Inadvertent Lazymeme Clearinghouse Lamentations
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 thousand people stumble across a blog post.
Chief among the unexpected results is that I’ve become a reluctant dumping ground for people who want to share their lolwhatever sites with me. Please note: I am not asking you to send me more. Doesn’t mean I don’t like them, or that I won’t look at the links you send; Some of them are interesting. But, being fully employed, married, and relatively sane, I couldn’t possibly check out all the fascinating, inane, and useless web memes that have popped up around lolcats and image macros.
If you want to get a feel for what the realm looks like, here’s a random sampling:
- Update: I missed a good one, just published today. Cat Power: You cannot resist lolcats just went up on Slate, a meditation on the meme in the form of a slideshow. I even got some props.
- I Can Has Corgan, for fans of Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan. Also the subject of a Stereogum contest.
- I Has A Tardis, for those interesed in Dr. Who cat macros.
- Research indicating that emoticons are tied to cultural context. Duh! The discussion on Ars Technica is a little less dense than the original research [ (PDF format), but that one seemed like an obvious call.
- Unsettling Gawker fave Kreepie Kats ]() considers the meme.
- And there’s even a nod in a recent episode of current geek-fave web comic xkcd.
And that’s all I have to say about that subject for now.