In Case I'm Not The Only Laggard
Lolcat
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lolcats are images combining photographs of animals, most frequently cats, with a humorous and idiosyncratic caption in broken English referred to as Kitty Pidgin[1], Kitteh, or lolspeak. The meme originated in the 4chan imageboards as the Caturday internet phenomenon.[2] The name "lolcat" is a compound word of "lol" and "cat".[3][4] The phenomenon is also referred to as cat macros.[5] Lolcats are created for photo sharing imageboards and other internet forums. Lolcats are similar to other anthropomorphic animal-based image macros such as the O RLY? owl,[6] and the term is often used as a catchall for images of the same genre which may or may not feature cats.
The term lolcat gained national attention in the United States when it was covered by Time magazine,[7] which wrote that non-commercialized phenomena of the sort are increasingly rare, stating that lolcats have "a distinctly old-school, early 1990s, Usenet feel to [them]." The superimposed text is assumed to be uttered by the cat in the photograph. There are parallels between the language used in lolcats and baby talk, which owners of cats often use when talking to them.
