Alright, I admit it. I’m a sucker for lolcats. Who isn’t? The delightful internet meme goes to show that funny cat pictures and broken English go together like chocolate and peanut butter. Right now it is the biggest thing on the web. I Can Has Cheezburger, the lolcat mecca, currently resides in the top 10 of Technorati‘s top 100 blogs, outranking even popular celebrity gossip site TMZ. But where did this phenomena originate? Besides owing a small debt to O Rly? the owl, it seems to have started with a little catchphrase known as, I am in your base killing your d00ds.
From some dude’s blog (mixed with the Encyclopedia Dramatica entry, because I didn’t like his wording) :
Similar to “All your base are belong to us,” the quote “I am in your base killing your d00ds” is a catchphrase that can be roughly translated to “…you got pwned and don’t even know it yet.” Two players, one unnamed and the other known as 1337h4x, were engaged in a game of Starcraft. 1337h4x rushed his opponent, and not realizing he was already being attacked, his opponent asked:
“Dude, where are you?”
To which 1337h4x responded, “im in ur base, killing ur d00ds”
From there it was somehow co-opted by your animal loving types and evolved into the wacky meme we all know and love today.
From Wikipedia:
The News Journal states that “some trace the lolcats back to the site 4chan, which features bizarre cat pictures on Saturdays, or ‘Caturdays’.” The images have been “slinking around the Internet for years under various labels, but they didn’t become a sensation until early 2007 with the advent of I Can Has Cheezburger?”
One of the best pieces I have read on the whole phenomenon can be found over at Anil Dash‘s blog (don’t worry, I don’t know who the fuck he is either) where he deconstructs the conventions of the cat image macro.
But why stop there? Despite the inclusion of other types of animal macros and the launching of sister-site I Has A Hotdog, I feel other animal species are being done a disservice. That is why I’m considering launching my own rival macro site called, I Can Haz Queen’s Teet? dedicated to the cute and cuddly naked mole rat ( or Heterocephalus glaber, as his friend’s call him.)
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