June 5, 2007
LOLcats: Web photo-posting phenomenon
For the last few months, online regulars have been seeing on various Web sites and blogs pictures of cats and other animals in strange poses, with large type captions embedded in the photos, writes Chron.com.
"The grammar and syntax in the captions are atrocious by design. The pictures are called LOLcats, named after the abbreviation for "laughing out loud" used by fans of text and instant messaging.
The origin of LOLcats is murky at best. Based on various blog posts — the most authoritative at LinguisticMystic.com, written by a Colorado linguistics student — they may have evolved from a practice called Caturday, in which cat lovers posted photos of their felines with funny captions on Saturdays.
Now there are dozens of pictures of cats on the Web with captions that take the same form.
Images from I Can Has Cheezburger' collection. The title comes from one of the earliest, most popular LOLcat pictures, which features a dark-gray cat that seems to grin expectantly. You can see the original by going to the site and clicking on the "First Post — #1" link on the right (picture below).
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