Lolcat
You might remember it as Caturday, lolspeak, I Can Has Cheezburger?
Captions in lolspeak, often on the pattern “I’m in your X, Y-ing your Z”
Biggest memes ever5 of 32
2007·Early YouTube·funny
A photograph of a cat with a caption in heavy white capitals, written in deliberately broken English as though the cat were speaking.
At a glanceThe facts
- Remembered as
- lolcats
- Spread in
- 2007
- Format
- Meme
- Where it started
- 4chan, where cat pictures were posted on Saturdays as Caturday
- What it said
- Captions in lolspeak, often on the pattern “I’m in your X, Y-ing your Z”
- Origin
- No single original
- Available
- Not held by ViralWorld
What this wasThe story
A photograph of a cat is captioned in deliberately broken English — misspelled, mis-conjugated, set in heavy sans-serif type across the image. The captions follow reusable templates: "I can has cheezburger?", "Im in ur [noun], [verb]-ing ur [noun]", "Ceiling Cat is watching you". The style acquired a name of its own, lolspeak, and a cast of recurring characters including Ceiling Cat and Basement Cat.
I Can Has Cheezburger? became the anchor of a commercial meme network; "lolcat" was a runner-up in the American Dialect Society's 2007 Word of the Year; the syntax was parodied into a programming language, LOLCODE. Every captioned reaction image that followed — Advice Animals, rage comics, the whole 2010s macro economy — inherited the grammar lolcats established.
Why it matteredWhat changed
The lolcat fixed the shape that most people still mean by the word meme: a picture, block capitals top and bottom, and a voice. Its misspelt dialect was studied as a language in its own right and was turned into a Bible translation and a programming language.
TimelineIn order
- Made
The Brighton photographer Harry Pointer begins selling cards of cats posed with humorous captions in the early 1870s, the earliest precursor usually cited.1
- Later
The domain caturday.com is registered, after 4chan’s habit of posting cat pictures on Saturdays.1
- Later
The domain lolcats.com is registered. The word itself is in use on 4chan by this month.1
- Took off
The site I Can Has Cheezburger? posts its first image, reportedly taken from Something Awful. Its popularity over the following year carries lolcats to a general audience.1
- Mainstream
The Los Angeles Times covers the LOLCat Bible Translation Project, which is rendering scripture into lolspeak.1
- Later
Ceiling Cat, a taxidermy work by Eva and Franco Mattes after the lolcat of the same name, enters the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.1
What people misrememberSet straight
Commonly remembered asLolcats began in 2006 or 2007, with I Can Has Cheezburger.
ActuallyTime’s Lev Grossman, who had dated them to 2006, later corrected himself: Caturday and many of the best-known images go back to early 2005, and the Cheezburger image was itself taken from an older forum.1
What it createdWhat came out of it
- LOLCODE, an esoteric programming language whose keywords are lolspeak.1
- Ceiling Cat and Basement Cat, who became the good and evil figures of the lolcat world and of its Bible translation.1
- A variant of this Grumpy CatPhotograph · 2012
Her first photograph spread because Reddit users captioned it in the lolcat manner, five years after that format was set.
LegacyWhat it left behind
- “Lolcat” was runner-up for most creative word of the year at the American Dialect Society.1
- Entertainment Weekly put lolcats on its best-of list for the decade.1
More from hereIn this collection
RelatedMore like this
Records this one is explicitly related to — a copy, a remake, a parody, the same meme or the same maker.
Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · a moment that changed what the internet did next · copied, redrawn and reused until the original stopped mattering · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later
Where it came fromWhat we know
This spread through many posts rather than one identifiable original. The example shown is one surviving copy and is not claimed as the first.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first version of this. It spread through many posts rather than from one identifiable original.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
What this was built on, each one a record of its own.
- A variant of The image macroMeme · 2007
A lolcat is an image macro with a cat in it: a photograph under a caption in heavy capitals, in the dialect the format made famous.
More from 2007You were there
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Kelly Shoes
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Charlie bit my finger
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Battle at Kruger
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Rickrolling
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CPDRC Dancing Inmates
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EVO Moment 37
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Potter Puppet Pals
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Charlie the Unicorn
ConnectedFollow it further
- Spread by Something AwfulPhenomenon · 2001
Forums such as Something Awful spread the images, and the picture that launched I Can Has Cheezburger was reportedly taken from it.
- Spread by 4chanPhenomenon · 2003
The word lolcat was first recorded on 4chan, where cat pictures were posted on Saturdays as Caturday.
SourcesWhat was read
Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things