Dog Community

A lesson on Loldog and Lolcat macros - history, pidgin english, etc.

g33

Posted : 6/21/2007 10:32:43 AM

[linkhttp://www.dashes.com/anil/2007/04/cats-can-has-gr.html]Cats Can Has Grammar[/link]
[linkhttp://www.dashes.com/anil/2007/04/cats-can-has-gr.html]http://www.dashes.com/anil/2007/04/cats-can-has-gr.html[/link]

If you spend any time at all observing net culture, then you'll have been unable to miss the recent explosion in popularity of [linkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolcat]lolcats[/link]. This relatively recent phenomenon is the convention of taking pictures of cute animals, most frequently cats, and overlaying absurdist captions on the images.

The core behavior has existed for some time; "[linkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_macro]Image macro[/link]" is a generic term for this kind of folk art, and cats have always featured heavily in these types of Internet in-jokes. But a few distinct categories have sprung up that have helped amplify and popularize the phenomenon.

I'M IN UR X Ying your Z. This construct, based on [linkhttp://shackfaq.portax.net/?qid=89]i'm in ur base, killin ur d00ds[/link] has morphed into a catch-all structure for [linkhttp://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c28/chantalemo/2af480fe50128bd2ec33bde5de69cacd.gif]annotating cat pictures[/link].

Invisible Item. Variations on the seminal [linkhttp://www.flickr.com/search/?q=invisible%20bike&w=all]Invisible Bike[/link], these are images of cats, usually in midair, with captions that prompt us to fill in imaginary objects or actions that complete the scene. There's something brilliant to these images, speaking to our mind's ability to intuitively extrapolate unseen details.

Kitty Pidgin. And finally, the newly dominant lolcats, of the family [linkhttp://icanhascheezburger.wordpress.com/]I Can Has Cheezeburger?[/link] These seem to be spawning nearly infinite variations, and have exploded in popularity since being named "lolcats" instead of the more general "image macro" or "cat macro".

The rise of these new subspecies of lolcats are particularly interesting to me because "I can has cheezeburger?" has a fairly consistent grammar. I wasn't sure this was true until I realized that it's possible to get cat-speak wrong.

Incorrect kitty pidgin jumped to my attention the first time I saw [linkhttp://icanhascheezburger.wordpress.com/2007/02/07/the-spice-must-flow/]a reference to Dune[/link] being used with a lolcat image. The caption on the linked version of the image, "The spice must flow." is fine, if not particularly cat-like. But the caption on the version I saw first was [linkhttp://rev-jo.livejournal.com/132404.html]much more verbose[/link]: "I are dunecat. I controls the spice, I controls the universe." Besides being an awkward attempt at overexplaining the punchline (I've never read Dune or seen the film, but the joke is obvious) this was just all wrong. The fact that we can tell no cat would talk like this shows that kitty pidgin is actually quite consistent.

I was having a conversation with [linkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Cerveny]Ben[/link] and [linkhttp://btrott.vox.com/]Ben[/link] a few weeks ago where I suggested this consistent grammar for lolcats could be a "cweeole". Knowing a [linkhttp://www.dashes.com/anil/2007/04/22/pidgins_and_cre]bit more[/link] about such things now, I realize this isn't a creole but more likely a [linkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin]pidgin[/link] language, used to help cats talk to humans. And since "pidgin" is already a cutesy spelling of a mispronunciation, there doesn't seem to be any really cute way to rename it to reflect its uniqueness. "Kitty pidgin" might be the closest thing we have to a name for this new language.

There's a consistent visual vocabulary to the construct, as well. If it ain't Impact or Arial Black or some other nondescript sans serif font, it ain't lolcat. White letters with a black outline are a must. But codifying a design guide for lolcats is well beyond my abilities.
Unfortunately, the evolution of these grammars online can be very difficult to track down; This kind of nascent web culture is generally frowned upon by Wikipedia (witness the deletion of the [linkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Im_in_ur_base_killin_ur_d00dz]I'm in ur base[/link] article since the [linkhttp://ask.metafilter.com/47041/I-am-in-ur-webz-aksin-ur-questins]Ask MetaFilter thread[/link] just a few months ago) and there are no other sites designed to collect definitive collaborative reference material. It's going to take time to document kitty pidgin with any degree of accuracy.
I've just started bouncing the idea of kitty pidgin off of [linkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_McKean]Erin[/link] and [linkhttp://www.doubletongued.org/]Grant[/link], two of my favorite word experts, but I'm confident that someday we'll have kitty pidgin dictionaries. Perhaps we'll even get all the niceties that Klingon and Elmer Fudd-speak enjoy, like a Google translation, a Microsoft Word dictionary, or a cat-native version of the Bible or Shakespeare.

Ixas_girl

Posted : 6/21/2007 10:52:39 AM

Thanks! I just met with an artist yesterday who is also a programmer. He has a whole lecture on lolcats to introduce programming languages and actually teaches a little program for generating lolcat lingo. I was able to follow what he was saying because of your posts here ... so thanks! You made I can has intelligence! [

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