I Can Has Talking Animals?
The ur-lolcat. [I Can Has Cheezburger ]
If you only use the internet for boring things like, you know, reading the newspaper and listening to smarty-pants public radio shows (psht), you’ve probably missed one of this year’s most ridiculous, anthropomorphic, internet memes – the lolcats.
The recipe is pretty simple: take a picture of a cat or another animal which may or may not be funny by itself, add a caption, and voila, hilarity ensues. The blog I Can Has Cheezburger? has collected some of the finer specimens.
I used to think these picts were just random. But after talking to one of the guests for tonight’s anthropomorphism show, I realized they were also a little profound. Marc Shell teaches a class at Harvard on talking animals in culture high and low, from Poe’s Raven to Pepe Le Peu. His thesis is that giving animals speech and then making them talk funny is all about distinguishing who is like us and who is not. Not just who is human and who is not, but also, who is a native English speaker and who is, say, a Mexican immigrant. I was shocked to go through the list of classic Warner Brothers cartoon characters and realize that almost every one of them, from Porky Pig and Foghorn Leghorn, to Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny, have some kind of outrageous accent or speech impediment.
The lolcats are not that far off. Each picture’s caption, which is usually like a little speech bubble, is almost always messed up in some way. Bad spelling, bad grammar, misused words, etc. In other words, the lolcats are funny because they don’t know how to “speak good English.” So to speak. For some reason, it’s a lot funnier to picture a cat saying, “I can has cheezburger?” than it is to picture it saying, “Can I have a cheeseburger?” Eschewing for the moment that these are cats and that they can’t…talk…at all.
Not to mention the fact that this isn’t just about animals talking. The “lol” part of lolcats stands for “laughing out loud,” an acronym that comes from instant messaging. Other computer-esque typos or abbreviations are common in the captions, including 1s instead of exclamation points and thx instead of thanks. So now, it’s not just about animals talking funny; it’s about them typing funny, or even (gasp) sending each other instant messages. Weird, right?
A variation – the “lolrus” bucket saga. [I Can Has Cheezburger ]
I think the lolcats also reveal the anthropomorphic way we think of our pets. They’re something more than animals, yet something less than hapless toddlers (or ditzy teenagers). They can communicate with us, but they haven’t quite mastered our codes. They have a life of their own. When we’re not looking, we just know they’re secretly engaged in human activities – like fixing computers or even BDSM. The rational part of us knows this isn’t so, but somewhere deep down we want to believe that our cats could really be cyclists. Or hovercrafts.
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April 18th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
[...] ats on da radio. by cheezburger (be first to rate me!) Loading …
word from cheezburger: we is gonna be mentioned on [...]
April 18th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Oh, u cud not fined a beter sigght 2 do this sotry for.
April 18th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
[...] ickest and least cerebral of all the jokes that actually make me laugh, maybe they work by tapping into the [...]
April 18th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
‘The “lol†part of lolcats stands for “laughing out loud,†an acronym that comes from instant messaging.’
Nuh-uh! IM certainly did not give birth to “LOL” or its close relatives “ROFL”, “BTW,” etc. Plenty of us were lazy typists back in the day, as well. All those hours spent reading netnews… my youth, misspent right there in alt.*.
p.s. YAY CHEEZBURGER!
April 19th, 2007 at 12:27 am
They’re blaming it on Digg, but they… uh… “MELTORED CHEEZSERVER?”
I blame ROS and their mighty influence.
April 19th, 2007 at 1:29 am
I just left the Mental Floss Blog and what do you suppose is on it?
Yes, LOL Cats.
Something is in the air…
April 19th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
The Mental Floss guys are big public radio fans. Maybe they listen to ROS?
April 20th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Check out the ORLY Owl site and the videos people have made with the images on YouTube – Some of them are actually quite amusing, if you are a geek.
April 20th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
[...] 07-04-21 NPR : Giant Bats Snatch Birds from Night Sky (tags: bats audio) I Can Has Talking Animals? Why are the LOL Catz so funny to us? (tags: cats humor human [...]
April 22nd, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Maybe the lolcats captions are all about making fun of foreigners who talk funny. But maybe not. To me, the incorrect grammar and pronunciation suggest the kind of language errors very young children make. So maybe the captions appeal to us for the same reason our pets evoke nurturing, protective feelings in us: It’s all about the neoteny, the traits that make use say “Awwwwwww! Cute!”
April 23rd, 2007 at 5:04 pm
[...] ats called I Can Has Cheezburger? which recently was mentioned on the public radio program Open Source with Christopher Lydon. The lolcats have been floating aro [...]
May 9th, 2007 at 3:30 am
[...] l poster, “Hang in there.” Others suggest these simply fall into place with a long history of using anthropomorphized animals to get our kicks. These macros are used [...]
May 10th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
[...] ay we form groups and play with language when we shape our group identities. They also, as Robin Amer points out, appeal to our broader desire [...]
May 24th, 2007 at 12:59 am
The lolcat pic with the BDSM link is one that I made! I feel so honored that it made your blog!
June 10th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
threadbombing.com has a huge gallery of lolcats (http://www.threadbombing.com/categories.php?cat_id=18)
June 12th, 2007 at 2:41 am
[...] n ur studioz….hedbanz tu ur tunez.. Lolcat From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia I Can Has Talking Animals?. Open Source (radio show). Silverman, Dwight (2007-06-05). I [...]
October 7th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
[...] es with poor spelling” ; Column by Dwight Silverman, Houston Chronicle, June 6, 2007 I Can Has Talking Animals? — Radio producer Robin Amer offers her perspective on [...]
October 26th, 2007 at 11:42 am
[...] iet aan mij besteed. Waarom dan toch gezemel over katten alhier? Welnu; omdat ik deze week LOLCats tegenkwam op internet. Hier is een analyse van LOLCats en het ontstaan ervan, w [...]
February 1st, 2008 at 12:33 pm
When I was a teenager in the 60’s and people wrote hand written letters to friends, ‘LOL’ was a common way to sign off. Back then, it meant “Lots of Love”!
May 17th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
[...] http://io9.com/ Robin (April 18th, 2007) I Can Has Talking Animals? http://www.radioopensource.org Thomas Angela (July 23, 200) Lolca [...]
June 7th, 2008 at 10:00 am
[...] t composé des lemmes « ”LOL” » et « ”cat” ».<ref>{{lien web |url=http://www.radioopensource.org/i-can-has-talking-animals/ |titre=I Can Has Talking Animals? |author=Robin Amer |date=[[14 avril]] [[2004]] |visité le [...]
July 8th, 2008 at 4:10 am
[...] es – like fixing computers or even BDSM. The rational part of us knows this isn’t …http://www.radioopensource.org/i-can-has-talking-animals/Read “clip fre [...]
September 13th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
[...] the context of other cultural Internet phenomena, such as Leetspeak and the image macro. Elsewhere, Robin Amer has described the Lolcat and the history of the anthropomorphized animal, and Anil Dash has [...]