# LOLcats / I Can Has Cheezburger
> LOLcats is a 2005 image-macro meme featuring cats overlaid with humorous captions in intentionally broken English, popularized by the website I Can Has Cheezburger.
LOLcats are image macros featuring photos of cats with humorous captions written in intentionally broken English known as "lolspeak." Originating on 4chan around 2005 as part of the weekly "Caturday" tradition, LOLcats became one of the earliest internet memes to break into the mainstream, fueled by the website I Can Has Cheezburger and widespread media coverage from outlets like Time Magazine. The format drew on a surprisingly long lineage of captioned cat photography stretching back to the 1870s, and at its peak inspired books, art exhibitions, an off-Broadway musical, a Bible translation project, and even an esoteric programming language.
## Origin
The roots of captioned cat photography go back much further than the internet. In the 1870s, Brighton photographer Harry Pointer produced a series of carte-de-visite photos of cats posed in human situations, complete with written captions and greetings[8]. By 1872, Pointer had created over a hundred captioned cat images in what became known as "The Brighton Cats" series[8]. In the early 20th century, American photographer Harry Whittier Frees picked up the torch, dressing cats in costumes and photographing them with props for postcards and children's books[6]. Frees considered kittens "the most versatile animal actor" and worked only three months a year because the process was so stressful[6].
The modern LOLcat meme traces directly to 4chan. According to reports from The Star and Time Magazine, anonymous users on 4chan's imageboards began posting captioned cat pictures as part of a weekly "Caturday" tradition around early 2005[3]. Time writer Lev Grossman initially dated the oldest known example to 2006 but later corrected himself in a blog post, acknowledging that Caturday and its cat macros were already circulating on 4chan in 2005[9]. One reader explained to Grossman that Caturday started as a protest against "Furry Friday" threads on the boards[9]. The domain caturday.com was registered on April 30, 2005[4].
- **Platform:** 4chan (Caturday threads), I Can Has Cheezburger (mainstream spread)
- **Creator:** Unknown (community-created on 4chan's Caturday threads)
- **Date:** 2005
## Overview
A LOLcat is a photo of a cat, usually caught in a funny pose or human-like situation, with a large-font caption slapped on top. The captions follow a distinctive broken-English dialect called "lolspeak," which mashes together textspeak shortcuts, deliberate misspellings, and grammar patterns loosely inspired by baby talk and early internet culture[5]. Common caption formats include "Im in ur [noun], [verb]-ing ur [related noun]" and the simple "[Adjective] cat is [adjective]"[4]. The text is typically set in Impact or Arial Black, making the words impossible to miss even in thumbnail-sized images[4].
What makes LOLcats distinct from regular funny cat pictures is the lolspeak layer. The language has its own internal logic: verbs get mangled in consistent ways, "I" becomes a standalone subject without proper conjugation ("I can has"), and words like "cheezburger" follow predictable misspelling rules[11]. This isn't random gibberish. It's a pidgin with conventions that fans learned to read and write fluently[1].
## How It Spread
The meme's move off 4chan began in 2006. The domain lolcats.com was registered on June 14, 2006[4]. That September, Urban Dictionary user bridgepiercingbex defined "lolcat" as "laugh out loud, with cat on the end of it"[3]. LOLcats also spread through Something Awful's forums during this period[4].
The real breakout came in January 2007 with the launch of I Can Has Cheezburger, a blog dedicated entirely to curating and publishing LOLcat submissions. The site's name came from a now-iconic image of a chubby blue British Shorthair looking at the camera with the caption "I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?"[11]. By mid-2007, the site was pulling in 200 to 500 submissions daily[11]. Time Magazine covered the craze in June 2007, noting that a Google search for "lolcat" returned 3.3 million results[11]. The magazine praised LOLcats for their "distinctly old-school, early 1990s, Usenet feel" in an internet that was becoming increasingly commercial[11].
Reddit's r/lolcats subreddit launched on January 5, 2008, eventually reaching over 67,000 subscribers[3]. In December 2009, Entertainment Weekly ranked LOLcats at #99 on their list of the "100 Greatest Movies, TV Shows and More" of the decade, writing the entry entirely in lolspeak[10]. The American Dialect Society nominated "lolcat" as a runner-up for Word of the Year in the "Most Creative" category[4].
## How to Use
The classic LOLcat format is straightforward:
1. Start with a photo of a cat, ideally caught in a funny, dramatic, or oddly human pose
2. Write a caption in lolspeak, as if the cat is speaking or narrating the scene
3. Use Impact or another heavy sans-serif font, usually white with a black outline
4. Overlay the text on the image, typically centered at the top and/or bottom
## Cultural Impact
LOLcats were one of the first internet memes to receive serious mainstream media coverage. Time Magazine's 2007 feature treated them as a cultural indicator worth examining, noting how rare genuinely non-commercial internet phenomena were becoming[11]. The meme generated two best-selling books and an off-Broadway musical[1].
Academic study of LOLcats opened the door to treating internet memes as legitimate subjects for cultural analysis. Miltner's LSE dissertation argued that memes like LOLcats reflect societal desires in the same way that space-invasion films reflected Cold War anxieties, making them valid objects of scholarly inquiry[1]. She spoke at ROFLCon on a panel called "Adventures in Aca-meme-ia," helping establish the field that would later become internet culture studies[1].
The art world engagement was notable. Beyond the London gallery exhibitions[2], the Ceiling Cat taxidermy piece by Eva and Franco Mattes entering SFMOMA's collection in 2016 marked one of the first times a meme-inspired artwork was acquired by a major museum[4].
Linguistically, LOLcats left a mark through lolspeak. What started as silly cat captions developed into a surprisingly rule-governed dialect that linguists took seriously as an example of internet-native language creation. The LOLCat Bible Translation Project, which attempted to rewrite scripture in this dialect, became a well-known curiosity that illustrated just how internally consistent the language had become[4].
## Fun Facts
- Harry Pointer had published over 200 captioned cat photos by 1884, making him arguably the original LOLcat creator, 120 years before 4chan[8].
- Harry Whittier Frees, the early 20th-century cat photographer, only worked three months a year because posing animals was so stressful. He held cats in position using pins, forks, and stiff costuming with 1/5th-second exposures[6].
- Time Magazine praised LOLcats for their "distinctly old-school, early 1990s, Usenet feel" in an internet that was becoming increasingly commercial and homogenous[11].
- "Lolcat" was a runner-up for Word of the Year from the American Dialect Society in the "Most Creative" category[4].
- The Ceiling Cat taxidermy installation by Eva and Franco Mattes is in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art[4].
## Frequently Asked Questions
### What is LOLcats?
LOLcats are image macros consisting of cat photos with humorous captions written in broken English known as lolspeak[3]. The format pairs cute or funny cat poses with captions that use deliberate misspellings and mangled grammar[11].
### Where did LOLcats come from?
LOLcats originated on 4chan around early 2005 as part of a weekly tradition called "Caturday," where users posted captioned cat images every Saturday[9]. The meme went mainstream in 2007 with the launch of I Can Has Cheezburger[11].
### What does LOLcats mean?
The word "lolcat" combines "LOL" (laugh out loud) with "cat"[4]. Urban Dictionary defined it in 2006 as "laugh out loud, with cat on the end of it"[3].
### How do you use LOLcats?
Take a funny cat photo and add a caption in lolspeak using a heavy sans-serif font like Impact. Captions typically use deliberate misspellings, dropped articles, and mangled verb tenses, as if the cat is speaking[4].
### Is LOLcats still popular?
The classic lolspeak format peaked in the late 2000s and early 2010s. While cat memes are still everywhere online, the specific lolspeak style has largely faded from common use, replaced by newer meme formats[11].
### What is lolspeak?
Lolspeak is the intentionally broken English dialect used in LOLcat captions. It blends textspeak shortcuts, phonetic misspellings, baby-talk grammar, and references to older internet memes like "All your base are belong to us"[5].
### What is Caturday?
Caturday was a weekly tradition on 4chan where users posted captioned cat pictures every Saturday. It began around early 2005, reportedly as a response to "Furry Friday" threads[9].
### What is I Can Has Cheezburger?
I Can Has Cheezburger is a website launched in January 2007 that became the central hub for LOLcat content. Named after one of the most iconic LOLcat images, it received hundreds of daily submissions at its peak[11].
### Who is Ceiling Cat?
Ceiling Cat is a LOLcat character based on a photo of a cat peering through a hole in a ceiling. It became associated with God in the LOLcat universe, with its counterpart Basement Cat representing Satan[4].
### What is the LOLCat Bible?
The LOLCat Bible Translation Project was a community effort to translate the entire Bible into lolspeak. It became one of the more ambitious cultural spinoffs of the LOLcat meme[4].
### Were LOLcats studied academically?
Yes. Kate Miltner wrote her LSE Master's dissertation on the appeal of LOLcats, identifying three distinct consumer groups and arguing that the meme primarily functioned as a tool for social connection[1].
### Did LOLcats inspire a programming language?
LOLCODE is an esoteric programming language built on lolspeak syntax, with functional interpreters and compilers available for.NET Framework and Perl[4].
### Were there precursors to LOLcats before the internet?
Harry Pointer created over 200 captioned cat photographs in the 1870s-1880s known as "The Brighton Cats"[8]. Harry Whittier Frees produced similar costumed cat photography in the early 1900s[6]. The 1970s "Hang in there, baby" motivational poster of a cat on a branch is another precursor[3].
## References
1. [Are LOLCats Making Us Smart? - The Atlantic]()
2. [Wayback Machine]()
3. [LOLCAT Art: Internet Meme Becomes Real Life Exhibition At London Gallery | HuffPost UK News]()
4. [LOLcats - Know Your Meme]()
5. [Lolcat]()
6. [LOLcats - Urban Dictionary]()
7. [Harry Whittier Frees]()
8. [Urban Dictionary: lolcat]()
9. [New Exhibition Of Original LOLCATS Raises Money For Charity: Enjoy Guilt-Free | HuffPost UK News]()
10. [Harry Pointer]()
11. [Funny how stupid site is addictive]()
12. [Lolcats Addendum: Where I Got the Story Wrong | TIME.com]()
13. [100 greatest movies, TV shows, and more]()
14. [lolcats.com WHOIS Domain Name Lookup - Who.is]()
15. [50 Cute Cat Memes – Adorable Jokes for Feline Lovers - Catster]()
16. [Creating a Cute Cat Frenzy | TIME]()
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Source: https://meme.com/memes/lolcats
Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library