
btw, great post !! :)-
99% of these macros came from 4chan.org. The other one percent came from somebody that saw a picture that was originally at 4chan.org, and decided to try to imitate that picture. Please, know your sources.
Also, the dunecat and spice reference is a completely different cat meme. Look up "the spice must flow" at macrochan.org.
"there are no other sites designed to collect definitive collaborative reference material"
Incorrect! See urbandictionary.com :)
gay minds think alike: http://lolgay.com
very good post
A++. Would lol again.
sweet article
As Townsend said, Lolgay.com lives. They're in ur internets, stylin ur home page.
obviously, it should be cat pigeon. as in "i spoke cat pigeon. but i eated it."
hmm... no one ever seen ceiling cat? www.ceilingcat.com ? Doesnt have the grammar/spelling feature, but it wouldnt surprise me if this is the start of the trend.
The "cat-speak" of which you speak seems to stem from two earlier image macros which did NOT feature cats: "I has a shuvel" (http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/I_has_a_shuvel) and another one featuring a small hamster which reads "I has a seed."
From what I've observed, image macro culture seems to have stemmed primarily from www.4chan.org (or more likely, it's Japanese predecessor) and it's associated websites.
I personally wouldn't take any study of internet culture seriously if it didn't mention the -chan websites.
However, before you visit, equip yourself with brain bleach.
Like a heap of other people in this thread, I recommend www.encyclopediadramatica.com, as well as lurking moar.
Hey, how about next time you cite where you got that picture instead of taking it off my YTMND, and uploading it to photobucket. Assholes.
You gots the bucket right, anyway - subgenre of lolcats is the walrus/bucket/cat eternal triangle. "Takes my bucket, I dares ya!" and "Oh Mr Walrus! I gots a bucket!"
Oh and the goggles. I predict a goggle meme expressing in lolcat pidgin any time soon now...
While I'd rather not attract more attention to 4chan, I don't like miscredit. Most all internet cat macros involving this sort of thing, and many of the other kinds, come from 4chan. Where every saterday (called caterday there) people make and post and repost these as a tradition thats has been going on for quite some time. Many things can be found on ytmnd also (which is more or less 4chan with sound). SA could possibly have had some hand in it as well.
In fact, those 3 above sites are responsible for most non-commercial (english)net culture.
Have you been here? It's the most comprehensive collection of cat macros on the web, I think.
Also, don't listen to tinycat. There are countless sources of web culture, even if it's not his culture. Livejournal and fandom_wank spawn plenty of catchphrases on their own.
LOL Anil! UR in Wikipedia, bein authoritativ.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolcat
Luthe, I count those as commercial, LJ at least.
And many things spawned there where actually spawned elsewhere.
Thats a pretty nifty link, lots of cats there. Note the frequent caterday references ;)
Things leak out of 'my'* culture and show up on the greater internets. Take the o rly owl, which is a combination of SA (where talking in instant messenger shorthand became a joke) and a 4chan owl-day, where with mine own eyes did I see its birth.
While you can attempt to track down things beginnings as far as their first appearance, that is not very dependable as things travel very fast on the internet, rather look at the individual elements of the thing, and realize where these things come together on the internet. Then you get a good idea of where something really came from.
*Besides, its not really 'my' culture, i don't even like SA or YTMND
And to think that I thought my thought processes were odd. This is the kind of gem that proves we're all connected in some kind of weird geekdom that other humans just shake their heads at.
Since I can't adopt you I'm at least nudging you up the ladder of my must reads. Insights and insanity appeal to me in a big way.
I tried to create pages for IM IN UR BASE KILLIN UR D00DZ and FridgeCat on Wikipedia last year, but the Wiki editors deleted them. Now that the Lolcat meme is taking off, they can't say no!
i'm in your 4chanz making all your culture? i think tracing all internet culture to 4chan, SA and YTMND is about as realistic as saying 'everything on japanese tv is anime' or 'anime is better than all those other animation and live action styles.'
fail.
as the other commenters have said, this meme is largely from the great crucible of internet memedom, 4chan. being on 4chan is like watching memes be born, and then usually quickly die, save the few that persevere. take your culture commentaary to 4chan--that's an article i'd like to see.
With the powers vested in me as the 16th Baron of Xternetsa, I hereby declare that it is not possible to get cat grammar wrong at all. As a cunning linguist myself, I am very well aware of the limitations of language - and as a Baron, I have the power to expand those limitations whenever I see fit.
http://static.twitter.com/system/maintenance/index.html
(I hope this stays put.)
LOL!
1337 haxxor loves dis!
Great post, but I have to disagree with you on one point. IMO, the only way to get kitty pidgin "wrong" is to make it not-funny, and what is and isn't funny is entirely subjective. The dunecat picture, for example, is one of my favorite ones, and everybody that I've shown it to thinks it's hilarious.
Remember when Twitter *accidentally* deleted (...sure) Techrunch's account? They probably saw a lot of these lolcats:
http://twitter.com/The+Mark+1
Hi Pageman, I'm sitting here with a couple of the guys from Twitter, and as I suspected, they didn't actually deliberately delete anybody's account. I think it's stupid to suggest they would.
But I do sees lolcats!
"Cweeole"? "Kitty pidgin"? I prefer to think of this patois as "catois."
"Cweeole"? "Kitty pidgin"? I prefer to think of this patois as a "catois."
...suggested this consistent grammar for lolcats could be a "cweeole".
Well, although you decided that it's not a creole but a pidgin, I think it couldn't be a "cweeole" anyway - perhaps a "twee-ole"
^5 for the "i has a photobucket" pic.
This is ridiculous, as already mentioned, AT LEAST 99% of all these images are creation of 4chan.org
Anonymous becomes enraged everytime some silly website decides to call these macro their own and some even have the audacity to watermark them, even to the extreme of DDoSing said websites. No, not a threat of any sort, just to show how much Anonymous loves his cats. God knows why cats are so loved, I guess they're just too cute even for the Anonymous collective.
I think Anonymous would be able to sleep better at night if credit was given to us. Where's the common decency? :(
racial kitty talk
http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/broccoli.jpg
I think a 'Cheezburger' commenter named it 'Mangleslang'; on Cute Overload their particular dialect is 'Snorglish'. :)
The evolution of these grammars online can be very difficult to track down... true, but encyclopedia dramatica can be very useful.
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/I_am_in_your_base_killing_your_d00ds