SRSLY PHENOMENAL: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE APPEAL OF LOLCATS
SRSLY PHENOMENAL: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE APPEAL OF LOLCATS
SRSLY PHENOMENAL: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE APPEAL OF LOLCATS
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<strong>SRSLY</strong> <strong>PHENOMENAL</strong>:<br />
<strong>AN</strong> <strong>INVESTIGATION</strong> <strong>INTO</strong> <strong>THE</strong><br />
<strong>APPEAL</strong> <strong>OF</strong> <strong>LOLCATS</strong><br />
Candidate No. 31304<br />
Advisor: Dr. Alison Powell<br />
Dissertation (MC499) submitted to the Department of Media and Communications,<br />
London School of Economics and Political Science, in partial fulfillment of the requirements<br />
for the MSc in Media and Communications<br />
August, 2011<br />
1
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
LOLCats wouldn’t be what they are without a ton of people contributing their time, creativity,<br />
and enthusiasm. The same goes for this paper, and I’d like to acknowledge a few individuals<br />
specifically.<br />
First, I want to thank the 36 insightful, articulate, funny, and generous participants in my focus<br />
groups. You guys make me want to do focus group research for ever.<br />
Second, I’d like to thank Dr. Powell for her guidance and patience, and Drs. Banaji, Helsper,<br />
and Livingstone for their insight.<br />
Third, I’d like to thank Cole Stryker for sending me his unpublished work and giving me the<br />
proud distinction of being the first person to cite what will likely be a staple of Internet culture<br />
literature.<br />
Fourth, I’d like to thank BC, LG, LM, AS, and JT for helping to make this year one of the most<br />
fulfilling of my life, and for supporting me when times were tough. The Bear loves you.<br />
Fifth, I’d like to thank my Dad for his love, support, and Facebook messages.<br />
Finally, I need to thank DB, without whom this dissertation would not have happened. Thank<br />
you for calming me down, pumping me up, keeping me grounded, and inspiring me to new<br />
heights. I am so grateful for you, my Gallant Sir. Smoosh.<br />
2
TABLE <strong>OF</strong> CONTENTS<br />
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................2<br />
GLOSSARY.......................................................................................................................5<br />
ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................................7<br />
INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................7<br />
<strong>THE</strong>ORETICAL CHAPTER ......................................................................................... 10<br />
Part I: The Context of LOLCats ........................................................................................10<br />
Web 2.0 and The Rise of Participatory Culture.......................................................................................................... 10<br />
The Appeal of User-Generated Content........................................................................................................................ 11<br />
Vernacular Creativity and the Production of the Everyday................................................................................... 12<br />
LOLCats and The Memesphere........................................................................................................................................... 13<br />
Part II: The Textual Elements of LOLCats .......................................................................14<br />
The LOLCat Genre...................................................................................................................................................................... 14<br />
Humor & LOLCats....................................................................................................................................................................... 15<br />
RESEARCH STATEMENT ........................................................................................... 17<br />
METHODOLOGY ........................................................................................................ 18<br />
Preface................................................................................................................................................................................................. 18<br />
Overview............................................................................................................................................................................................ 18<br />
Research Strategy.......................................................................................................................................................................... 19<br />
Participant Selection: Face to Face Groups.................................................................................................................... 19<br />
Discussion Guide........................................................................................................................................................................... 20<br />
Stimulus Selection ......................................................................................................................................................................... 21<br />
Summary of Procedures: Face to Face Groups ........................................................................................................... 21<br />
Online Focus Groups: Rationale and Selection............................................................................................................ 22<br />
Methodological Considerations: Online Focus Groups .......................................................................................... 22<br />
Google Hangouts As A Focus Group Tool................................................................................................................... 23<br />
Summary of Procedures: Online Focus Groups.......................................................................................................... 23<br />
Thematic Analysis.......................................................................................................................................................................... 24<br />
RESULTS........................................................................................................................ 24<br />
The Three LOLCat User Constituencies ..........................................................................25<br />
Cheezfrenz ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 25<br />
MemeGeeks ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 26<br />
Casual Users..................................................................................................................................................................................... 26<br />
The LOLCat Genre ...............................................................................................................26<br />
Humor & LOLCats ................................................................................................................28<br />
“It’s like your sad relative, isn’t it?”: The Appeal of Anthropomorphic Humor......................................... 29<br />
“Memes are jokes your friends don’t get”: The Role of In-Jokes ...................................................................... 30<br />
“They would like that”: Connection Through Creation and Sharing ..........................34<br />
LOLCats as Emotional Outlet ............................................................................................................................................... 34<br />
Altruism in Creation and Sharing ......................................................................................................................................... 36<br />
DISCUSSION ................................................................................................................ 37<br />
CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 39<br />
Final words: A note on the value of LOLCats ............................................................................................................. 40<br />
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................ 42<br />
APPENDIX A: FOCUS GROUP DISCUSSION GUIDES ...................................... 47<br />
3
APPENDIX B: PARTICIP<strong>AN</strong>T INFORMATION SHEET ........................................ 49<br />
APPENDIX C: PARTICIP<strong>AN</strong>T CONSENT FORM ................................................. 50<br />
APPENDIX D: PARTICIP<strong>AN</strong>T QUESTIONNAIRE ................................................ 51<br />
APPENDIX F: PARTICIP<strong>AN</strong>T INFORMATION ...................................................... 52<br />
APPENDIX G: FOCUS GROUP STIMULUS ........................................................... 53<br />
APPENDIX H: SAMPLE TR<strong>AN</strong>SCRIPT .................................................................... 56<br />
APPENDIX I: ICHC HALL <strong>OF</strong> FAME GENERAL <strong>THE</strong>MES................................... 92<br />
APPENDIX J: FINAL CODING FRAME ................................................................... 93<br />
APPENDIX K: CHEEZBURGER FIELD DAY ........................................................... 94<br />
APPENDIX L: ADVICE <strong>AN</strong>IMAL MEMES ................................................................ 95<br />
APPENDIX M: MEME REFERENCES......................................................................... 96<br />
APPENDIX N: <strong>LOLCATS</strong> REFERENCED IN BODY TEXT .................................. 97<br />
APPENDIX O: LOLCAT VS. MEMES ....................................................................... 98<br />
4
GLOSSARY<br />
4Chan: 4Chan, particularly the /b/ board, is a website (imageboard) credited with creating<br />
LOLCats. It is also the home hub of hacktivist group Anonymous. See Stryker, 2011 and<br />
Bernstein et al., 2011 for further information.<br />
Advice Animals: A series of image macros that follow certain tropes and themes. See<br />
Appendix L for examples.<br />
Animated gif: A series of gif (Graphics Interchange Format) images which are linked<br />
together to make simple animations that run on a loop.<br />
Ceiling Cat: Ceiling Cat refers to an image of a cat peeking through a hole in a ceiling.<br />
Ceiling Cat became a reference to God after its use in the LOLCat Bible Translation Project.<br />
Cheez Town Cryer: A blog that serves as a social and informational hub for the<br />
commenter community on ICanHasCheezburger.com<br />
Chuck Norris Facts: A meme that parodies the tough image of Chuck Norris. A sample<br />
Chuck Norris Fact is “Chuck Norris’s tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried”.<br />
Colbert SuperPAC: A political fundraising organization started by satirical pundit Stephen<br />
Colbert. SuperPACs are organizations that can raise unlimited funds for American political<br />
candidates.<br />
Demotivator/Demotivational Poster: A genre of image macro which parodies the<br />
Motivational Posters found frequently in schools and offices, especially those from the 1970s<br />
and 80s.<br />
FAILBlog: FAILBlog features pictures of people and animals ‘failing’, or committing idiotic and<br />
occasionally self-injurious acts. Although FAIL as a genre exists outside of FAILBlog, it is the<br />
most well-known repository of FAIL images. Like I Can Has Cheezburger, FAILBlog is in the<br />
Cheezburger Networks portfolio.<br />
I Can Has Cheezburger: The website that popularized LOLCats . Founded in 2006, it<br />
originally featured a single grey cat with the supertitle, “I C<strong>AN</strong> HAS CHEEZBURGER?”. It now<br />
receives approximately 3 million unique visits a month.<br />
5
Image macro: An image macro is an image with text superimposed upon it. Image macros<br />
tend to be humorous in nature. LOLCats are an example of an image macro.<br />
Leetspeak (1337 5pe4k): A numeric replacement language with roots in the hacking and<br />
gaming communities. See Blashki and Nichol, 2005 for a full explanation.<br />
Lol/lols: A generic term which refers to a LOLCat or other image macro<br />
LOLCat Bible Translation Project: A wiki established to translate the entire Bible into<br />
Lolspeak.<br />
Lolspeak: Lolspeak is the lingua franca of the LOLCat world. Its exact origins are unknown,<br />
but it appears to incorporate elements of Motherese (baby talk), AOL Chat Speak (“BRB”,<br />
“LOL”) and Leetspeak.<br />
n00b: Leetspeak for “newbie”, or novice.<br />
Reddit: Reddit is a content aggregation site that consists of user-generated news links that<br />
are up-or-downvoted by the community members, or ‘Redditors’.<br />
Rickrolling: A prank which consists of sending an unidentified link to a friend that leads to a<br />
music video of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”.<br />
Tumblr: A microblogging platform that allows users to post text, images, links, chat, audio,<br />
and video content in a pre-formatted template. Tumblr is also a social networking site that<br />
consists of nodes of ‘Tumblrs’ who ‘follow’ each other (similar to Twitter).<br />
6
ABSTRACT<br />
LOLCats are pictures of cats with misspelled captions that have become a genuine cultural<br />
phenomenon. LOLCats are often considered to be the archetypal Internet meme, a piece of often<br />
entertaining cultural currency that spreads rapidly through social networks and media platforms.<br />
However, unlike most Internet memes whose potency tends to wane after a short period of time,<br />
LOLCats have remained relevant and popular for the better half of a decade, inspiring a devoted<br />
following. Despite their position as a hallmark of participatory culture, LOLCats—and Internet<br />
memes in general— have been largely ignored in academia. This study sought to address this<br />
shortcoming through an exploratory, audience-oriented examination of LOLCats’ appeal. In light of<br />
the user-generated and social nature of the LOLCat phenomenon, focus groups were conducted to<br />
investigate the ways in which the textual and social aspects of LOLCats contribute to their allure.<br />
The research revealed that the LOLCat audience is comprised of three separate groups that<br />
interact with and appreciate LOLCats for different reasons. The study also confirmed that LOLCats<br />
are operating as a genre, and that the appropriate execution of that genre is central to their<br />
enjoyment. Furthermore, it became evident that for most participants, LOLCats’ appeal rests in the<br />
intersection of the textual and the social, as exemplified by the use of textual and generic elements<br />
such as Lolspeak to perform social functions like establishing in-group boundaries. Additionally,<br />
despite the fact that LOLCats are a form of publicly circulated UGC, these groups revealed that<br />
many LOLCats are created or shared for the purpose of interpersonal communication and<br />
emotional expression. Ultimately, LOLCats are funny pictures of cats; however, the ways in which<br />
they traffic in fundamental human needs like belonging and emotional expression are no laughing<br />
matter.<br />
INTRODUCTION<br />
The rise of ‘Web 2.0’ (O’Reilly, 2007) has changed the way that people interact with the<br />
world and with each other. Developments in ICT have enabled changes in commerce, politics,<br />
and interpersonal communication. Widespread consumption and creation of user-generated<br />
content (UGC) has ushered us into an era of participatory culture, breaking down the barriers<br />
between producer and consumer (Bruns, 2007), and allowing us to “take media into our own<br />
7
hands” (Jenkins et al., 2009: 29). This has contributed to the election of the first African-<br />
American President (Painter, 2009), and provided new tools for fighting governmental<br />
corruption (Shirky, 2010a). It has also given us Peanut Butter Jelly Time 1 .<br />
Peanut Butter Jelly Time is an Internet meme, a piece of “cultural currency” that drives<br />
audiences to “share, participate, augment, parody and otherwise own it” (Stryker, 2011: 17).<br />
Once the exclusive province of message boards and other ‘computer geek’ hangouts, Internet<br />
memes have exploded into mainstream culture, becoming “as important to the American<br />
consciousness at this point as Hollywood movies” (Grigoriadis, 2011, n.d.). Advertisements<br />
emulate them 2 , political campaigns incorporate them 3 , and popular TV shows reference them 4 ,<br />
all in an attempt to capture some of the magic.<br />
However, while user-generated content and participatory culture have been widely covered in<br />
academic literature, Internet memes themselves have been largely overlooked, a fact which is<br />
“sobering” given the public’s interest in them (Bauckhage, 2011). Even within the study of<br />
internet memes, academic interest has focused primarily on their spread and distribution<br />
(Bauckhage, 2011; Shifman & Thelwall, 2009); while there has been some examination of ‘viral<br />
video’ (Burgess, 2008), there has been no investigation into why specific internet memes<br />
resonate with online audiences, despite the fact that they operate “at the intersection of<br />
Internet, society, and culture” (Erlich, 2011, n.d).<br />
While Internet memes are notoriously ephemeral (Bauckhage, 2011; Bernstein et al., 2011),<br />
one meme has managed to remain culturally relevant for years, crossing over into mainstream<br />
audiences: The LOLCat. LOLCats (or ‘cat macros’) are, at their simplest, pictures of cats with<br />
misspelled captions on them, but they have sparked an enormous cultural reaction and<br />
become the most recognizable example of “internet‐borne cultural iconography” (Stryker,<br />
2011: 21). Named “the cutest distraction of the decade” (Entertainment Weekly, 2009: n.d.), I<br />
Can Has Cheezburger (ICHC), the site which popularized the images, received approximately<br />
1 See Appendix M.<br />
2 This refers to Burger King’s Subservient Chicken, one of the most famous ‘viral’ ad campaigns. See Appendix M.<br />
3 In 2008, Gov. Mike Huckabee used Chuck Norris in his campaign ads, riffing on the ‘Chuck Norris Facts’ meme.<br />
See Glossary.<br />
4 In 2011, Stephen Colbert used Lolspeak to announce the approval of his SuperPAC. See Glossary; Appendix M.<br />
8
37 million unique hits in the last 12 months (Quantcast, 2011). Based off the popularity of<br />
ICHC (as well as the other meme-oriented sites in its portfolio), Cheezburger Networks<br />
received $30 million in venture funding in January 2011 (Erlich, 2011). LOLCats have spawned<br />
two best-selling books (Nakagawa, 2008; Pet Holdings, 2009), a Bible translation (Grondin,<br />
2010), an art show (Rountree, 2008), and an Off-Broadway musical (Pomranz & Steinberg,<br />
2009). LOLCats have also inspired the development of a massive international community; in<br />
July 2011, thousands of Cheezburger devotees converged upon Safeco Field in Seattle for<br />
Cheezburger Field Day 5 , “a celebration of all things awesome about the internet” (I Can Has<br />
Cheezburger, 2011: n.d.).<br />
Despite their evident impact, LOLCats have been essentially ignored in the academic<br />
literature. When they are mentioned, the comments have been either indifferent (Burgess,<br />
2008; Jenkins et al., 2009) or blatantly derogatory; one web scholar dismissed them as “the<br />
stupidest possible creative act” (Shirky, 2010a). While it’s true that LOLCat images are simple<br />
and arguably even silly, they are just as much a part of the “peer-to-peer cultural production”<br />
landscape (Benkler in Boyle, 2001:14) as the YouTube videos and blogs that have been<br />
exalted and heralded as breaking down the barriers between the consumer/producer<br />
relationship and turning audiences into “produsers” (Bruns, 2007). Online content is playing an<br />
increasingly important role in social, political, and cultural agenda-setting (Hargittai & Walejko,<br />
2008: 253), and, as this paper will show, LOLCats are a key example of the types of content<br />
that are changing the way people engage in cultural participation, creative engagement,<br />
community interaction, and identity construction.<br />
This study is an investigation, ultimately, into why people like LOLCats. While most memes<br />
have a shelf life of a few days to a few weeks (Bauckhage, 2011), LOLCats have managed to<br />
remain popular and relevant for the better half of a decade. If the ‘right question’ is, ‘What are<br />
the interesting memes?’ (Brodie 2009: 4), the other right question must be, “why?”<br />
Why is it that LOLCats resonate with online audiences? While this paper examines the<br />
LOLCat’s appeal, it also examines the larger context of the digital cultural practices that<br />
5 See Appendix K.<br />
9
surround it. Burgess, Foth, and Klaebe (2006) note that gauging the cultural impact of the<br />
“collaborative communities” engaging in “unconventional expressions of participatory culture”<br />
is a challenge for today’s media scholars (5); in studying one such “unconventional expression”,<br />
this study aims to understand—on a small scale—some of that cultural impact.<br />
<strong>THE</strong>ORETICAL CHAPTER<br />
While LOLCats is an enormously popular phenomenon, it has yet to be studied in any depth.<br />
In academic literature, LOLCats have been mentioned in the context of other topics such as<br />
participatory culture (Shirky, 2010b; Jenkins et al., 2009) and 4Chan (Bernstein et al., 2011),<br />
but thus far no attempts have been made to understand the phenomena in and of itself: the<br />
sole academic article published specifically about LOLCats focused on the similarities in visual<br />
practice between LOLCats and silent-film intertitles (Brubaker, 2008).<br />
There has been, however, a great deal of literature written about the socio-technical context<br />
that gave rise to LOLCats, as well as theories that explore the appeal inherent in their textual<br />
elements. This chapter will selectively review both areas of literature with the intent of<br />
examining how it may—or may not—help understand the appeal of LOLCats. The first half of<br />
this chapter will focus on the context of LOLCats, particularly the literature on user-generated<br />
content, participatory culture, and Internet memes. The second half will provide a concise<br />
overview of existing work that pertains to LOLCats’ textual features, specifically in the areas of<br />
genre and humor.<br />
Part I: The Context of LOLCats<br />
Web 2.0 and The Rise of Participatory Culture<br />
The participatory culture that enabled the development and proliferation of LOLCats<br />
emerged from what is popularly known as ‘Web 2.0’. Web 2.0 is a contested term (O’Reilly,<br />
2007) whose definitions range from a shift in business models (Burgess, Foth, & Klaebe, 2006)<br />
to a metaphor for collaboration in service of the greater good (Gauntlett, 2011). However,<br />
the fundamental shift which underlies most conceptualizations of Web 2.0 lay in the<br />
proliferation of platforms which, combined with the ‘increased availability and power of digital<br />
10
technologies’ (Burgess, 2006: 1), enabled lay users to easily create and distribute their own<br />
content on a massive scale.<br />
This explosion of user-generated content, for many academics and critics, heralded a new era<br />
in which the traditional boundaries between media consumers and producers were severely<br />
blurred, if not eradicated (Bruns, 2007; Couldry, 2003; Lievrouw & Livingstone, 2002).<br />
Conceptualizations of the ‘active audience’ evolved from a theoretical argument concerning<br />
textual interpretation to a literal portrayal of the behavior that was taking place on a<br />
widespread basis (Burgess, 2006: 2). The attendant new paradigm, labeled ‘participatory<br />
culture’, has allowed consumers to “take media in their own hands” and not only choose from<br />
existing options, but respond to those options, directly or indirectly, through their own<br />
creative endeavors (Jenkins et al., 2009: 4). This evolution of the “audience” into the<br />
“produser” (Bruns, 2007) has not only affected the way users interact with media, but as this<br />
study will show, the ways in which it appeals to them as well.<br />
The Appeal of User-Generated Content<br />
Once it became clear that user-generated content (UGC) was resonating deeply with<br />
audiences, many scholars began to investigate the roots of its appeal. In a theoretical review of<br />
the early empirical literature on UGC engagement, Shao (2008) concluded that consumption,<br />
participation and creation behaviors derive from disparate motivations: consumption is driven<br />
by information and entertainment needs, participation is encouraged by social interaction<br />
needs, and creation is motivated by the desire for self-expression and recognition. More<br />
recent empirical studies have confirmed Shao’s conclusions: Leung (2009) similarly found that<br />
entertainment, socialization, and recognition were the main drivers for online content<br />
generation; additionally, Schaedel & Clement (2010) found that entertainment, socialization<br />
and social identity drove involvement in UGC-based communities, while desire for recognition<br />
resulted in a greater amount of time spent engaging in creative activities.<br />
While these studies are an excellent starting point for an investigation into the overarching<br />
appeal of user-generated content, they do not differentiate sufficiently between the various<br />
content forms that fall under what is ultimately an umbrella categorization (Leung, 2009:<br />
1345). While blogs, YouTube videos and Wikipedia entries all fall under the auspices of UGC,<br />
there are not only significant differences in the nature of those content types, but also within<br />
11
those content categories themselves (see boyd 2006 for an example of this argument<br />
regarding blogs). Consequently, a gratification that may be intimately tied up in the appeal of<br />
one type of user-generated content may be inapplicable to another; the issue of recognition is<br />
a key example of this. While recognition may be a key driver for users creating content for<br />
sites/platforms such as YouTube, it wouldn’t apply for a site like Wikipedia where recognition<br />
consists of “having your username listed somewhere in an article’s history logs” (Gauntlett,<br />
2011: 7). This point is particularly salient for content like LOLCats where value can’t be<br />
attributed to a single author, usually because there isn’t one (Burgess, 2008).<br />
Vernacular Creativity and the Production of the Everyday<br />
In The Collective Intelligence Genome, Malone, Laubacher & Dellarocas (2010) reduce the<br />
question of creative motivation to the triad of “love, glory, or money”; absent recognition or<br />
financial remuneration, they argue, people engage in creative pursuits because they love it. In<br />
his 2011 book, Making is Connecting, David Gauntlett echoes this assertion. Departing from<br />
Csíkszentmihályi’s conceptualization of creativity as the province of genius (74), he introduces<br />
the concept of “everyday creativity” to recognize the ‘imaginative process’ involved in DIY<br />
pursuits such as knitting, baking, blogging or YouTube videomaking:<br />
Everyday creativity refers to a process which brings together at least one active human<br />
mind, and the material or digital world, in the activity of making something which is novel in<br />
that context, and is a process which evokes a feeling of joy.<br />
(Gauntlett, 2011: 76 emphasis in original).<br />
This definition of creativity highlights the fact that the makers engage in these imaginative<br />
pursuits largely because they “want to, and because it gives them pleasure” (Gauntlett, 2011:<br />
221). Gauntlett argues that these exercises of everyday creativity are not inconsequential<br />
dabblings, but a site of transformative power on both the individual and the societal level.<br />
When we make, he argues, not only do we transform our self-image from that of passive<br />
consumer to “powerful, creative agents” (245), but we connect with others, ultimately laying<br />
the groundwork to confront problems with “confidence and originality” on both an individual<br />
and societal basis. (245).<br />
Jean Burgess supports a similar celebration of “amateur creativity and media production”<br />
12
(2008: 1), albeit from a more digitally exclusive perspective. She uses the concept of<br />
“vernacular creativity” to describe the blending of what could be described as traditional folk<br />
activities (such as storytelling and scrapbooking) with contemporary media knowledge and<br />
practices. She argues that this results in a reduction of “cultural distance” (Atton, 2001, in<br />
Burgess, 2008) between the “conditions of cultural production and the everyday experiences<br />
from which they are derived and to which they return” (p. 6).<br />
Gauntlett and Burgess’s conceptualizations of creativity are useful for thinking about—and<br />
validating—the type of content creation which is often derided as “throwaway” (Shirky,<br />
2010a; 2010b). However, while these definitions of creativity were developed to incorporate<br />
‘digital DIY’, YouTube videos and LOLCats are two very different types of content, and as I<br />
will explore further in the Discussion section, understanding the type of creativity that<br />
LOLCats afford requires more nuance than either of these theories currently provide.<br />
LOLCats and The Memesphere<br />
One of the forms of ‘digital DIY’ that has taken hold in recent years is the Internet meme. The<br />
concept of the meme was introduced by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins as part of a<br />
theory that explained why certain ideas, catchphrases, trends, and other pieces of cultural<br />
information replicate through a population (Dawkins, 1976). The term ‘Internet meme’, while<br />
“similar to the scientific usage in meaning if not analytical precision” (Burgess, 2008: 1), has<br />
come to refer to the “inside jokes or pieces of hip underground knowledge” (Bauckhage,<br />
2011: 42) that inhabit social networks and email inboxes across the world.<br />
While certain memes 6 (such as Rickrolling 7 ) are relatively self-contained, the majority of<br />
memes are part of a complex, interconnected, and esoterically self-referential body of texts<br />
referred to as “the memesphere” (Stryker, 2011). It is important to note, however, that rather<br />
than a collection of discrete texts, memes are inextricably bound to the context of their<br />
creation and consumption. As Burgess astutely noted in regard to video memes on YouTube,<br />
memetic texts are “the mediating mechanisms via which cultural practices are originated,<br />
adopted and (sometimes) retained within social networks” (2008: 2). In other words, on<br />
6 For the purposes of this paper, the term “meme” will refer to an internet meme, and not a Dawkinsian meme.<br />
7 See Glossary<br />
13
meme-riddled sites and platforms like YouTube, 4Chan, Tumblr, and Reddit, memes are often<br />
the means through which users/members interact with each other. This communication<br />
through visual means has resulted in what Cole Stryker calls the “language of memes”, a<br />
“visual vernacular” that allows people to pithily communicate emotions and opinions (2011:<br />
29). However, despite the particular evolution of this new genre, Burgess asserts that the<br />
communicative practices underlying memes are “deeply situated in everyday, even mundane<br />
creative traditions” (2008: 9).<br />
The relationship between memes and LOLCats is a complicated one. Any discussion of<br />
LOLCats invariably involves a discussion of memes because the two are inextricably<br />
interrelated: LOLCats are, in a certain sense, the ur-meme: they are the example that most<br />
people turn to in order to explain what, exactly, an Internet meme is (Grigoriadis, 2010;<br />
Bernstein et al., 2011; Stryker, 2011). On the other hand, LOLCats’ longevity, mainstream<br />
audience, and devoted community are atypical of most other memes, and the combination of<br />
the three makes it peerless in the memesphere.<br />
Part II: The Textual Elements of LOLCats<br />
The LOLCat Genre<br />
LOLCats have a set of textual conventions that make them instantly recognizable to those<br />
who interact with and consume them. The fact that LOLCats have widely-recognized visual<br />
structure within a particular community means, according to Toms (1999), that they are a<br />
genre. ‘Genre’ is a term that is used to refer to a “distinctive type of text” (Chandler, 1997:<br />
1). Despite the fact that genre is frequently used as a method of classification, its use can be<br />
problematic, both as a concept and as a system of categorization. This primarily stems from<br />
the fact that genre suffers from definitional problems; as Chandler notes, “one theorist's genre<br />
maybe another's sub-genre or even super-genre (and indeed what is technique, style, mode,<br />
formula or thematic grouping to one may be treated as a genre by another)” (1997: 1).<br />
Nonetheless, genres are generally identifiable through their combination of form and agreed-<br />
upon function (Yates, Orlikowski and Rennecker, 1997: 1), even if the knowledge of that form<br />
and function is largely tacit and difficult to clearly articulate (Chandler, 1997: 3).<br />
14
While genre is most familiarly used in the context of audio/visual media or literature, the<br />
concept and application of genre has considerable implications for the digital realm. Within<br />
this literature, genre is considered to be an essential element of online interaction since the<br />
effective use of online documents—from websites to blogs—depends on the user’s ability to<br />
recognize its nature, structure, and purpose (Toms, 1999). Furthermore, genre dictates not<br />
only the way communications are structured, but the way they are received (Yates, Orlikowski<br />
& Rennecker, 1997: 1). The question of reception connects to the notion that genres are both<br />
socially constructed and constructing. Genres are the “keys to understanding how to<br />
participate in the actions of a community” (Miller, 1984: 165): communities that were likely<br />
informed by genre (Brown and Duguid, 2002 in Bowman and Willis, 2003). Whether textual<br />
or social, genres are important framing devices: generic conventions set up expectations<br />
(Kuipers, 2009). In the case of LOLCats, the expectations set by the genre are both social and<br />
textual; one question addressed in the Results section is how these social and textual<br />
conventions interact with how LOLCats are created, consumed, and enjoyed.<br />
Humor & LOLCats<br />
One of the most obvious generic ‘expectations’ for LOLCats is that, as funny pictures of cats,<br />
they should actually be funny. The question then, is not so much whether humor is involved<br />
with LOLCats’ appeal, but in what way.<br />
Shifman asserts that humor can provide unique insight into a society or culture (2007: 187);<br />
while the existence of humor is universal, its appreciation is tied to the context of its creation,<br />
whether that be a group of friends or an entire nation (Boskin, 1997 in Shifman, 2007).<br />
Furthermore, a shared sense of humor can bring a society or culture closer together; as<br />
Kuipers notes, “sharing humor signals similarity and similarity breeds closeness…laughing<br />
together is a sign of belonging” (2009: n.d.).<br />
Humor is a mechanism through which we erect and maintain symbolic boundaries (Kuipers,<br />
2009) which are used to execute a number of personal and social functions: asserting tastes,<br />
exploring identities and situations, and defining insiders and outsiders (Jenkins et al., 2009;<br />
Gelkopf and Kreitler, 1996). Particularly applicable to the study at hand is identification humor<br />
(Meyer, 2000), more familiarly known as ‘in-jokes’. In jokes are important components of both<br />
memes and online communities (Stryker, 2011; Baym, 1995) due to their facilitation of “in-<br />
15
group-ness” (Bormann, 1972, 1982 in Meyer, 2000: 325) through the assumption of<br />
exclusively shared knowledge (Meyer, 2000: 434).<br />
In-jokes can take many shapes, from single words to entire systems of meaning (Apte, 1985).<br />
One related phenomenon is slangs, a form of linguistic humor (Apte, 1985) that is used for<br />
“bonding and ‘sociability’ through playfulness” (Thorne, n.d., 2). Slangs are often specialized<br />
languages developed by a group for the purpose of in-group communication and identity<br />
marking (Apte, 1985: 187), and can function as a source of humor on multiple levels. One way<br />
is through ‘accent humor’, the exaggerated use of incorrect grammar and vocabulary (Apte,<br />
1985: 200). The other is through the reinterpretation of familiar words and phrases to create<br />
a code that is understandable only within a group context (Apte, 1985: 187). The latter type<br />
of humor can be an essential element in creating group identity and solidarity in online<br />
communities; as Baym notes, the group-specific meaning which arise out of humorous<br />
interaction can provide “central objects” around which online groups can define themselves<br />
(1995: n.d.).<br />
There is a significant symbiosis that exists between humor and the Internet: not only is most<br />
‘viral’ content of a humorous nature (Jenkins et al., 2009; Phelps et al. 2004 in Shifman, 2007),<br />
but seeking out humor is one of the most common activities for Internet users in the UK<br />
(Dutton et al, 2005 in Shifman, 2007). Interestingly (and quite relevant for this study),<br />
Shifman’s (2007) content analysis of Internet-based comic texts revealed that the most<br />
prominent format in the sample was the ‘funny photo’, most of which featured animals.<br />
Shifman attributed the texts’ appeal to the anthropomorphic nature of the images, noting that<br />
funny animal photos “may on the one hand highlight the difference between humans and<br />
animals, but on the other hand hint at the similarities between them” (2007: 202).<br />
Anthropomorphism is the practice of attributing “human characteristics to non-human things”<br />
(Milton, 2005: 255). Baker argues that in anthropomorphized texts, “the immediate subject of<br />
those ideas is frequently not the animal itself, but rather a human subject drawing on animal<br />
imagery to make a statement about human identity” (2001: xxxv). Alger and Alger (1999)<br />
consider anthropomorphism to be a distancing concept (Milton, 2005: 266); in terms of<br />
humor theory, this means that anthropomorphized texts allow those who identify with them<br />
16
to essentially laugh at themselves by regarding their own actions from a different perspective<br />
(Goldstein, 1976 in Gelkopf and Kreitler, 1996). Baker observes that there is a common view<br />
that animals are inherently funny, and argues that peoples’ willingness to identify with and<br />
through these images is rooted in a simple pleasure: “people, it seems, just like looking at the<br />
image of animals” (2001: 121).<br />
RESEARCH STATEMENT<br />
The question that inspired this research overall was “Why in the name of Ceiling Cat 8 are<br />
LOLCats so popular?” What is it about LOLCats that not only fueled their initial popularity,<br />
but helped maintain it for years? Given that LOLCats are a phenomenon that is both textual<br />
and social in nature, I will be looking to concepts that are equally textual and social in nature<br />
to aid in understanding their appeal: specifically, genre and humor.<br />
Within genre, I will be using, in particular, Toms’ (1999) conceptualization of genre as “a shape<br />
of information that is universally recognizable within particular discourse communities” (n.d.). I<br />
will also be drawing upon Miller’s idea that genre acts as “the keys to understanding how to<br />
participate in the actions of a community” (1984: 165).<br />
Within humor theory, I will be applying the concept of linguistic humor, especially Apte’s<br />
(1985) definition of a slang. I will also be utilizing the concept of identification humor, or in-<br />
jokes (Meyer, 2000), particularly regarding the assertion that humor plays a role in erecting<br />
and enforcing symbolic boundaries (Kuipers, 2009).<br />
Additionally, I will be invoking the concept of anthropomorphism, particularly<br />
anthropomorphic distancing through humor (Alger and Alger, 1999 in Milton, 2005; Goldstein<br />
1976 in Gelkopf and Kreitler, 1996).<br />
Finally, interacting with LOLCats can be a process not only of consumption, but of sharing and<br />
creation as well. In order to recognize the various forms of engagement that are possible<br />
8 See Glossary; Appendix N<br />
17
when interacting with LOLCats, those who interact with LOLCats will conceptualized as<br />
“users”.<br />
In formulating my research question, I took into consideration the following sub-questions:<br />
• What do people find funny about LOLCats?<br />
• Is anthropomorphism a factor?<br />
• What role does Lolspeak play?<br />
• What about the form and format of LOLCats appeals to users?<br />
• How do sharing and creation factor in?<br />
The questions outlined above helped shape my ultimate Research Question, which is:<br />
METHODOLOGY<br />
Preface<br />
In what ways do the textual and social aspects of LOLCats<br />
contribute to the appeal of LOLCats for LOLCat Users?<br />
At the start of the research process, I set out to understand the textual appeal of LOLCats:<br />
why it was, exactly, that these funny images of cats with misspelled captions and big white font<br />
resonated so strongly with LOLCat users. My investigations of the social and creative practices<br />
surrounding LOLCats—the making and sharing— were an attempt to further understand<br />
what was going on with the images themselves. However, it soon became clear that the<br />
textual elements of LOLCats were only half of the story: that, like Burgess’s video memes<br />
(2008), LOLCats are inextricably bound to the cultural practices and social environment that<br />
surround them, and that the examination of one inevitably requires the examination of the<br />
other.<br />
Overview<br />
The research question was investigated through a total of six focus groups. Four of the groups<br />
were comprised of primarily passive LOLCat Users and were conducted face to face. The<br />
remaining two groups consisted of more active LOLCat Users and were conducted using<br />
Google Hangouts, a new online videoconferencing technology launched in July 2011. While<br />
18
the sample size for this study (36 individuals) allowed me to explore my research question in<br />
depth, the results are not meant to be generalized to a larger population.<br />
Research Strategy<br />
The aim of this research – to understand the appeal of an online phenomenon – presented<br />
from the beginning a number of methodological questions. While direct analysis of the texts<br />
could reveal certain elements about LOLCats, I realized that to answer the research question<br />
at hand, an audience-oriented methodology would be needed. Focus groups were chosen for<br />
several reasons, but the most compelling was their social nature.<br />
LOLCats are a fundamentally social phenomenon; as Clay Shirky quipped, “no one would<br />
create a LOLCat to keep for themselves” (2010b: n.d.). As such, conducting individual<br />
interviews was rejected due to their inherent lack of interactivity that is characteristic of<br />
LOLCat engagement. Furthermore, attitudes and perceptions are largely developed via social<br />
interaction; focus groups work primarily because they tap into this tendency (Krueger, 1994:<br />
10), allowing to the researcher to explore “what individuals believe or feel as well as why they<br />
behave in the way they do” (Rabiee, 2004: 655).<br />
Furthermore, focus groups are particularly suited for gaining insight into complicated topics<br />
where behavior or motivation may be multifaceted (Rabiee, 2004; Krueger, 1994); This is<br />
particularly beneficial when discussing a deceptively complex topic like humor, where the<br />
insights generated from group interaction are frequently “deeper and richer” than those<br />
gleaned from individual interviews (Rabiee, 2004: 656). Additionally, the permissive nature of<br />
properly-conducted focus groups can encourage individuals to disclose opinions and feelings<br />
that may not otherwise be divulged through alternative interrogatory practices (Krueger, 1994:<br />
11). While focus groups present the risk of group think or outspoken individuals influencing<br />
others (Krueger, 1994) this is countered in well-moderated groups by the opportunity for<br />
group members’ disclosures to provide a ‘jumping off point’ for others to evaluate in the<br />
context of their own perceptions and emotions (Gaskell, 2000).<br />
Participant Selection: Face to Face Groups<br />
Given that LOLCats are an online phenomenon, the participants for the groups were<br />
recruited primarily through the use of social networking, content, and community sites.<br />
19
Requests for participants were posted on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit, Craigslist, and<br />
The Cheez Town Cryer. I also partially utilized a snowball sample, tapping into my own<br />
personal networks and requesting them to spread the word to their LOLCat-loving friends<br />
and acquaintances. As incentive, I offered the chance to win a £25 Amazon giftcard. These<br />
two sampling techniques were utilized with the goal of representing the range of involvement<br />
levels represented in the LOLCat user population; while some LOLCat Users are deeply<br />
involved with the community, others enjoy them in a more casual way. Participants for the<br />
groups were also selected with this representational breadth in mind.<br />
While the participants’ engagement with LOLCats differed in intensity, they were, overall,<br />
demographically homogeneous, a general requisite for conducting successful focus groups<br />
(Krueger, 1994). The one exception was a 72 year old woman who is one of the most active<br />
commenters on ICHC and the co-author of the Cheez Town Cryer. While her demographic<br />
divergence from the participants in her group could have been an issue, the other members of<br />
the group treated her with much appreciation once her level of involvement with the LOLCat<br />
community was made apparent.<br />
I also had the opportunity to conduct a focus group with a group of coworkers who were<br />
LOLCat enthusiasts. Given the relationship between memes and the “Bored At Work”<br />
population (Peretti in Stryker, 2011: 172), I saw this as an ideal opportunity to investigate the<br />
dynamics of this particular social aspect of the LOLCat phenomenon. Furthermore, Kitzinger<br />
(1994) notes that due to established comfort levels, the use of pre-existing groups can be<br />
helpful when conducting exploratory research (Rabiee, 2004: 656)<br />
Discussion Guide<br />
Given that LOLCats are largely undocumented in academic literature, the discussion guide was<br />
designed with an exploratory and phenomenological spirit, the aim being to explore as many<br />
of the textual and social aspects of the LOLCat phenomenon as possible while allowing the<br />
study participants to openly contribute their opinions with minimal influence. Consequently,<br />
the discussion guide was designed primarily as a topic guide. This allowed for more flexibility in<br />
exploring themes and topics introduced by the participants, as well as the ability to<br />
incorporate participants’ own words in to the questions (Krueger, 1994: 56-7). The guide<br />
underwent two iterations. The original version, used on the first focus group, incorporated<br />
20
explorations of the main textual and social aspects of the phenomenon. The guide was revised<br />
after the first focus group when it became clear that certain elements of the phenomenon<br />
were of more significance than anticipated, particularly the format and the significance of<br />
Lolspeak. The interview guide was then revised to further explore these issues, and was used<br />
in all further groups.<br />
Stimulus Selection<br />
To aid in the discussion of the more abstract textual aspects of LOLCats (such as humor and<br />
anthropomorphism), I elected to include stimulus in the second half of the focus groups as<br />
suggested by Gaskell (2000: 51) and Krueger (1994: 66). Stimulus was selected in two ways.<br />
Participants were invited to submit their favorite lols in advance of the groups; this allowed for<br />
an exploration of the factors that guided their selection rationale. Given that the number of<br />
participants who elected to send images varied by group, supplementary stimulus for the<br />
groups was selected after a comprehensive review of the ICHC Hall of Fame, a collection of<br />
the most popular LOLCats on the site. During this review, I inductively developed topical<br />
categories to guide my selection; the individual images ultimately selected for inclusion<br />
represented a variety of intersecting textual elements and topical categories.<br />
Summary of Procedures: Face to Face Groups<br />
All of the focus groups were held in July 2011. The face-to-face groups were held in three<br />
separate locations to accommodate the participants: two were held in on the LSE Campus in<br />
Central London; one was held at a private residence in East London, and one group was held<br />
at an office in Central London. Groups were recorded on video camera with backup digital<br />
audio recorders. Each of the groups had between 6 to 8 participants in adherence to<br />
methodological best practices (Krueger, 1994; Rabiee, 2004).<br />
The groups began with each participant reading the information sheet and signing the consent<br />
form. Further verbal explanation and clarification was provided, with an opportunity for the<br />
participants to ask questions. As suggested by Krueger (1994: 114), the discussion started off<br />
with lighter questions before proceeding to more complicated subject matter. Any topics on<br />
the guide that were not introduced organically into the discussion were incorporated after<br />
natural ebbs in conversation.<br />
21
In moderating the groups, I aimed to create a relaxed and permissive atmosphere that<br />
encouraged participants to divulge their feelings about LOLCats. One complication that arose<br />
was that quite a few of the participants either demonstrated or admitted their embarrassment<br />
that they were so engaged with something that was such a “waste of time” and “silly”. In<br />
order to diminish their apprehension, I occasionally indicated, directly or indirectly, the extent<br />
of my own experience with, and feelings about, LOLCats. While this risked inserting myself<br />
into the process, I found that these revelations assuaged the participants’ nervousness and<br />
resulted in their being more expressive, revelatory, and engaged with the group overall.<br />
After approximately 30 minutes, stimulus was incorporated into the discussion and<br />
participants asked to comment generally on the images with follow up questions posed if<br />
necessary. After approximately 50 minutes, the session was closed by inviting participants to<br />
make any additional comments or address unasked questions as suggested by Krueger (1994:<br />
69). The groups ended with a random draw for the £25 Amazon gift card.<br />
Online Focus Groups: Rationale and Selection<br />
The first three focus groups that were conducted were primarily composed of users who<br />
engaged with LOLCats in a more passive manner. In an attempt to fully understand the<br />
LOLCat phenomenon, I elected to conduct two online focus groups with “expert” LOLCat<br />
users who either actively sought out LOLCats or had experience creating them. While overall,<br />
creators are a smaller percentage of the UGC population (Van Dijck, 2009: 44), I felt their<br />
important role warranted further investigation. While I attempted to recruit these more active<br />
users for my face-to-face groups, many of those who were interested in participating and also<br />
fit the desired criteria lived outside the metropolitan London area. To include a selection of<br />
more active LOLCat users who had responded to my original posts, I held online focus groups<br />
using Google Hangouts.<br />
Methodological Considerations: Online Focus Groups<br />
Methodological literature documents several drawbacks of online focus groups. Edmunds<br />
(1999 in Rezabek, 2000) notes that even when video cameras are used during live groups, it’s<br />
difficult to see other participants’ facial expressions. Rezabek (2000) noted that some<br />
participants’ fear of, or inexperience with, online video technology impacts their willingness to<br />
participate in discussions and affects the group dynamic. These concerns, while valid, were<br />
22
largely inapplicable to the two online groups that were conducted for this study, for reasons<br />
expanded upon below.<br />
Google Hangouts As A Focus Group Tool<br />
Google + was launched in July 2011. One of its most lauded features was Hangouts, which<br />
function as advanced group chats (pictured in figure A).<br />
Figure A: User Interface for Google Hangouts<br />
The uniqueness of the Google Hangout is that it emulates face-to-face (F2F) conversation.<br />
This is accomplished through an audio functionality that, once triggered by vocal or other<br />
audio input, switches the video feed of the speaker to the main window, directing your<br />
attention to the person who is speaking. While this may have been confusing or distracting for<br />
the uninitiated, the groups who were interviewed online consisted of technically savvy early<br />
adopters, many of whom regularly used Google Hangouts in a social capacity. Due to this<br />
familiarity and comfort with the platform’s functionality and emerging norms, the online focus<br />
groups went quite smoothly.<br />
Summary of Procedures: Online Focus Groups<br />
The online focus groups were conducted using the same discussion guide and the same<br />
procedure as the Face-to-Face groups, the single difference being the absence of stimulus. This<br />
23
was for two reasons. While Google Hangouts support simultaneous YouTube watching, they<br />
currently do not support static image consumption. More salient, however, is the fact that the<br />
online groups were intimately familiar with the LOLCat corpus and were able to speak at<br />
length about the more complicated aspects of the phenomenon without the need for visual<br />
prompts. The focus groups were recorded with Camtasia, live screen-capture software.<br />
Thematic Analysis<br />
Qualitative analysis allows researchers to describe and explain phenomena or social worlds<br />
through the process of reviewing, synthesizing, and interpreting data (Fossey et al., 2002: 728).<br />
Thematic analysis is a “flexible and useful research tool” that can help accomplish this<br />
description and explanation by providing a complex and detailed account of qualitative data<br />
(Braun and Clarke, 2006: 78). Furthermore, the flexibility of thematic analysis allows for the<br />
identification of unanticipated themes and insights (Braun and Clarke, 2006: 97), a particular<br />
advantage for an exploratory project such as this one. However, thematic analysis is not<br />
without its challenges or drawbacks; one of the most significant is that it invariably requires a<br />
certain amount of assumption and interpretation on the researcher’s part. Nonetheless, as<br />
long as these potential pitfalls are kept in mind, thematic analysis can help provide valuable<br />
insight into the ways people experience their worlds (Fossey et al., 2002: 720).<br />
The recordings made of all six focus groups were manually transcribed and analyzed based on<br />
the process outlined by Braun and Clarke (2006). In order to allow for the cultivation of<br />
unforeseen results, I took a data-driven approach that relied on the inductive development of<br />
themes (Braun and Clarke, 2006) which were established by examining the transcripts for<br />
instances of recurrence, repetition, and forcefulness, as per Owen (1984). Extracts matching<br />
each theme were identified and ‘bucketed’ into individual documents for further evaluation;<br />
these individual documents were then analysed, condensed, and reorganized in a recursive<br />
process until the final themes were decided upon (Braun and Clarke, 2006).<br />
RESULTS<br />
The results section is organized by the four main findings of the study. The first section<br />
explains how, rather than one set of LOLCat users, there are three separate groups of users<br />
24
that engage with LOLCats in different ways. The remaining sections on genre, humor, and<br />
creation/sharing reveal how LOLCats’ appeal rests in the interaction between the textual and<br />
social, and connects to issues of identity, pleasure, and emotional expression. All quotes that<br />
have been selected for inclusion have been chosen because they most closely typify the<br />
sentiment being referenced or described.<br />
The Three LOLCat User Constituencies<br />
Over the course of the focus groups, it became clear that ‘LOLCat Users’ were not one<br />
amorphous group, but were best conceptualized in terms of three separate groups of users.<br />
During my analysis and coding of the focus group transcripts, I inductively established three<br />
user groups, into which I subsequently categorized each participant: CheezFrenz, MemeGeeks,<br />
and Casual Users. It is worth noting that the presence and proportion of these three groups<br />
in the participant population are inevitably be bound up in the selection process. Thus it is<br />
possible that other user categories exist that are not represented here. Nonetheless, the<br />
results provide strong evidence that these three groups represent important constituencies for<br />
LOLCats, and that the appeal of the phenomenon differs by group.<br />
Cheezfrenz<br />
“Cheezfrenz” is how community members are referred to on ICHC. They are invested<br />
LOLCat lovers whose interest in LOLCats generally stems from their affinity for cats. They<br />
actively seek out LOLCats, usually on a daily basis. The Cheezfrenz in my sample were all<br />
involved with the ICHC community on some level; most were drawn to it because it is,<br />
according to one Cheezfrend who was unable to attend the focus groups, “a place to be safe<br />
and kind” for people who “want to be nice, want to be happy, want to give support, want to<br />
smile” (H. Langdon, personal communication, 15/7/11). According to one focus group<br />
participant who attended Cheezburger Field Day, the most ardent Cheezfrenz tend to be<br />
older women; while all of the Cheezfrenz who attended my focus groups were female, they<br />
ranged in age from 21 to 72. Cheezfrenz comprised 11% of the participant sample in this<br />
study.<br />
25
MemeGeeks<br />
Classifying the “MemeGeeks” as such is not meant pejoratively; “geek” and “nerd” were used<br />
frequently within this group as a badge of honor or compliment 9 . While MemeGeeks enjoy<br />
LOLCats, their interest in them is almost nostalgic, stemming mostly from LOLCats’ place in<br />
the meme canon 10 and their role as the progenitor of other less mainstream memes,<br />
particularly Advice Animals 11 . A minority of the MemeGeeks actively seek out LOLCats; most<br />
interact with them on content-oriented social networking sites such as Tumblr and Reddit.<br />
MemeGeeks’ interest in memes overall is part of a larger interest in Internet culture, with<br />
many MemeGeeks referring to themselves as “children of the Internet”, “from the Internet”,<br />
and “(living) on the Internet”.<br />
The MemeGeeks represented by far the largest proportion of users in the study at 63%. The<br />
vast majority (66%) were males between the ages of 24 and 28, and overwhelmingly worked<br />
in the digital industry in some context. While this may have been a factor of the selection<br />
process, the selection process was also largely a matter of self-selection, with many of the<br />
MemeGeeks responding to online ads/posts.<br />
Casual Users<br />
The Casual User group made up the remaining 25% of the participant sample. The Casual<br />
Users were mostly comprised of the “Bored At Work” population (Peretti in Stryker, 2011:<br />
172) and cat owners. These users tend to engage passively with LOLCats, receiving them<br />
from others via email or seeing them on Facebook. The appeal for this group is grounded in<br />
the LOLCats’ humor, and can best be summed up as an appreciation for cute,<br />
anthropomorphized cat images with funny language superimposed upon them. The casual<br />
users worked in a variety of industries and were evenly distributed by gender.<br />
The LOLCat Genre<br />
Miller (1984) argues that “when a type of discourse or communicative action acquires a<br />
common name within a given context or community, that’s a good sign that it’s functioning as<br />
9 Historically, “geek” is a derogatory term, but in recent years it has been reclaimed and redefined as a reference<br />
to certain types of cultural interests or pursuits (see Konzack, 2006 for a more in-depth exploration).<br />
10 Interestingly, many of the MemeGeeks saw LOLCats as “no longer a meme” and “beyond a meme”. See<br />
Appendix O for a table that illustrates the perceived differences between LOLCats and memes.<br />
11 See Appendix L<br />
26
a genre” (Miller and Shepherd, n.d.). One of the clear findings from the focus groups was that<br />
the form and structure of the LOLCat were not only distinct, but that the proper execution of<br />
the generic conventions were essential to its appeal. Participants repeatedly mentioned the<br />
following textual elements as integral to the proper execution and full enjoyment of a<br />
LOLCat:<br />
• Font<br />
• Placement of Text<br />
• Subject of Image<br />
• Syntax<br />
• Characterization of animal<br />
• Intertextuality<br />
For both the Cheezfrenz and the MemeGeeks, knowledge of generic conventions was an<br />
indicator of in-group membership: improper application of the unspoken rules was the mark<br />
of an outsider.<br />
JT: Yeah, you can spot the n00bs.<br />
Interviewer: Yeah, the n00bs. So, how can you spot a n00b?<br />
JT: Wrong font, wrong syntax. Just wrong.<br />
AB: Shouting.<br />
(JT, 38, MemeGeek, female; AB, 72, Cheezfrend, female)<br />
Somewhat ironically, the MemeGeeks frequently attributed many of the generic transgressions<br />
found in the LOLCat corpus to the older women and “crazy cat ladies” who largely belong to<br />
the Cheezfrenz:<br />
I was really really put off by the continual Lolspeak in the comments, because, that’s not<br />
how it works. The Lolspeak is really reserved for the animals in the pictures.<br />
(GV, MemeGeek, 30, male)<br />
I imagine mums at home looking at LOLCats and thinking, “Oh, I can do one of those” and<br />
then typing it down and not doing it right.<br />
(MH, MemeGeek, 30, male)<br />
27
More than just defining group boundaries, however, adherence to generic conventions is also<br />
instrumental to LOLCats’ appeal in a more straightforward way: making them funny. This<br />
manifests itself in two distinct ways. The first is through the actual set up of the “joke” in the<br />
LOLCat image:<br />
I think that what we were saying about the form of the LOLCats is quite good, because the<br />
bit at the top is kind of, it sets it up, and then I think you look at the picture, and then the<br />
bit below, kind of, I dunno, reinforces it a little bit?<br />
(CS, 29, MemeGeek, male)<br />
The fact that the text is half at the top and half at the bottom is really important because<br />
it gives you a joke and a punchline.<br />
(GV, 30, MemeGeek, male)<br />
The second is more subtle, with the style of the genre itself acting as an integral part of the<br />
humor:<br />
When you see that font, you know there’s going to be something funny, it’s expected. If it’s<br />
the wrong font—yeah, it’s just, you know, 9 times out of 10 it’s not as funny…even if it’s<br />
saying something funny, I just think, you know, come on, you’ve gotta do it properly. There is<br />
a style, here. And that’s part of what makes it funny.<br />
(JT, 38, MemeGeek, female)<br />
These findings echo the literature on genre and humor in other contexts (Toms, 1999;<br />
Kuipers, 2009): like a TV sitcom or a spoken joke, the established generic conventions of<br />
LOLCats are both appreciated in and of themselves and in their role as a framing device.<br />
Humor & LOLCats<br />
Perhaps not surprisingly, the humor inherent in LOLCats is one of the most significant<br />
elements of their appeal: they are, after all, funny pictures of cats. However, the way in which<br />
humor factors into LOLCats’ appeal is far more complicated than the texts themselves might<br />
suggest.<br />
28
“It’s like your sad relative, isn’t it?”: The Appeal of Anthropomorphic Humor<br />
While many of the cat owners in the sample echoed the sentiment that “seeing other cats is<br />
always amusing to me…because my cats are silly” (MK, 32, MemeGeek, male), participants<br />
across all three groups overwhelmingly identified the anthropomorphic nature of the images<br />
as one of the most appealing elements of LOLCats.<br />
Anthropomorphic distancing was a theme that came up frequently in the focus groups, and<br />
materialized in two separate ways. The first was laughing at one’s own foibles and “situations<br />
you identify with” (SC, 31, MemeGeek, male), as exemplified by JH:<br />
There’s one actually that I used to reference— it’s like this little kitten and it’s like…“No<br />
squish! I be good! 13 ” and I think I kind of identified with it? … Part of what’s funny can be<br />
that you recognize in it, part of your own ego and that’s sort of what you can take off, or<br />
what you can laugh at.<br />
(JH, Casual User, 25, female)<br />
The other way it manifested was in laughing at other people. While many of the MemeGeeks<br />
expressed enjoyment of sites like FailBlog 14 , many of the Casual Users and Cheezfrenz<br />
expressed reluctance to laugh at others’ misfortunes, and noted that the anthropomorphic<br />
distance provided by LOLCats made it more acceptable to do so:<br />
GS: In another way I think the reason that LOLCats are funny is because they’re— they<br />
are people. Or treating them, sort of like, humans, but they’re in a world where everything<br />
is much bigger than them?<br />
KB: And it makes it okay to laugh at, because if it was a person in the same exact<br />
situation, let’s say instead of a cat falling over, it’s a person—<br />
PB: I want to use the word schadenfreude so she can have trouble transcribing that.<br />
JM: I don’t think it’s really schadenfreude, though. Like, I think it creates a certain distance<br />
so you can kind of see like, goofy, or even stupid, or trying to be devious things that people<br />
do, and see it as kind of endearing.<br />
PB: Puts it in a fun context.<br />
JM: Yeah, makes it so you can laugh at it.<br />
13 See Appendix N<br />
14 See Glossary<br />
29
(GS, 27, Casual User, male; KB, 26, Cheezfrend, female; PB, 24, MemeGeek, male; JM,<br />
30, Casual User, female)<br />
The other element of anthropomorphic humor that was frequently cited as a source of<br />
humor was Lolspeak. While the anthropomorphic portrayals of animals largely served as a<br />
source of enjoyment and humor for the participants, Lolspeak’s main function was as an in-<br />
joke that works to create and enforce symbolic boundaries (Kuipers, 2009): this will be<br />
discussed further in the next section.<br />
“Memes are jokes your friends don’t get”: The Role of In-Jokes<br />
The notion of the in-joke was raised repeatedly throughout the groups. The MemeGeeks<br />
especially prized LOLCats for the fact that they were a “a bit of an insidery club, which is<br />
cool” (MK, 32, MemeGeek, male). Similarly, JE, a 29 year old MemeGeek explained that “the<br />
funniest thing is being part of the group that understands the joke. Having to explain it to my<br />
boyfriend always makes it sound really rubbish.” The in-jokiness of LOLCats was largely<br />
achieved through two textual features: Lolspeak and intertextual references.<br />
Lolspeak<br />
One of the most recognizable features of LOLCats, Lolspeak is characterized by its childlike<br />
tone and incorrect grammar. It has been taken up with great gusto by the LOLCat community<br />
and operates as the lingua franca of the ICHC comment boards. The following example of<br />
Lolspeak is excerpted from an email I received in response to my solicitations for focus group<br />
participants:<br />
Lolspeak: Ohai! I wud like tu b in deh focus groop, if it am alrite wif u<br />
English: Hi! I would like to be in the focus group, if that is alright with you<br />
Lolspeak was found to be entertaining (or at the very least, interesting) to all three user<br />
groups, mostly because it was considered to be the voice of the cat in the image; as one<br />
Casual User noted, “obviously, you’d imagine that cats can’t really speak properly” (PT, 28,<br />
male). However, the fact that “the speak belongs to the cat” (GV, 30, MemeGeek, male),<br />
failed to deter either the MemeGeeks or the Cheezfrenz from using it as a slang. It is in this<br />
way that the use of Lolspeak creates the sense of “in-group-ness” that makes identification<br />
humor so appealing.<br />
30
MemeGeeks enjoy Lolspeak because to them, it is an emblem of Internet culture. One<br />
MemeGeek explained that she engaged with LOLCats for “the Internetty part, not the cute<br />
part—like, the speak. Like Lolspeak”. For her, the appeal of Lolspeak was that “it’s its own<br />
language that makes no sense, and that the context is like, within the private joke of the<br />
community that you have to trace its origin back, back to the Internet” (LW, 25, MemeGeek,<br />
female).<br />
Lolspeak’s status as “teh furst language born of teh intertubes” 15 identifies it as an in-joke for<br />
those who understand the context of its origins. This use of Lolspeak was particularly clear<br />
during the focus group conducted with a cohort of coworkers whose jobs required deep<br />
understanding of the online cultural landscape. These coworkers actively used Lolspeak and<br />
other forms of Internet argot in a jokey manner during the entire focus group; this not only<br />
functioned as a form of workplace bonding, but also marked the office as an environment<br />
steeped in Internet culture:<br />
JE: But we, we do it loads between ourselves here<br />
TB: Yeah.<br />
JE: Like with everything, like our wifi names and passwords.<br />
MH: They’re all “I Can Haz Wifi”<br />
JE: Yeah (laughs), our wifi actually is called I Can Haz Wifi.<br />
SC: And the password is Cheezburger.<br />
(JE, 29, MemeGeek, female; TB, 26, MemeGeek, female; MH, 26, MemeGeek, male;<br />
SC, 31, MemeGeek, male)<br />
On top of demonstrating that “we’re Internet people” (MH, 26, MemeGeek, male), the use of<br />
Lolspeak as a slang provides an opportunity for the entire office to playfully establish similarity<br />
through shared humor (Kuipers, 2009; Thorne, n.d.).<br />
The Cheezfrenz’ use of Lolspeak was seen as a source of enjoyment, but even more as an<br />
indicator of who was truly committed to the ICHC community. Speaking ‘perfect Lol’ was<br />
15 This phrasing is used on sites all over the Internet; I could not find an original source. For an example see<br />
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Lolcats<br />
31
seen as a great accomplishment; this was illustrated in discussions of The Cween’s 16 level of<br />
virtuosity. Those who are unable (or unwilling) to master the rules of Lolspeak are seen as less<br />
invested, even if they are active contributors to the community in other ways. In one of the<br />
more compelling examples of this, AB, a leader in the ICHC commenting community, noted<br />
that even though her son had created several lols that had made it to the front page 17 , his<br />
Lolspeak was “erratic” and he “couldn’t keep it up”, the implication being that this was less<br />
than ideal.<br />
Virtuosity in slang performance is not always appreciated by those for whom it is unfamiliar.<br />
(Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1976 in Apte, 1985). This was often the experience for the<br />
Cheezfrenz, who reported “frequent trolls that pop up on the comments column saying we’re<br />
a load of retards who don’t speak proper English” (AB, 72, Cheezfrend, female). However, for<br />
those who do understand and enjoy Lolspeak, it can signal connection in a fragmented world.<br />
According to Cheezfrend KB,<br />
I sort of feel an affinity when I see it in the outside world. It’s like, help spelled with an A or<br />
something like that, I’m like, “aww!” it makes the Internet community feel a bit smaller…<br />
just makes the world feel a bit smaller, even though it’s a really big place. To see<br />
something that you find funny, that you saw referenced somewhere else. I don’t know, it’s<br />
like an inside joke that the whole Internet gets.<br />
(KB, 26, Cheezfrend, female)<br />
Intertextual References<br />
For some MemeGeeks, the fact that LOLCats and other Internet culture artifacts became<br />
popular was akin to their favorite underground band selling out. In the words of one<br />
MemeGeek,<br />
You know, this is our language, these are our shared cultural reference points. And, when it<br />
goes mainstream, you know, you feel like you’ve lost something, and it’s time to move on to<br />
the next little bit of obscurity.<br />
16<br />
The Cween is the founder of The Cheez Town Cryer and the arguable leader of the ICHC commenter<br />
community.<br />
17<br />
Lols on ICHC are voted on by the community; to make it out of the voting section and on to the front page<br />
of the site is seen as a major achievement.<br />
32
(CS, 27, MemeGeek, male)<br />
In a memorable example of this, one MemeGeek said that LOLCats were “over” for him after<br />
he received one from his mother.<br />
To illustrate their difference from the bandwagon jumpers, MemeGeeks often demonstrated<br />
that they both understood and appreciated ‘the past’. One way that this was accomplished<br />
was through the enjoyment of lols that featured intertextual references. MemeGeeks<br />
particularly appreciated LOLCats that included multiple layers of selective knowledge; those<br />
that featured references that were exclusive on their own merit were particularly prized.<br />
JE: When they bring in old-school computer game references it’s awesome.<br />
GT: Yeah, especially Street Fighter—Shoryuken is like a massive upper cut in Street Fighter<br />
in the first one, eh, that Ryu does? And there’s a LOLCat of that 18 , and he’s going<br />
“SHORYUKEN!” and he’s got the pose perfect.<br />
(JE, 29, MemeGeek, female; GT, 22, MemeGeek, male)<br />
This use and appreciation of multilayered referential humor has several functions. First,<br />
having—and continually invoking—shared references bolsters the foundations of the group’s<br />
unity (Baym, 1995). Secondly, repeated references take on significance in and of themselves<br />
within the group, providing “codified forms of group-specific meanings” (Baym, 1995: n.d.). In<br />
turn, these meanings provide further fodder for reinterpretation and remixing, with the<br />
ultimate outcome being a dense thicket of references that are cryptic for those who aren’t ‘in<br />
the know’ (Stryker, 2011). This all serves to reinforce the symbolic barriers of the communal<br />
walls: the more referential knowledge needed to get the joke, the higher the barriers to entry,<br />
and the more exclusive the group feels. Casual Users and Cheezfrenz also enjoyed lols that<br />
made them “feel part of the joke” (RK, 31, Casual User, female); however, this was far less<br />
common in comparison to the MemeGeeks, and much less important for their appreciation of<br />
LOLCats’ humor.<br />
18 See Appendix N. Technically, this poster is a Demotivator (see Glossary)<br />
33
“They would like that”: Connection Through Creation and Sharing<br />
When it comes to sharing and creating, there is an emphasis in empirical literature on self-<br />
oriented gratifications: the research, thus far, has indicated that people share and create, often<br />
publicly, to satisfy individual needs for self-expression, community belonging, identity<br />
reinforcement, and recognition (Shao, 2008; Leung, 2009). To be sure, elements of this<br />
research echo these findings, as will be demonstrated in the section on LOLCats as a venue<br />
for emotional expression.<br />
However, two motifs emerged that contradict some of the themes present in other studies of<br />
sharing and creating behavior with UGC. The first was of intimacy. Much of the sharing and<br />
creating reported by participants took place privately between very small groups of people or<br />
dyads that knew each other on a deeply interpersonal level: close friends and family members.<br />
This seems to diverge from much of the existing literature which focuses on sharing and<br />
creation on public platforms and venues such as YouTube, Facebook, and blogs (Bowman and<br />
Willis, 2003; Shao, 2008; Leung, 2009, Burgess, 2008).<br />
The second, and likely tied in to the previous point, is that the sharing and creating was largely<br />
altruistic in the sense that it was done primarily with someone else’s enjoyment in mind<br />
(Sherry, 1983)— not for the purpose of recognition which is widely suggested in the literature<br />
(Bowman and Willis, 2003; Shao, 2008; Gauntlett, 2011). Furthermore, while much of the<br />
research on sharing and creating divide the two actions into separate practices, I found that<br />
when it came to LOLCats, sharing and creating were often different means to the same end:<br />
making meaningful connections with others.<br />
LOLCats as Emotional Outlet<br />
Although recent empirical literature has focused on the self-oriented nature of UGC<br />
engagement, recent theoretical work has taken a more interpersonal tack. For example,<br />
Jenkins et al. assert that “spreadable” content like LOLCats makes its way through the web<br />
because it is “personally and socially meaningful” (43) to the people who are sharing it; at the<br />
heart of it, people embrace certain types of content because it “allows them to say something<br />
34
that matters to them”, often about their relations to others (2009: 76). This was very much<br />
the case with the LOLCat Users in this study.<br />
Interestingly, participants in all three user groups reported both sending and receiving<br />
LOLCats as a form of emotional expression, particularly as ‘reactions’ to situations they or<br />
their family and friends were going through. The practice of responding with an image or<br />
animated gif 19 is relatively common on message boards and in blog comment sections, but to<br />
see that practice used in daily life situations was somewhat surprising. Participants reported<br />
using LOLCats to express a range of emotions—such as caring, embarrassment and<br />
frustration—in a variety of situations:<br />
AB: I make calendars and birthday cards, and I have used some for those. Either my own<br />
or other peoples’. There was a lovely one with a cat face- down, saying “I cannot brain<br />
today, I haz the dumb” 20 , which I’ve used quite often.<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
JT: I, I, find that a really interesting use of LOLCats, because when I am having a really bad<br />
day at work, I will find a suitable LOLCat picture to say what I want to say, um, and I’ll<br />
tweet that, and everyone will know, “she’s having a pretty bad day”, and you know, I might<br />
get some DMs or something.<br />
AB: You know, I’ve sent, put that link, if I’ve made a mess of a comment, I’ll put that link<br />
up, for that, that particular lol.<br />
RK: I do that with-- at work cause I edit peoples’ copy, edit peoples’ text, sometimes I’ll<br />
send them—it depends what mood you’re in, sometimes I’ll just send them just a cat on<br />
their own, if I’m in a bad mood, but if not, I’ll put like, “Hahahaha!” like, “hmm hmm”, but<br />
really, I mean, I’m really angry.<br />
SC & JT: (laughing)<br />
RK: And there’s a cat, a picture of a cat, an angry cat, and it says, “If you don’t like my<br />
changes, I can edit your face 21 ”.<br />
(AB, 72, Cheezfrend, female; JT, 38, MemeGeek, female; SC, 30, Cheezfrend, female;<br />
RK, 31, Casual User, female)<br />
19 See Glossary.<br />
20 See Appendix N<br />
21 See Appendix N<br />
35
While participants didn’t explicitly touch upon the exact reasons why LOLCats are used to<br />
share feelings, one likely explanation, given the conversation above, is that it allows them to<br />
either laugh at themselves or express emotions that might otherwise be seen as ‘unacceptable’<br />
for any number of reasons (Winick, 1976 in Meyer, 2000; Smith & Powell, 1988 in Lynch,<br />
2002).<br />
Altruism in Creation and Sharing<br />
Another surprising finding, particularly in light of existing research on sharing and creation, was<br />
the largely selfless way in which LOLCats were shared and created. This altruistic undercurrent<br />
manifested in a multitude of ways, from users reporting that they avoided ‘spamming’ their<br />
friends with ‘irrelevant’ content, to explaining how a friend or family member had taken the<br />
time to identify the perfect LOLCat to send them in a particular situation or context. One<br />
participant reported that when he received LOLCats he liked, he would “archive them on my<br />
computer and store them so that I can use them as reactions to other things” (SC, 28,<br />
MemeGeek, male).<br />
The reasons participants gave for sharing and creating often sounded like categorizations in a<br />
greeting card aisle: “just for fun”, “for a party”, “for a birthday”. Furthermore, this sharing and<br />
creating was done with little thought as to whether or not they would get credit for their<br />
efforts:<br />
JE: So I made a really lame one for your birthday, because I had to do it really quickly. It<br />
was like, “(TB)’s getting old”, she was like, “Oh man, I’m getting old”. So I looked for an old<br />
cat. And then I was like, “Old cat is old” (inaudible) super lame and small.<br />
SC: There’s a meme right there.<br />
TB: She printed it out, and stuck it on my screen, and I had this A4 old cat on my screen.<br />
JE: But obviously, that’s not the kind of thing like, I’m not setting out like to make like, this<br />
mad Internet meme that makes me look really cool or anything.<br />
(JE, 29, MemeGeek, female; SC, 31, MemeGeek, male; TB, 26, MemeGeek, female)<br />
Although there were no examples of this in these focus groups, it is likely that there are some<br />
members of the LOLCat community who create lol after lol, hoping to make the front page of<br />
36
ICHC. Or, it could be that making the front page is merely incidental. As MemeGeek CS<br />
remarked,<br />
It really, sort of disproves everything that marketers thought about the way users behave<br />
because…we’re spending hours making these fun things for no compensation, and not<br />
even any recognition. I guess like, the Cheezburger platform and Reddit, like, with the<br />
upvoting and downvoting, they try and make it so that you can have some kind of<br />
mechanism for rewarding people for their creativity, but I feel like, you know, people are<br />
going to do it anyway, just because the inherent fun in it, and just, being able to share<br />
something with someone else, enough to motivate them to spend all that time and effort.<br />
(CS, 27, MemeGeek, male)<br />
DISCUSSION<br />
The primary finding coming out of this research, as illustrated above, is that LOLCats’ appeal is<br />
connected to their genre, their humor, and the way that they can be used to connect to<br />
others. However, somewhat surprising was the underlying reasons as to why those things are<br />
the root of LOLCats appeal.<br />
While I anticipated that the larger significance of LOLCats was more than ‘Ha, ha, funny kitty<br />
picture’, I was taken aback at the degree to which LOLCats’ appeal is bound up in matters—<br />
such as emotional expression and belonging—that are fundamental elements of peoples’ lives.<br />
Jenkins et al. suggest that when remixable media like LOLCats catches on, it’s not so much<br />
that the content itself is especially compelling, but that it can be used to make meaning (2009:<br />
18). This sentiment was echoed by some of the LOLCat creators in the groups, who<br />
attributed LOLCats’ success to the fact you could “push anything through them” (ND, 27,<br />
MemeGeek, male) like a narrative form—or as Stryker suggests, “like pop songs” (2011: 219)<br />
Perhaps this is an additional explanation as to why people use LOLCats to express their<br />
feelings: because, like pop songs, “there are so many of them 22 , you can actually connect it to<br />
whatever situation you come across” (BD, 26, Casual User, male).<br />
22 There are currently 5 Terabytes of LOLCat images on the Cheezburger Networks servers. (D. L. Madden,<br />
personal communication, 24/8/11).<br />
37
Also somewhat surprising was the discovery that LOLCats appeal to three “very different<br />
networks of Internet”, as one participant put it (LW, 25, MemeGeek, female). While the<br />
presence and proportion of these three groups in this study is, as previously stated, inevitably<br />
bound up with the participant selection process, it also supports the notion that LOLCats’ are<br />
“simultaneously obscure and accessible” (Rutkoff, 2007, n.d.). Fundamentally, LOLCats are<br />
cute pictures of cats with captions whose meaning is usually self-contained. While LOLCats<br />
can (and do) feature obscure intertextual references that appeal to people like the<br />
MemeGeeks, on the whole they don’t require the dense thicket of self-referential knowledge<br />
needed to appreciate memes like Insanity Wolf 23 . As MemeGeek TB pointed out, “for people<br />
who aren’t that into the Internet, LOLCats are a very easy way into a meme” (26, female).<br />
One result that still requires explanation is why LOLCats seem to be shared in a different way<br />
than other ‘spreadable’ media. To be fair, one study does not make a pattern, and it could be<br />
possible that this result stems from a desire on the participants’ parts to present a generous<br />
ideal self. However, it seems more likely that, as discussed earlier, LOLCats are so easily<br />
customized that they lend themselves to intimate and personalized sharing: these LOLCat<br />
Users simply wanted to show their friends and family that they cared, and LOLCats provided<br />
them a venue for doing that in a way that was meaningful to them (Jenkins et al, 2009, 35).<br />
It could also be that this type of sharing is not the exception to the rule, but the rule itself.<br />
The argument in some of the UGC literature that sharing is based in some sort of self-<br />
interested motivation contradicts the admittedly trite but long-held belief that ‘sharing is<br />
caring’. Shirky supports this theory, arguing that the purportedly ‘new’ behavior of “creating<br />
something with others in mind and then sharing it with them” is based in centuries of tradition<br />
(2010b: n.d.). Or, it could simply be that sharing is not a behavior that can be easily<br />
categorized in terms of motivation or appeal. As Benkler (2007) notes, “human beings<br />
are…diversely motivated beings. We act instrumentally, but also noninstrumentally. We act<br />
for material gain, but also for psychological well–being and gratification and social<br />
connectedness” (Jenkins et al., 2009: 64).<br />
23 See Appendix L<br />
38
Finally, as was demonstrated in the previous section, this study revealed that the differences in<br />
how and why people share and create are not so clear-cut. The instances of sharing that many<br />
focus group participants described were deliberate acts with thought, intention, and effort<br />
behind them. In the context of the literature on creativity, particularly Gauntlett’s conception<br />
of Everyday Creativity, this poses something of a problem.<br />
While Burgess (2008) and Gauntlett (2011) have made great strides towards defining<br />
creativity in a manner that recognizes and encompasses the type of imaginative expressions<br />
that are taking place in and around phenomena like LOLCats, their emphasis is on the<br />
generative nature of creativity. Gauntlett takes Csíkszentmihályi to task for focusing on<br />
outcome versus process (2011: 74); however, he too is implicitly focusing on outcome when he<br />
fails to consider the potential creativity in what I would label curational sharing: deliberate acts<br />
with consideration, intention, and effort behind them. If those same acts had culminated in a<br />
post on an aggregation blog instead of a personal email, that act would have fallen under the<br />
auspices of creativity; and yet because it is ‘sharing’, it is classified in the same category as rating<br />
and voting (Shao, 2008). While those are valuable actions, they are not on par with the<br />
thoughtful and creative actions that were reported by the LOLCat Users in this study.<br />
It is beyond the scope of this paper to suggest a new definition of digital creativity.<br />
Furthermore, it is possible that this behavior is endemic to LOLCats, making it a (very<br />
interesting) exception to the rule. It is more likely, however, that these blurred boundaries<br />
extend beyond this particular context, and if this is indeed the case, then revisiting the<br />
definition of creativity is surely a worthwhile endeavor.<br />
CONCLUSION<br />
In undertaking this research project, I sought to understand the underlying mechanisms of a<br />
strange—and strangely popular—Internet phenomenon. What I ultimately discovered is how<br />
seemingly trivial pieces of media—pictures of cats with captions—can act as meaningful<br />
conduits to central elements of our humanity. Wacker (2002) states that media are how we<br />
39
define ourselves and our relationships (Bowman and Willis, 2003: 17); the outcome of this<br />
research, for better or worse, certainly validates that claim.<br />
The results of this study offer several avenues for future research. Within LOLCats specifically,<br />
it could be enlightening to conduct a content analysis on the LOLCat images themselves.<br />
Given that this study has illustrated that LOLCats are used as a tool for expressing emotions,<br />
understanding the overarching themes that are present in the LOLCat corpus might shed<br />
some light on what, if any, emotions are shared in particular. Furthermore, given the altruistic<br />
way in which LOLCats are shared, a gift economy perspective might be a valuable lens<br />
through which to examine that process. Additionally, given the significance of this one<br />
particular meme, a general program of meme research is certainly warranted. Many of the<br />
Advice Animal memes, particularly Foul Bachelor Frog and Socially Awkward Penguin 24 , traffic<br />
squarely in socio-cultural mores and norms. Understanding the ways in which people engage<br />
with such memes could, among other things, give us insight into the values held by certain<br />
societal groups.<br />
Stryker argues that engaging with the memesphere is how many people “learn, laugh, build,<br />
argue, discover, share and live” today (2011: 219). It is my strong belief that investigating<br />
memetic texts—or the audiences and users who engage with those texts—can tell us a great<br />
deal about where we are as a culture. If the media are a mirror, then the memesphere is a<br />
funhouse—sometimes scary, sometimes funny—that shows us new ways of seeing ourselves.<br />
Final words: A note on the value of LOLCats<br />
In a June 2010 TED Talk, Clay Shirky invoked LOLCats to illustrate an example of a<br />
‘throwaway’ creative act that could potentially lead to more valuable endeavors (2010a).<br />
LOLCats, he argues, have little value in and of themselves except as a stepping stone to<br />
greater things. Shirky is not alone in his trivializing of LOLCats; even as Gauntlett was arguing<br />
that we should “embrace and value” the “zesty, everyday, creative liveliness” embodied by<br />
phenomena like LOLCats, he described the sites that host them as “daft websites” filled with<br />
“silly photos of cats with comic captions” (2011: 219). Even the ostensibly LOLCat-loving<br />
24 See Appendix L<br />
40
focus group participants referred to LOLCats as a “waste of time”, something which sparked<br />
debate in the final group:<br />
FA: Cause I mean, you know, go and cure AIDS or something. I mean, it’s rubbish. Like,<br />
don’t spend your time captioning pictures of cats.<br />
JH: Yeah, but the thing is, it’s not representative of human life to say that people do<br />
worthwhile things all the time… like, that’s part of human life, but then another massive<br />
part of human life is being able to laugh and enjoy life, otherwise you couldn’t—you<br />
wouldn’t be able to do it.<br />
KB: Like, in some ways, it is a waste of time, even though LOLCats isn’t intellectual in a lot<br />
of ways—but I think comedy in general—and I would say it falls under comedy—I think it<br />
makes the world a better place. It makes it easier.<br />
(FA, 27, MemeGeek, male; JH, 25, Casual User, female; KB, 26, Cheezfrend, female)<br />
Even if LOLCats were just a collection of silly cat pictures, they would have value simply<br />
because they, as KB said, make life easier. But, as this study has shown, LOLCats are much<br />
more than that. They are a venue through which people express their emotions, connect to<br />
their loved ones, and define group identity. This not only gives them value; it makes them<br />
important. To quote Sherry Turkle, “some are tempted to think of life in cyberspace as<br />
insignificant, as escape or meaningless diversion. It is not. Our experiences there are serious<br />
play. We belittle them at our risk” (1995: 269).<br />
41
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46
APPENDIX A: FOCUS GROUP DISCUSSION GUIDES<br />
Focus Group Discussion Guide: Original Version<br />
1. Why did you decide to come to this focus group today?<br />
2. Do you remember the first time you saw a LOLCat?<br />
3. What was your original reaction?<br />
4. Has that changed? If so, when and why?<br />
5. What do you think of first when you think of a LOL? Can you explain why?<br />
6. What do you think makes a LOL a LOL?<br />
a. Is it the animal? The caption? The format?<br />
7. What do you like about LOLs?<br />
8. What makes a LOL funny, in your opinion?<br />
9. Do you like it better when a LOL is in English or LOLspeak?<br />
10. Do you like it better when the LOLs are written from the animal’s perspective, or<br />
when they’re written in 3 rd person?<br />
11. Have you ever made a LOL? Why or why not?<br />
12. Do you share LOLs? When would you share a LOL?<br />
13. Which one of these LOLs do you think are funny? Why?<br />
Opening Questions<br />
Focus Group Discussion Guide: Revised and Final Version<br />
• What prompted you to come to this focus group today?<br />
• Do you remember the first time you saw a LOLCat?<br />
• What was your original reaction?<br />
o Has that changed?<br />
Topic: LOL Format<br />
• When you think of a lol, what pops into your head?<br />
• What do you think makes a LOL a LOL?<br />
Topic: Humor<br />
• Do you have a favorite LOL?<br />
o If so, which one is it?<br />
o Can you tell me what you like about it?<br />
o If not, do you have a specific kind of lol you like?<br />
• Do you think lols are funny?<br />
o If not, what is it about them that you like?<br />
o If so, what makes a LOL funny to you?<br />
• Do you like other memes?<br />
o If so, which ones? Can you tell me what you like about them?<br />
o Do you think there’s a difference between lols and other memes? If so, what’s<br />
the difference?<br />
47
Topic: Animals<br />
• Do you like animals?<br />
o What about animal videos?<br />
• Do you like it when animals talk?<br />
o What do you like about it?<br />
• Do you like cats?<br />
o What about cats do you like?<br />
• Do you have pets?<br />
• Do you differentiate between animal lols and other lols?<br />
• Do you like lols of people?<br />
Topic: Language<br />
• How do you feel about lolspeak?<br />
o What do you like/not like about it?<br />
• When you see something in lolspeak, how do you interpret it?<br />
Topic: Consumption/Sharing Creation<br />
• Where do you usually see lols?<br />
o Do people send them to you? If so, whom?<br />
• Do you actively seek out lols?<br />
o If so, when would you seek out a lol? If not, why?<br />
• Have you ever made a LOL?<br />
o If so, when do you make them? If not, is there a reason for that?<br />
• Do you share lols?<br />
o If so, what would prompt you to share them?<br />
o With whom do you share them?<br />
48
APPENDIX B: PARTICIP<strong>AN</strong>T INFORMATION SHEET<br />
49
APPENDIX C: PARTICIP<strong>AN</strong>T CONSENT FORM<br />
50
APPENDIX D: PARTICIP<strong>AN</strong>T QUESTIONNAIRE<br />
Date:<br />
Name:<br />
Sex:<br />
Age:<br />
Nationality:<br />
Occupation:<br />
LOLCat Focus Group Participant Questionnaire<br />
Do you actively engage with lolcats (i.e., seek them out) or passively engage with lolcats (i.e.,<br />
friends send them to you)?<br />
Approximately how often do you engage with Lolcats? (Circle one)<br />
Daily Weekly Monthly Less than Monthly Not Sure<br />
Approximately how much time do you spend online per day? (Circle one)<br />
Less than 1 hour 1-2 Hours 3-5 Hours 6-8 Hours 9+ Hours<br />
51
APPENDIX F: PARTICIP<strong>AN</strong>T INFORMATION<br />
52
APPENDIX G: FOCUS GROUP STIMULUS<br />
53
APPENDIX H: SAMPLE TR<strong>AN</strong>SCRIPT<br />
Transcript: Face-to-Face Focus Group #3<br />
July 14, 2011<br />
LSE Campus<br />
MODERATOR: Okay, thank you guys for coming, sorry we’re starting a little late. So, what prompted<br />
you to come here today?<br />
AB: I saw your message on Cheez Town Cryer.<br />
MODERATOR: Mmhmm. Okay.<br />
RK: Well (to SC) maybe you should answer for me<br />
SC: Uh, so I saw it on Jolie’s Facebook, who’s a mutual friend that we have, and I then emailed quite a<br />
few friends, including GL and our friend Ruth, and then Ruth forwarded it to RK, so.<br />
JT: And I had a message from Alex, who, I think, messaged a couple of people, and I just leapt at the<br />
chance to be able to talk—to spend the evening talking about LOLCats.<br />
MODERATOR: So why, why is that, why do you like talking about LOLCats?<br />
JT: Because I love them so much I mean, I, I get the newsletter everyday into my inbox, and before I—I<br />
have an extremely busy job with back to back meetings and very very stressful decisionmaking and the<br />
first thing I do is open that email because I know I’m guaranteed to smile or laugh.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay, do you guys feel the same way about the lols?<br />
RK: I do, but I was just saying, these people are so much more hardcore than me.<br />
MODERATOR: Uh huh.<br />
RK: Because I don’t, I’m-- on the survey thing, I’m not—I don’t actively seek out the lols—like, if people<br />
send them to me, I love them, but I don’t kind of, seek them out.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
RK: You know, maybe I will now. (To others) I’m quite inspired by you.<br />
MODERATOR: How about you, do you—<br />
AB: I’m more interested in the commenting, I’ve made several good friends in the comments section,<br />
from all over the world.<br />
MODERATOR: So how do you keep in touch with your friends?<br />
AB: Um, one or two I email offline, off the, uh, off the thread, but most of them, exchanging comments<br />
on the—in the comments column.<br />
MODERATOR: So um, do you remember the first time you guys saw a LOLCat?<br />
56
AB: Um, it would be about April 19—2008. Less than a year after it started. I started commenting<br />
about April 2008, and never looked back.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
RK: Again, I don’t really know, it’s probably someone sent me one, but I remember when I first saw<br />
them I didn’t really like them.<br />
MODERATOR: Really?<br />
RK: Yeah, they’ve grown on me. When I first saw them I was like, “Oh that’s silly”, I hate “LOL”, I hate<br />
“OMG”- well, I use it a lot, I use OMG a lot—I hate, I hate abbreviations because my job is wordy, and<br />
it’s all about loving language, so I hate it in text, but when I see it on a cat, I’m like, “Ohmygod, this is<br />
funny”, OMG funny!<br />
MODERATOR: Okay, can you talk a little bit more about your reaction to that?<br />
RK: Oh, what when…?<br />
MODERATOR: Like when you see “OMG” on a cat<br />
RK: Yeah, yeah I like it.<br />
MODERATOR: What do you like about it?<br />
RK: Ahhh… I dunno—just because it’s so much more funny that a cat would say it.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay<br />
RK: I know it sounds really stupid.<br />
MODERATOR: No! It doesn’t sound stupid at all.<br />
RK: Okay.<br />
MODERATOR: No judgment here, let me tell you. No judgment here, I promise.<br />
RK: (Giggles)<br />
MODERATOR: How about you, Sara?<br />
SC: It’s really hard to—when did they start, officially?<br />
MODERATOR: I think they were first seen on Something Awful and in 4Chan around 2005. And<br />
then they started hitting the press in like, 2006-7? Wall Street Journal and Time picked it up and then<br />
at that point it had sort of started swirling already.<br />
SC: I think the first time I saw them must have been 2007, because I know I still lived in New York, and<br />
the first one I remembered is the one of the cat saying, “I made you a cookie but I eated it”--<br />
ALL: Awwww! Yeahhh!<br />
SC: Which is a really cute one—and, someone must have sent it to me, and I forwarded it to my<br />
mother, and I came home for a visit, and she had printed it out and framed it—<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
57
JT: There’s nothing strange in that.<br />
SC: No, not at all. So that’s the first one that I remember, and that was probably 2007.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay. Did your mother love cats? Or…<br />
SC: Not really, no. I think something about it just struck her as funny. She put it in my sister’s bedroom<br />
as like, a present for her—cause she really loves cats.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
JT: For me, it probably was about 3 or 4 years ago. And um, I- I- I actually was more, I can’t remember<br />
the first one I saw, I have a feeling it was, was, it might have been a Basement Cat, um, but it was more<br />
the, sort of language and the tone because I could immediately hear a cat’s voice, and because cats<br />
have so—such different personalities, way more than dogs do, and you know, their faces are all so<br />
different, I just loved that style of language that suited every different kind of you know, LOLCat and I<br />
just, I just think it just—sarcastic, or sometimes cute, and it just-- yeah, it was the language that I was<br />
really interested in, I could hear it in my head.<br />
MODERATOR: So the Lolspeak made sense to you?<br />
JT: The Lolspeak made sense to me, and I found um, the Lolspeak translator, and I started sending all<br />
my emails in Lolspeak—<br />
RK: That exists? I’m learning so much now!<br />
MODERATOR: Well AB, the Cheez Town Cryer is almost all in Lolspeak, and—<br />
AB: Uh, the Cween speaks perfect Lolspeak<br />
RK: Hee heee!<br />
AB: When I post on the Cryer, I use plain English,<br />
MODERATOR: Okay<br />
AB: But um, I’m, you know, I’m bilingual.<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
MODERATOR: You’re bilingual. So what would make you speak in Lolspeak versus in English?<br />
AB: Um, well, I use Lolspeak in the comments, obviously, except if I’m angry about something I might<br />
go into plain English.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay<br />
AB: Um, but mostly, I comment in Lol.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay, and why—can you —why do you comment in Lol?<br />
AB: Because everybody else does, and I enjoy-<br />
MODERATOR: Because everybody else does.<br />
AB: I’m slightly dyslexic and it’s easier for me.<br />
58
MODERATOR: Is it? Mm, interesting!<br />
AB: Well, it’s phonetic, isn’t it?<br />
MODERATOR: It is.<br />
AB: So, you know, I don’t have to worry about the spelling.<br />
MODERATOR: You get creativity points for spelling.<br />
AB: (laughs)<br />
MODERATOR: Although there is a specific syntax with Lol.<br />
JT: Yeah, yeah.<br />
MODERATOR: So I shouldn’t say that there’s too much creativity. Okay, so--<br />
JT: Yeah, you can spot the n00bs.<br />
MODERATOR: Yeah, the n00bs. So, how can you spot a n00b?<br />
JT: Wrong font, wrong syntax. Just wrong.<br />
AB: Shouting.<br />
JT: Using a giraffe. I dislike it when there are other animals on there.<br />
MODERATOR: You don’t like when there are other animals.<br />
AB: It does say LOLCats and funny pictures.<br />
JT: I know, but. I don’t get lolgiraffes.<br />
MODERATOR: Lolgiraffes. Lolsloths?<br />
JT: No.<br />
MODERATOR: What about Lolrus?<br />
JT: Lolrus is okay.<br />
MODERATOR: Why is Lolrus okay?<br />
JT: Because Lolrus is a kind of- he’s not really a—he’s kind of always been there. You know, he’s quite,<br />
he’s one of the original-- But I don’t, I personally don’t like to see many other animals on there.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
JT: It’s polluting.<br />
MODERATOR: It’s polluting. Okay. So just quickly going back to Lolspeak, when you see something in<br />
Lolspeak, how do you interpret it? Like, what do you think Lolspeak is?<br />
JT: 99% I have an evil voice in my head, which is a bit sinister and calculating—because cats are<br />
calculating, and they know exactly what they’re doing, so, for me, it’s that kind of voice, or unless you<br />
have the cute one with the ears back and the “I ate cookie”. But they’re just doing that to, to reel you<br />
in.<br />
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SC: I think of it as more childlike.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
SC: Not really creepy, sinister.<br />
MODERATOR: But you associate it with cats?<br />
SC: Yeah, when it’s on the photographs, yeah.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
AB: It’s to fool you into thinking they’re innocent.<br />
JT: Exactly.<br />
SC: Yeah.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay. Um, so, when you think of a lol—we’ve talked somewhat about the font, and<br />
you know, other animals, but what pops into your head, when you think of a lol? If I were to say<br />
“LOLCat”, what would you think of?<br />
AB: It’s a cat doing something that cats do, anthropomorphized.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
JT: I think of the ones that—so, Monorail Cat, Basement Cat, you know you have your, your threads<br />
that run through within that meme, that are repeated in a different version of, which I really like—<br />
AB: Mm, yes.<br />
JT: You know, so, because they become characters and you know, “Ohhh, Basement Cat’s back”, you<br />
know it’s—<br />
AB: I object to Basement Cat<br />
(General giggling)<br />
MODERATOR: Why do you object to Basement Cat?<br />
AB: Because it implies that cats are deliberately evil and they’re not, to me.<br />
MODERATOR: No? But JT, you think that cats are--<br />
JT: No, I don’t think they’re evil. But cats can be very manipulative. And they, uh, they’re, I think, they’re<br />
very intelligent. Um, you know, I do get laughed at for thinking that, but I just think they, they know<br />
exactly what they’re doing, with humans, you know. We are their slaves.<br />
GL: So is that why you never owned a cat?<br />
JT: Possibly. But a cat—a cat has to find me, is my philosophy. I don’t, I don’t hear them as evil, but I<br />
hear them as, as clever. Cleverer than dogs.<br />
MODERATOR: Cleverer than dogs, okay. What about you, Sara, what do you think?<br />
SC: Um, I think—honestly what I think of is, you’re at work, you’re day’s kind of boring, it’s something<br />
that kind of just pops up on your screen, entertains you—<br />
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RK: Mmmm.<br />
SC: I think that’s what it is for me.<br />
MODERATOR: What do you think, GL? Same thing?<br />
GL: About?<br />
MODERATOR: About, when you think of a lol, what do you think of?<br />
(New participant enters room, 10 min late)<br />
BM: Ohai.<br />
MODERATOR: Ohai! This is, everyone, this is BM.<br />
BM: Hi, I’m Ben.<br />
MODERATOR: This is GL, JT, SC, RK, and AB.<br />
BM: Hello, I apologize for being late, you can thank TFL.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay, have a seat. We are uh, we’re just talking about lols, and what you think of<br />
when you think of a LOLCat, and so, I was asking GL—<br />
GL: I don’t know how to answer the question.<br />
MODERATOR: You don’t know how to answer the question.<br />
GL: BM’s probably quite good at it, though.<br />
MODERATOR: Um, so if I say “LOLCat”, what comes up in your head?<br />
GL: A picture of a cat.<br />
KM A specific picture of a cat?<br />
GL: No.<br />
MODERATOR: Just a picture of a cat.<br />
GL: With words, yeah.<br />
MODERATOR: With words, okay.<br />
GL: Very uncreative, I just--<br />
MODERATOR: No, that’s okay! I just—I’m just exploring, no wrong answer. How about you, BM?<br />
BM: Uh, well I—oddly, just had this conversation over dinner, because I had to explain where I was<br />
going, um, so I probably have a bit longer of an answer.<br />
MODERATOR: Go right ahead.<br />
BM: No, well, just to make it concise, it’s a—an odd Internet meme that people use as a method of<br />
conveying um, happiness or emotion through—any kind of emotion through a cat and some sort of<br />
linguistic perversion of English, um, in white text on top.<br />
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MODERATOR: Okay. So the white text is that, is that important to you GLs, the white text on the<br />
photo?<br />
RK: Whenever I actually picture a photo I do, I think of the text as being white, actually.<br />
GL: Just because it’s clearer over color.<br />
AB: It’s only clearer, that’s why. Color—occasionally, if the background is really light, a dark color is<br />
acceptable, but mostly the backgrounds are dark, so you need a white or a bright color.<br />
JT: I think though, when you see that font, you know there’s going to be something funny, it’s<br />
expected.<br />
MODERATOR: You know JT, you were saying earlier, “Wrong font!”, as if—<br />
JT: If it’s the wrong font—yeah, it’s just, you know, 9 times out of 10 it’s not as funny. You know, and I<br />
don’t know what it is about it, even if it’s saying something funny, I just think, you know, come on,<br />
you’ve gotta do it properly. There is a style, here. And that’s part of what makes it funny.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay. So, do you guys like other memes? Ben, you were talking about Internet<br />
memes, do you guys like other memes, or is it largely LOLCats for you?<br />
SC: RK says “what’s a meme”.<br />
MODERATOR: What’s a meme, oh, sorry! Um—<br />
JT: Like a thread of –<br />
GL: A running joke.<br />
MODERATOR: A running joke on the Internet.<br />
RK: See, this is how un-hardcore I am!<br />
MODERATOR: No, that’s okay! So, so you’re not really into Internet culture.<br />
RK: No, well, you know, I use the Internet every day for work, but I’m—I’m not on Facebook, or<br />
anything like that.<br />
BM: Good for you.<br />
RK: Yeah.<br />
BM: You’re better off.<br />
RK: (laughs)<br />
AB: I do look at some of the other Cheezburger sites, but I don’t really look at anything else.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
AB: But some of them I dislike intensely.<br />
MODERATOR: Which ones?<br />
AB: Failblog.<br />
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MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
AB: I don’t like that very much. I’ve met some Failbloggers, and they’re weird.<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
MODERATOR: How are they weird?<br />
AB: Oh, they just are! I, they—this again came about through The Cryer, they said, you know, would<br />
anyone like to meet them, and I went and met these people and they’re really strange.<br />
JT: Is that because they’re quite negative?<br />
AB: No, they just came across as being completely barmy.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay. BM, you laughed when AB mentioned Failblog.<br />
BM: I, I just—I like, I think Failblog is funny. Um, but it’s in that dark way. Obviously, it’s making fun of<br />
peoples’ misfortunes. Um, whereas LOLCats is funny-happy.<br />
MODERATOR: GL, you’re making a face.<br />
GL: So I, I was on 4Chan back in 2005, and always, sadly<br />
MODERATOR: Why do you say sadly?<br />
GL: Because it rightly has a stigma attached to it. As a site, as a social networking site. Um, I got in bed<br />
with LOLCats—sounds like alcoholics anonymous—<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
GL: I got into it, enjoying the idea that cats were doing stupid things, or doing things that we thought<br />
were stupid, and then like giving them a voice and they’d seem either even stupider, or, um—I<br />
suppose the concept ‘Haters Gonna Hate” which is um, a popular meme, um which uh, continued to<br />
get more popular, I kind of miss that, so, I’ve kind of taken steps away from the LOLCat communities,<br />
um, just because I, I miss the sort of aggressive—<br />
JT: You like being a hater.<br />
GL: Well, no, I—I—I-, yeah, I liked, I liked to think, “Man, that cat is stupid”, uh, which is why you know,<br />
Failblog, although I don’t-- I don’t really actively follow it, but—you, you know, when Failblogs were<br />
going around, um, I found those quite funny, I thought those were re-capturing the—I don’t want to<br />
say innocence, I’d say I think the word I’m looking for would be capturing the original essence of<br />
LOLCat pictures.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
GL: That’s just the feeling.<br />
MODERATOR: So they’ve evolved over time.<br />
GL: Yeah, you know I think yeah, definitely, They’re definitely more along the lines of cute you know I<br />
think these days. And, sadly, I can’t appreciate cute.<br />
MODERATOR: You can’t appreciate cute.<br />
GL: As much as I used to. I think the 4Chan again has warped any appreciation.<br />
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MODERATOR: Okay. How do you guys feel about cute? Is cute important?<br />
SC: Yes, I like cute.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay, is that—is that what partially draws you to LOLCats?<br />
SC: Yeah, I think that cats are cute in general, so, yes. Anything cat related I’m sort of already halfway<br />
towards liking. And then whenever you’re reading their thoughts or whatever, that’s cute as well.<br />
MODERATOR: RK, what about you?<br />
RK: Ummm, yeah I like it! (Laughs nervously) Ohhhh, I’m so not hardcore. I like, I like all of them,<br />
whichever ones I see, I like, doesn’t matter what kind of—what the tone is. They’re all quite funny in<br />
general, really. I don’t—yeah, I like cute.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay, but you don’t necessarily associate LOLCats and cute? That’s not—<br />
RK: Ummmmm, actually, well I think, if you were to say LOLCat, I wouldn’t immediately think cute, I’d<br />
think more—more—I dunno, cutting.<br />
MODERATOR: Cutting.<br />
RK: Yeah, um, a little hint of sarcasm. Again, like, there’s sarcastic cat. But I like the cute ones, too! You<br />
know, the little…. (makes cat ears that lay flat on her head)<br />
JT: They’re manipulative.<br />
RK: (laughs) their brains are massive!<br />
MODERATOR: Okay. So do you Guys like animals in general? Like other animal videos, and—<br />
JT: Animals Being Dicks.<br />
MODERATOR: Animals being dicks!<br />
SC: Awesoooooome.<br />
RK: (laughs)<br />
JT: Have you not seen that one?<br />
MODERATOR: I have not seen that. Is that—is that a blog?<br />
SC: It’s a Tumblr.<br />
MODERATOR: It’s a Tumblr.<br />
SC: It’s brilliant.<br />
RK: There are some good ones on that.<br />
MODERATOR: I feel like I’ve failed, that’s LOLCat research FAIL.<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
MODERATOR: Um, so what do you like about animal—animal images<br />
JT: I mean, you know I love animal—I’m an animal friendly person, I’m obsessed with cats.<br />
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MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
JT: So, you know, I like-- I quite like animal- based memes because you can have quite a lot of fun with<br />
them, so, I love the—the reversioning and the reproduction memes, so um, dramatic—uh, whatever it<br />
was, chipmunk<br />
GL: Gopher.<br />
JT: Gopher, some called it Chipmunk, some called it, yeah, and the different variations of that—Nyan<br />
Cat, which we just had a chat about which you (looking at RK) hate, but I love all the different versions,<br />
you know there’s a Nyan Cat cake, there’s a NyanCat bollywood, there’s Nyan Cat jazz, there’s—it’s<br />
just incredible how it just replicates.<br />
BM: I don’t even know what that is.<br />
MODERATOR: Nyan Cat is a video that is a cat made out of a pop tart that is animated and sings a<br />
song that’s “nyan nyan nyan”.<br />
JT: The “nyan nyan nyan” comes from Mikku, who’s the—the avatar Japanese pop star, it’s her vocaloid<br />
voice, and I just bought a Mikku wig, completely unconnected—so it’s all coming together for me now.<br />
I’m officially mad.<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
MODERATOR: So do you like Nyan Cat—<br />
JT: It’s irritating.<br />
MODERATOR: It’s irritating.<br />
JT: It is an irritating sound, you walk around with it in your head, all day, I just love the reversioning of it,<br />
everyday, there’s a new version—my friend and I just send, you know, it’s like a competition who can<br />
find the next version first, you know. So, but you know, also for my job, I’m involved in commissioning<br />
content for young people online, and their attention is the hardest to capture, so I’m obsessed with<br />
just, understanding memes, particularly in YouTube communities, and how young people—or people<br />
in general—are kind of, reversioning and using them, you know, in ways that professionals can’t keep<br />
up with. The marketing agencies always say to me, “I’m going to make a viral”—no you’re not.<br />
BM: Check the box.<br />
JT: You’re going to make a meme.<br />
BM: Check the viral box.<br />
JT: Yeah, yeah, exactly.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay. So um, how about the rest of you guys, would you consider yourselves animal<br />
content fans, or is LOLCats a different thing for you?<br />
SC: Yeah, definitely, like, animal videos on the Internet, I like um, (inaudible) foxes, foxes on a<br />
trampoline…<br />
RK: (giggles)<br />
SC: I like that, um, did you see the one where the guy got the two kittens and he was crashing them<br />
into each other?<br />
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RK: No!!<br />
SC: Aww, that was—<br />
AB: That was horrible.<br />
RK: Ohhhh.<br />
SC: I loved that one. (to MODERATOR). Have you seen that one?<br />
MODERATOR: I , I think I saw the gif of the—(makes gesture) “bonk!”<br />
SC: Yep, yep exactly. But it was very very dramatic music and like, glass breaking noises and stuff and<br />
then these two kittens<br />
JT: Have you seen “Kitty With Apples”?<br />
SC: No, no.<br />
JT: Dramatic music. Amazing.<br />
AB: That was incredible, that one.<br />
RK: What’s the…?<br />
AB: (inaudible) two apples on the bed and the cat is terrified of these two apples<br />
JT: And it’s just doing this--<br />
AB: …prancing around them<br />
JT: … prancing, and the music<br />
AB: …and sort of coming up close and then prancing off again.<br />
JT: But the music is edited to a T<br />
AB: It’s brilliant.<br />
JT: It’s to the cat’s actions, it’s stunning.<br />
SC: Oh it’s like horror film music<br />
JT: mmm, mmm.<br />
SC: Oh I have seen that! I do know what you mean, yeah.<br />
BM: I feel like I need to start making a list.<br />
AB: We can send you our playlists.<br />
MODERATOR: Yeah?<br />
RK: You need to! You need to educate me. I’ll appreciate them!<br />
MODERATOR: So, GL. Given that you were on 4Chan during the origin of LOLCats, can you talk a<br />
little bit more about Caturday, and the origins of Caturday and the tone of Caturday, and how that<br />
may have changed?<br />
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GL: You know, I suppose I was there then, I wasn’t really, that much in love—I think it was around the<br />
time uh, I think when, ehm, before I Can Has Cheezburger. Yeah, I think it was for me, when my<br />
mother sent me a LOLCat, that’s when I think the phase ended.<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
GL: This no longer funny, this is serious now, time to move on, grow up, move out of home, um, I<br />
think—not to change the topic, but I just, um—I think that was, for me, a seminal moment. I mean,<br />
before then, it had been, it had been enjoyable, uh, yeah. Which is nothing about my Mum, I love my<br />
mother, and I’m glad that she still enjoys LOLCats. YEARS later. Good on her.<br />
RK: You said as well, you think the quality has declined.<br />
GL: Well, I mean, I’m a snob, I suppose everyone’s a snob, you know, we’re going to think Nyan Cat is<br />
no longer funny in a few months’ time, that’s, that’s essentially the phenomenon of Internet culture, or,<br />
you know, humanity has sped up, fads and phases go a lot quicker on the web.<br />
JT: Well yeah, literally if you haven’t seen it two days ago, it’s old. You know, I’ve got people saying to<br />
me, “Oh my god, I can’t believe you haven’t seen that, it’s ancient.” Its two days old.<br />
GL: Just because there is that level of frustration when they go to show it to you, I mean, they might<br />
be a week behind, but there is a level of frustration, as undeserved as it might be, you’re like, “well, this<br />
is old, and now you’re wasting the precious time I have left”<br />
JT: There might be another meme out there.<br />
MODERATOR: So, can you tell me what memes you do like?<br />
GL: At the moment, I’m on the tail end of Rage Comics<br />
MODERATOR: Ah, Ragetoons, okay.<br />
GL: So these are comics that uh, essentially use some crudely drawn—crudely, not offensive, just badly<br />
drawn faces, they’ve been around on the web for years now, and people just turn them into comics to<br />
explain what they’re angry about. Ah, they were enJTyable for a while, they’re popular on Reddit, a few<br />
other sites, uh, it just allows people to explain how, if they had a bad day, how was it a bad day, or if<br />
they disagree with someone, why they disagree with someone, by using faces.<br />
MODERATOR: How about you, Ben? Other memes that you enjoy?<br />
BM: I have to be honest, I’ve been thinking about—I was trying to explain to the people that I was at<br />
dinner with, who have never heard of LOLCats, and they’re from London, they live in London, they’ve<br />
never heard of it. And so I was flipping through my iPhone trying to show pictures of LOLCats, and<br />
they looked at them and they were like, “Okay. Yup. Yeah, okay. It’s funny.” And they didn’t get it, and<br />
there was no, and they were like, “Okay, I see how it’s cute”. And it was, it put me in the position of<br />
trying to explain why an Internet meme is funny, why LOLCats is funny, and why it’s worthy of a<br />
dissertation topic.<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
BM: And so I was inspecting LOLCats in a way that I’ve never been asked to before, and of course that<br />
made me think about memes as a whole, and why—it’s not answering your question terribly.<br />
MODERATOR: No, it’s great.<br />
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BM: Except that for the past year, as I’ve been studying, um, and haven’t been in front of a computer in<br />
the way that I used to be, um, I don’t know what’s gone on in a year. I was looking at these LOLCats<br />
on, on, that I’d never seen before, ones that are apparently very popular that I’ve never seen before,<br />
Internet memes that I don’t know about--<br />
MODERATOR: Do you know which ones?<br />
BM: No, I mean, I couldn’t recall them to you.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
BM: But, I dunno, I seem to recall all the popular ones being Monorail Cat, Ceiling Cat, Basement Cat<br />
or something<br />
GL: Invisible Bicycle, Invisible Pool…<br />
BM: Yeah, these I find hilarious.<br />
GL: Yeah.<br />
BM: But all—it seemed as though when I was searching that all the popular ones, I don’t understand, I<br />
don’t think are as funny. Um, and that it seems to have been done.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay. So, do you associate LOLCats with other memes? Do you think they’re in the<br />
same camp?<br />
AB: I think LOLCats is special. But it’s got a lot of stuff spinning off from it.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
AB: Some of it I don’t approve of, others is fine.<br />
MODERATOR: Like what?<br />
AB: Well, I don’t approve of the after dark bit, for a start. That just strikes me as being gratuitous. Bad<br />
words, and uh, silliness.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
AB: But um, yeah, some of it is quite amusing, I suppose. I look at some of the other sites.<br />
MODERATOR: What are the other sites?<br />
AB: Um, babies. That’s quite funny. Um, um, history is sometimes funny. Um, and uh, um, “It Made My<br />
Day” I look at, but I’m not sure whether I like it or not (laughs).<br />
MODERATOR: Okay. How about the rest of you guys, is it the same for you, is it different?<br />
JT: I don’t think it is, is the same, it’s a different kind of—I think that’s, that’s the timing issue is quite<br />
interesting, where most memes have a kind of shelf life of about two days or a week, and literally it is<br />
that really fast turnaround of, reversioning. Whereas with LOLCats, it’s, it’s not so much reversioning,<br />
it’s, it’s just a continuation of an expression, of a way of expressing things. I mean, I like it when—this is<br />
what I was saying, I like the sort of older images, the ones that you recognize, like ceiling cat and<br />
basement cat, monorail cat. And, people who put different captions on them.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
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JT: To reflect, topical stuff, or things that have happened, you know. I think that’s much more, a sort of<br />
creative challenge. Um, so it’s, it’s a different kind of meme, I don’t think it’s necessarily a meme<br />
anymore.<br />
MODERATOR: Do you agree with that?<br />
GL: I wasn’t listening.<br />
MODERATOR: Hm? You weren’t listening, ah, okay. Well, um, JT said that uh, she, uh, doesn’t think<br />
that LOLCats are a meme anymore. What do you think?<br />
GL: How… how are you defining meme?<br />
JT: So, I’m not defining meme. So, all I was saying is I think the point that you made about the sort of<br />
fast reproduction, um, and that timescale, is more memetic, is—that’s more of a definition of a kind of<br />
meme now, five years after kind of memes—not really five years, a long time ago, um, started to<br />
appear on the Internet, the timescale is much quicker, and it’s a different kind of—it’s not really that<br />
kind of meme anymore.<br />
GL: So lol--<br />
JT: It’s--sorry? LOLCats have more of a longevity.<br />
AB: Mmm.<br />
GL: So they’ve evolved beyond currency.<br />
JT: I think so, yeah.<br />
GL: Memes need currency, Nyan Cat needs currency, and that um, it’s, these are essentially, become a<br />
staple of the media diet.<br />
JT: You don’t, you don’t, you don’t really see that many um, dramatic squirrel, chipmunk, whatever they<br />
call them, um, anymore. You know, for you to do that, it’d be like, “why are you doing that?” it’s so old.<br />
SC: I was going to say that Lolspeak became a language that you can say a lot of different things with.<br />
You can (inaudible) respond (inaudible).<br />
JT: Yeah, it’s a different kind of meme now. And it may not be a meme for that reason, maybe the<br />
meaning of meme has changed.<br />
BM: Isn’t that because LOLCats seem to be this all-encompassing—it’s such a broad category, whereas<br />
the dramatic squirrel or whatever is, is in it’s—if it were a LOLCat, it would be one photo, essentially.<br />
JT: Yeah, possibly.<br />
BM: Or it would be one subset, it would be like a Monorail Cat, um.<br />
JT: It’s like Business Cat.<br />
BM: Whereas, you can-- Monorail Cat can spin off in to all of those different versions—<br />
JT: Yeah<br />
BM: …as it has, and then there’s a subset, subsets of LOLCats, right? I mean…<br />
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JT: So is Business Cat, which, I had a Tumblr of Business Cat, which is just brilliant, cause it’s the same<br />
image, and it’s just different captions. But it just sort of died away. It, it became--sort of run its course,<br />
after about a week.<br />
MODERATOR: How do you Guys define LOLCat? Because BM, you were saying that there’re a<br />
bunch of different LOLCats, so.<br />
BM: You know, I—I would, I think when I walked in, we were talking about LOLCats just being,<br />
Lolspeak, in white letters, on a picture of a cat.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
BM: To, to convey something that the author finds humorous, or is expressing emotion through an<br />
image of a cat, speaking a funny language.<br />
MODERATOR: But if there’s another animal, or even a person, is that a LOLCat? Is that a lol? I mean,<br />
what—what is that?<br />
BM: Well I mean, I suppose it is, cause it’s appeared on the official—if there is one—site, I Can Haz<br />
Cheezburger. So the community decides.<br />
MODERATOR: The community decides.<br />
BM: If it just gets flamed in the comments, then perhaps its not a LOLCat.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
AB: There’s usually somebody says, “This isn’t a cat.”<br />
JT: That’s not me.<br />
AB: There’s one of um, I think today, it was, was a gorilla, a young gorilla, and somebody said, “This is<br />
not a cat”. Oh, bully for them, they recognized it wasn’t a cat!<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
MODERATOR: But, some of the most popular lols in the hall of fame are not cats.<br />
All: Mmmmm.<br />
AB: I’ve never looked at the Hall of Fame!<br />
MODERATOR: You’ve never looked at the Hall of Fame?<br />
AB: No!<br />
MODERATOR: Mmm, okay.<br />
BM: Maybe that’s where I should have gone during dinner.<br />
MODERATOR: The Hall of Fame?<br />
BM: Shown them the Hall of Fame.<br />
MODERATOR: There are a LOT of lols in the Hall of Fame. 95 pages of lols.<br />
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BM: I was trying to show them why I was so excited about LOLCats, why I thought it was a cool topic,<br />
and they were just looking at me like, “they’re cats”.<br />
MODERATOR: So why are you excited about LOLCats?<br />
BM: I, I dunno, I suppose because of the same—you know, full disclosure for everyone else, we’ve had<br />
this conversation before, and I think it’s uh, it’s just been a fascinating way that a culture of people who<br />
like LOLCats have been able to express themselves, and their daily lives, through pictures of cats and<br />
Lolspeak. Because, X, Y, and Z, what we’re discussing here, because it’s cute, because it’s funny,<br />
because it’s some way emotional, because it’s, uh, anthropomorphic projections of human behavior on<br />
a cat, on a picture that you didn’t take, or a picture of YOUR cat, that’s cute because it’s YOUR cat. I<br />
dunno.<br />
MODERATOR: Do you guys make lols?<br />
AB: I’ve made some several, yes.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay, so, what did you make them for?<br />
AB: For my own amusement, really. I didn’t expect them—no, I’ve never, never had front page.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
AB: My son’s had several front pages.<br />
MODERATOR: Yeah?<br />
AB: But um, no, I- I’m, the first one I made was, you know a cat which appealed to me and I put a<br />
caption to it, and several people liked it, it’s never, never gone anywhere.<br />
MODERATOR: Did you put it up on the site? Or did you—<br />
AB: Oh yes, it’s on the site.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay. Did you send it around anywhere else?<br />
AB: No, I didn’t, no, I- I—I do object to people who send emails ‘round saying, “Please vote for my<br />
lol”.<br />
MODERATOR: Ah, okay.<br />
AB: I think that’s cheating.<br />
GL: Would you send your picture, just as a picture, to your friends and relatives?<br />
AB: Um, I have used some—I make calendars and, and birthday cards, and I have used some for those.<br />
Either my own or other peoples’. There was a lovely one with a cat face down, saying “I cannot brain<br />
today, I haz the dumb”, which I’ve used quite often.<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
JT: I, I, find that a really interesting use of LOLCats, because when I am having a really bad day at work,<br />
I will find a suitable LOLCat picture to say what I want to say, um, and I’ll tweet that, and everyone will<br />
know, “she’s having a a pretty bad day”, and you know, I might get some DMs or something.<br />
AB: You know, I’ve sent, put that link, if I’ve made a mess of a comment, I’ll put that link up, for that,<br />
that particular lol.<br />
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RK: I do that with a-- at work, if um, cause I, um like, edit peoples’ copy, edit peoples’ text, um,<br />
sometimes I’ll send them—it depends what mood you’re in, sometimes I’ll just send them just a cat on<br />
their own, if I’m in a bad mood, but if not, I’ll put like, “Hahahaha!” like, “hmm hmm”, but really, I mean,<br />
I’m really angry.<br />
SC & JT: (laughing)<br />
RK: And there’s a cat, a picture of a cat, an angry cat, and it says, “If you don’t like my changes, I can<br />
edit your face”<br />
ALL: General laughter)<br />
MODERATOR: I’ve printed that out, and we’re going to look at some lols in a second, I just have a<br />
couple more questions before we get, get around. Sorry, anyone else?<br />
BM: (to JT) Can I ask you a question?<br />
JT: Mmmhmm.<br />
BM: You mentioned that you use a LOLCat in your tweet, picture of an angry LOLCat if you’ve had a<br />
bad day.<br />
JT: Mmm.<br />
BM: Would you otherwise express your frustration of the day if you didn’t do it through a LOLCat?<br />
JT: Ummm…<br />
BM: Have you done it where you haven’t used a LOLCat?<br />
JT: I, I have two Twitter accounts, one that’s locked and private where I swear, and I really say, that’s<br />
me; the other one is my public face, because I have quite a high-profile Job I need to maintain that, so I<br />
have to use techniques like that, I won’t really say, “I’m having a really shit day” on that account, I have<br />
to do it, sort of through subtext.<br />
BM: I find that interesting.<br />
JT: I think that subtext is a really interesting way of communicating in this, when you’re doing a lot of<br />
Tweeting, or Facebooking.<br />
BM: Which, yeah, I almost think—and I’d just be curious to hear what everybody else thinks, but that is<br />
why LOLCats succeeds, right?<br />
JT: Mmm.<br />
BM: Because of that subtext of communication.<br />
JT: Yeah. Absolutely.<br />
MODERATOR: Thinkin’ deep about LOLCats.<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
MODERATOR: So, SC, have you, have you made a lol?<br />
SC: I made one once when I put a photo of my cat on Facebook, thinking she was really really cute<br />
and several people said, “She looks like pure evil”<br />
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ALL: (amused surprise)<br />
SC: I was really offended.<br />
RK, AB: (laughing)<br />
SC: And so I, this is the only time I’ve ever done it, I put some text on it, something about, she wants<br />
to take over from the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz—it wasn’t that funny, really. It’s something<br />
like, “Get my my costume, the Flying Monkeys are sick” and no one really thought it was funny, but I<br />
was trying to defend her, cause I didn’t think she was evil looking at all. So yeah, that was the only time<br />
I ever did it.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay. GL? No?<br />
GL: Sara’s the funniest person I know online, so it’s a big deal that if they didn’t find it funny, it’s<br />
probably more of a—racism thing for cats and dogs.<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
MODERATOR: Okay, so, do you Guys share lols? Would you share a lol that you like? Well JT, you<br />
said you did, and AB I know you<br />
AB: Oh yes, I send them to friends and family.<br />
MODERATOR: And how do you do that, through Facebook? Email?<br />
AB: Um, emails. I don’t, I don’t have a Facebook account.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay, right, you did say that.<br />
AB: I positively refuse to have one.<br />
BM: Google +, though.<br />
JT: Yeah, I need a LOLCat group, circle. I’ve got the Cheezburger app, now. Which makes it really easy<br />
to share.<br />
MODERATOR: What’s the cheezburger app?<br />
JT: So it’s, it’s their official app. And you just go through all the lols, all the LOLCats and you can just<br />
Tweet from there.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay. So you use mostly on Twitter?<br />
JT: I wouldn’t usually tweet them, I, I only use Facebook because my sister only understands Facebook,<br />
because she’s 45. So, she—sorry, that’s not an ageist comment<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
JT: She doesn’t know what her desktop is, so um, so I know that she will, she will love to see some of<br />
the LOLCats that I tweet, so I share them on there as well.<br />
MODERATOR: How about you, RK and SC? Where do you share?<br />
RK: Mmm, I email—I’ve got one particular friend who I email, like I see them, and we just, we’ll email<br />
each others’ work accounts.<br />
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MODERATOR: Mmmhmm.<br />
RK: Because I know his—he works in Bristol, he’s one of my oldest friends, and his, um, screen faces<br />
out toward the rest of the room, basically, so he will open a picture from me and it’ll be a (funny<br />
voice) LOLCat.<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
RK: Uhh, so that’s what we do. But it’s really only with him, it’s not with anyone else.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
SC: I email them to my family.<br />
MODERATOR: You email them to your family. Under what circumstances do you, just something<br />
you’d think they’d like?<br />
SC: If I, If I see one that um, I think, “They would like that”. There was the one, with the cat, that was<br />
sitting on the Nintendo Wii—did you see that one? And it says something like, “Thanks for getting me<br />
a fancy butt warmer”<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
SC: Cause, that’s the kind of thing that our cat would have done, so, find something that she’s not<br />
supposed to sit on, so, I knew they’d like that.<br />
MODERATOR: So where do you see your LOLCats, mostly? AB, I know you see them on I can haz.<br />
So, do you guys seek them out, or is that where you see them?<br />
JT: I get the, I get the newsletter into my inbox every morning.<br />
MODERATOR: Right, you said that.<br />
JT: Because it is the first thing I will look at.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
JT: Because I know the rest of the day is going to be shit.<br />
RK: (laughs). I just get sent them.<br />
MODERATOR: You just get sent them.<br />
SC: I have the site, the official site, in my Google Reader.<br />
MODERATOR: In your reader.<br />
JT: I will also seek specific things out if I want to send someone, if I see someone having a bad time, or I<br />
want to send someone a birthday or valentine’s thing, I seek it out there.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay. (to GL) And you don’t really see LOLCats anymore?<br />
GL: I love LOLCats, but I suppose it’s the old ones that still hold my…<br />
MODERATOR: And where would you—like, do you ever seek them out? Or do people send them to<br />
you?<br />
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GL: I, occasionally I’ll, I’ll go look through the Hall of Fame, um—<br />
BM: Reminisce.<br />
RK, SC: (giggling)<br />
GL: Reminisce, exactly, yeah, nostalgia.<br />
MODERATOR: When would you do that?<br />
GL: Once a year, maybe.<br />
MODERATOR: Once a year.<br />
GL: Yeah, I worked in a Job a few years back, uh, really high pressure, essentially we were, uh, scoring<br />
interviews, uh, for, you know, celebrities, and, and, products they were hawking with radio stations. Uh,<br />
and so we’d have an issue where you know, the head of the news, the head of the department would<br />
be yelling at me to number for a certain age group or a certain radio station, so we had to send him<br />
the details of our contacts, there were twenty of us, different contacts, as soon as possible, in this<br />
Reply All email. And we had one guy who had this, just, just the gall to send LOLCat pictures. And this<br />
guy would be screaming from the other room, and suddenly he’d start getting a torrent of LOLCat<br />
pictures from the rest of the department , just completely ignoring the fact that he needed these<br />
numbers as quickly as possible getting—you know, I suppose it was more cats in costumes?<br />
MODERATOR: Uh huh.<br />
GL: You know a cat in a frog costume, a dog in a crab costume, different—but then also, LOLCats. I<br />
mean, that, that was probably the last time I was, it was a regular occurrence. Um, in the workplace.<br />
Yeah. I also left soon afterwards.<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
MODERATOR: Okay so—<br />
JT: For a year and—sorry—for about a year and a half, it just reminded—I used mostly cat, but a lot of<br />
LOLCat pictures in my presentations at work.<br />
MODERATOR: How did that go over?<br />
JT: I’m… not sure.<br />
MODERATOR: (laughs) okay.<br />
JT: It… but.. It was particularly at a time when everyone was worried about the TV—Internet killing<br />
TV. And there were quite a lot of LOLCats that I could use to illustrate that in a funny way, just to put<br />
people at ease? That yes, I’m digital, but it’s okay, I’m not here to kill your TV. But yeah, I can’t believe I<br />
did that.<br />
RK: I think that’s funny, if I had been in one of your presentations, I would have liked it.<br />
JT: Thanks.<br />
MODERATOR: We had a PhD student include a LOLCat in his, in our dissertation symposium, so.<br />
BM: That he didn’t sufficiently explain.<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
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MODERATOR: Yes, that’s very true. It was the cat that sat on a book and had TL;DR, but most<br />
people didn’t know what TL;DR meant. Um, okay, so, we’re just going to quickly, you guys sent over<br />
some lols, um, yes, Monorail Cat was-- a bunch of you sent me Monorail Cat, um, and then here are<br />
some other ones that you Guys sent around.<br />
All: (general giggling as lols are placed on table for perusal)<br />
AB: Ooh, that one. That’s hilarious, that one (Forgot frankincense).<br />
MODERATOR: Have you seen that one before?<br />
AB: Mmm.<br />
RK: I haven’t seen that one.<br />
AB: Yeah, I’ve seen that one several times. I think that’s on my favorites list.<br />
MODERATOR: Is it?<br />
AB: Mmmm.<br />
MODERATOR: Can you tell me what you like about it?<br />
AB: Oh, it’s just hilarious! The words just sort of fit the picture so perfectly<br />
RK: (giggling) Yeah.<br />
AB: It couldn’t be better, could it?<br />
JT: It’s got really nice pacing, even. You know, it’s just, where you position the words makes it…<br />
AB: Yes.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay, so, can you Guys tell me why you sent these particular lols to me?<br />
AB: I sent this one because it’s my son’s.<br />
SC, RK: Oh, which one??<br />
AB: That one (Pls to open door)<br />
JT: That’s brilliant.<br />
RK, SC: (appreciative laughter)<br />
JT: See, I always use that expression now, “Plz to open”, and I never say “kitty”, I always say “kitteh”.<br />
RK: (laughter)<br />
AB: My son’s LOLCat, his Lolspeak isn’t perfect. He can’t keep it up.<br />
MODERATOR: So it’s good to have perfect Lolspeak?<br />
AB: Yes, oh yes.<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
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AB: You know he, he’s, he’s made ever so many lols, I don’t know how many, I haven’t looked lately.<br />
But um, you know his Lolspeak is, is erratic.<br />
MODERATOR: It’s tough to keep up, I have to say, writing in Lolspeak.<br />
AB: Well have plenty of practice (laughing)<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
BM: I agree that if I see a LOLCat that’s written in plain English, I’m just like, “you didn’t even try”.<br />
JT: Yeah, come on, dude.<br />
BM: What’s the point?<br />
GL: There was that sort of anti LOLCat phase where they were writing it out sort of, err, like an evil<br />
genius, with you know, long words, and um.<br />
AB: There are frequent trolls that pop up on the comments column saying we’re a load of retards<br />
who don’t speak proper English.<br />
GL: That’s not, that’s not nice. Yeah.<br />
AB: We generally report them to the Head Cheezes and get them banned.<br />
SC: But then why is Invisible Swimming Pool right, because that’s perfect English.<br />
JT: Mmmm.<br />
GL: It’s old school.<br />
MODERATOR: It’s old school?<br />
BM: How would—how would, if you were to change that to Lolspeak, how would you do it?<br />
RK: I’d change the ‘s’ in “invisible” to a z. I dunno if that’s right.<br />
SC: I’d probably spell it B-U-L<br />
RK: Invisi-BUL. I’d put—<br />
AB: Invisib-lol!<br />
SC: Heeheehheeh.<br />
RK: Yeah, yeah.<br />
BM: That’s fair.<br />
MODERATOR: Well, do you think that’s the cat speaking? Or do you think that’s just a—<br />
SC: I’d see that as a caption.<br />
AB: That’s a comment on, that’s a comment on, a caption to what the cat is doing. It’s not the cat<br />
speaking, is it?<br />
GL: Kind of like Monorail kitty, Monorail Cat.<br />
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JT: Because there is a difference, isn’t there, between that. So this, being the recognizable images that<br />
you see, quite a lot of different captions.<br />
AB: But uh, that isn’t the cat speaking, that is a description of what the picture is.<br />
MODERATOR: So that’s okay for that not to be in Lolspeak?<br />
AB, JT: Yes.<br />
AB: But if it’s the cat speaking, it should be in Lolspeak.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay, so, I would like to talk about Monorail Cat. Because Monorail Cat crops up<br />
quite a bit, and it’s one of the most famous. Um, can you Guys explain what you like about Monorail<br />
Cat?<br />
JT: I would love to go on a Monorail Cat!<br />
ALL: General laughter<br />
JT: What an awesome idea!<br />
MODERATOR: Have you seen the GIF with the Monorail Cat?<br />
JT: Yes!<br />
MODERATOR: Where the people get on the Monorail Cat?<br />
JT, Yes, yes! And I think, I love it when, when cats like, Loaf Cat as well, I love Loaf Cat, and you, you<br />
know I just love the shapes that cats do. And cats always end up—I’ve got a Flickr group, just “Cats In<br />
Odd Places”, they always end up finding comfort on a, on a rail! I mean, it’s funny on so many different<br />
levels, because you know that that’s what cats do, and also it IS a Monorail Cat! And what a brilliant<br />
thing to have! I want to, I want to replace all the London Transport Network with Monorail Cats.<br />
ALL: General laughter.<br />
MODERATOR: I think that would make London one of the most popular—even MORE popular than<br />
it already is.<br />
GL: I like that its eyes are—you think that it thinks it’s a monorail. You get that sense.<br />
JT: (laughs) it’s very focused.<br />
GL: Very focused, it’s like, “Guys, please, I’m a monorail”.<br />
JT: (laughing) Regulating the service.<br />
RK: I’ve got a timetable here.<br />
JT: (laughing) how can that be comfortable? You just want to push it along, as well.<br />
SC: What is that it’s on, anyway?<br />
JT: It is a rail.<br />
SC: Is it like part of a… what is it?<br />
AB: It looks like uh, a bed head, something like that.<br />
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BM: Like a half-wall.<br />
JT: Yeah.<br />
MODERATOR: So uh, who sent me Jaime Oliver?<br />
SC: That was me.<br />
MODERATOR: That’s—okay. So, Sara. Jaime Oliver.<br />
SC: I like this one, I think, for two reasons. One that, I love how cats are always looking for ‘noms’,<br />
because that’s what cats do in real life. And also I like the idea that cats seem to be doing—it’s<br />
watching TV with you, and it understands that you’re watching Jaime Oliver, and that knows who Jaime<br />
Oliver is, and like, shares in your interests. Hope that doesn’t sound too pathetic.<br />
MODERATOR: No, it doesn’t!<br />
SC: That’s why I like that one.<br />
AB: He almost talks Lolspeak, doesn’t he?<br />
ALL: General laughter<br />
MODERATOR: I am always going to see Jaime Oliver and think about him speaking Lolspeak now.<br />
ALL: General laughter.<br />
JT: Please don’t!<br />
MODERATOR: Alright, just a couple more, I know that we’re running out of time—if anybody has to,<br />
to leave, I totally understand, but, um, I’ve got more lols for your lol pleasure if you’d like to look at<br />
them.<br />
RK: Will these gonna form part of your final project? (laughing)<br />
MODERATOR: They might! They might, it might be an appendix of favorite lols. It is going to definitely<br />
be part of an analysis, understanding which ones people like best. So, that’s basically what I’m doing<br />
with this part of the group, is understanding, which ones people—<br />
BM: it’d be a great coffee table book (inaudible) copies of LOLCats.<br />
MODERATOR: So good—well they have, they have several books.<br />
JT: Oh yes.<br />
AB: There are two books over here already, both which I’ve got, and another one coming over soon.<br />
BM: Wow.<br />
JT: Have you got the t-shirt?<br />
AB: No. I don’t think they make them my size!<br />
JT: (laughs)<br />
MODERATOR: GL, I think you’ll be excited to see this one (Lolrus)<br />
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GL: Yeah.<br />
ALL: General laughter.<br />
MODERATOR: Now, a lot of these don’t have cats in them. Okay, JT, you’re shaking your head.<br />
JT: No.<br />
MODERATOR: No, you don’t like any of these?<br />
JT: No, um, no, I was about to say, these are also my favorite ones.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
BM: In the computer?<br />
JT: Yeah, yeah. In the computer, or fixing wires, or I’m in your Facebook, changing your privacy settings,<br />
you know, the… love it. Love that.<br />
MODERATOR: What is it about that that you love?<br />
JT: Well, cause I’m, I’m, I just, I’m a, I’m a geek, anyway. So, I just love the idea that cats can, you know,<br />
are fixing stuff for us, and they’re in—they’re always sitting on your computer, on your laptop, they<br />
always sit on wires, they always sit on the keyboard.<br />
MODERATOR: Mmmhmm.<br />
JT: I say this, I’ve never owned a cat.<br />
BM: REALLY.<br />
JT: Yeah, I know. I’ve looked after a lot of cats.<br />
BM: Why?<br />
JT: Um, (embarrassed laughter)<br />
BM: Sorry, never mind.<br />
JT: I’ve just never… it’s okay.<br />
BM: No, I just think it’s interesting, you’re so fascinated….<br />
JT: Yeah, I’m absolutely obsessed with cats.<br />
BM: … by cats, and I’m wondering where it comes from.<br />
JT: It’s that, it’s… well, my sister has cats, um, or had cats, and has one cat. I just, I just absolutely love<br />
them, and have always loved them, I was brought up in Hong Kong, and Hello Kitty was my… I was<br />
obsessed with Hello Kitty, she was my, my Barbie<br />
MODERATOR: Yeah?<br />
JT: So I’ve just always loved cats. But these, these, yeah, I just don’t find them funny.<br />
MODERATOR: Because they don’t have cats?<br />
JT: Yeah. No cats. And that’s the wrong font.<br />
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MODERATOR: It is the wrong font.<br />
JT: Totally the wrong font.<br />
MODERATOR: It is.<br />
JT: (pointing to Disco, I haz it) That’s alright.<br />
RK: Yeah, that’s alright. And I like, I like his face is so—like the Monorail Cat’s so determined? DISCO!<br />
SC: (giggles)<br />
RK: Fine with that. He—(points to Emo Alpaca) his heart is not in it.<br />
JT: No.<br />
MODERATOR: Emo alpaca’s not in it?<br />
JT: No.<br />
SC: Also there’s tooooo much text on that, it’s too long.<br />
JT: Yeah.<br />
MODERATOR: Too much text, okay.<br />
JT: And you see, no, no Lolspeak at all.<br />
MODERATOR: And if he’s an animal, he should be speaking Lolspeak?<br />
JT: Well, if he’s trying to be a lol.<br />
MODERATOR: If he’s trying to be lol, okay.<br />
GL: They’ve essentially taken a lot of these animals with the whole Awkward Penguin, Angry Wolf or<br />
whatever<br />
MODERATOR: Courage Wolf?<br />
GL: Yeah, exactly, I think those work better, perhaps, than these. For me, for me the only ones I like<br />
are the ones in the middle, I’m not a fan of the cat pictures.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
GL: Or, or these ones. I mean, this one (show me your war face), I like war face.<br />
MODERATOR: You like show me your war face?<br />
AB: The elephant seal leaves me completely cold.<br />
MODERATOR: Really?<br />
AB: Mmm.<br />
MODERATOR: Can you explain why?<br />
GL: Look at that smile, look at that smile (holding up picture)<br />
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All: General laughter<br />
MODERATOR: No, not at all?<br />
AB: No, it doesn’t do anything at all for me.<br />
JT: I agree.<br />
MODERATOR: (to GL) So you like haters gonna hate.<br />
GL: Well, that’s a separate meme, altogether.<br />
MODERATOR: A separate meme, okay. Alright, next round. Any other comments about this group?<br />
No?<br />
AB: No.<br />
MODERATOR: Alright.<br />
JT: Oh, god, I’m so obsessed.<br />
RK: (laughs)<br />
MODERATOR: Yes, but I’m the one who’s doing, doing research on this as well,<br />
RK: I’m so jealous!<br />
MODERATOR: So, we’re in the same boat! We are in the same boat.<br />
BM: I’m in a similar place in that I love cats, love LOLCats, don’t have a cat, but.<br />
JT: I’m looking after 15 projects that I’ve commissioned, I’m getting a cat in every single one of them,<br />
that’s how obsessed I am, and I, it’s, it’s working.<br />
BM: Yeah.<br />
RK: (looking at pictures) Awww….<br />
JT: (laughing)<br />
MODERATOR: You like pop up? What strikes you about pop-up<br />
JT: I love it, I love—a lot of my presentations we’re using those images where cats are sitting like<br />
humans, and, there’s there’s there’s, you know, you put pots of beer with them, and it’s a bit cruel, I<br />
love that, because I just think it’s hilariously sexy—not in a way that I find sexy, what I mean is, I love<br />
the fact, I love the idea of cats looking at cat porn.<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
SC: D’you think that one’s been manipulated too much, because clearly, it’s, it’s been, you know, added<br />
into the image, you know it’s a combination of two cat photos, it’s not, it’s—it doesn’t have as much<br />
integrity as I’d like (laughing)<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
JT: (laughing), This is good, this one.<br />
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MODERATOR: You like Bill’s camera?<br />
AB: I don’t like cats in clothes.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
JT: But that’s why he’s been missing for two weeks (laughing)<br />
AB: Cats are beautiful as they are, they don’t need clothing.<br />
MODERATOR: But you don’t like the lols that make fun of people who put cats in clothing?<br />
AB: No, I, I object to the cats being dressed up. Because it’s not fair to the cat, and it seems silly to me.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
JT: (laughing) Sorry, I’m just looking at that top one. (Image: I’m a Cat???)<br />
AB: Yeah, (laughing) I remember that one.<br />
MODERATOR: “I’m a cat” got some laughs. That’s just for my notes, sorry.<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
MODERATOR: I’m just trying to narrate what’s happening.<br />
AB: “I’m a cat??”<br />
JT: It’s just brilliant because it just captures that, that, that, that attitude, that, that I think cats have.<br />
Which is a good attitude—<br />
AB: Mmmmm!<br />
JT: But it is a really superior kind of, attitude, and I just I love, I love the fact that you can take the piss<br />
out of that. In the same way that this one (Bill’s Camera) does the same sort of thing. It’s kind of like<br />
dare—I dare you.<br />
AB: Yes…<br />
JT: You know.<br />
SC: I think the Firefox one is good because a.) it’s really cute.<br />
MODERATOR: Mmmhmm.<br />
SC: You’ve got the heads stacked up like that, and b.) also, if you’re quite, if you know what Firefox is<br />
and know different ways to use it, you feel quite superior, like “Oh, I’m so tech savvy”---<br />
ALL: General agreement<br />
SC: You know, like, “I totally get that, Firefox tabs, yep”, it makes you feel really, you know, like you<br />
know a lot<br />
RK: It makes you feel included, it makes you feel part of the JTke.<br />
SC: Right, yeah.<br />
RK: And that makes you feel like “haha, yeah, I’m part of that”.<br />
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SC: Exactly, yes.<br />
AB: You know the one with the fox is diving in, in towards a heap of snow, and the caption is “Firefox<br />
is Crashing”.<br />
ALL: (General laughter and agreement)<br />
AB: Which it does, frequently.<br />
MODERATOR: See, my Firefox never crashes.<br />
AB: Oh, um, mine crashes because something else is going on at the same time.<br />
MODERATOR: Ah, okay.<br />
GL: 40 LOLCat tabs open at the same time.<br />
AB: I’m trying to get the first comment in, you see<br />
SC: Ahhhhh!<br />
GL: Are you the one that says, “First”, is that you?<br />
AB: No, no, I never say “FIRST!”,<br />
GL: Aww, alright.<br />
AB: No, I usually AM first.<br />
All: general laughter and agreement<br />
JT: She doesn’t need to say it.<br />
BM: I’ll have to look for your comments.<br />
JT: What’s your username?<br />
AB: [USERNAME]<br />
MODERATOR: You’re definitely like, first or second, almost—<br />
AB: Yes.<br />
MODERATOR: Every lol I’ve seen.<br />
AB: Yes, me and pussandboy.<br />
MODERATOR: Yeah?<br />
SC: Brilliant.<br />
MODERATOR: GL, do you like any of these? Not really?<br />
GL: They seem really new.<br />
MODERATOR: They seem really new, okay.<br />
BM: I’ve never seen any of them.<br />
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MODERATOR: These are all from the Hall of Fame, by the way.<br />
BM: Really!<br />
MODERATOR: These are all Hall of Fame.<br />
BM: The apocalypse one is funny (Pull Cord to begin Apocalypse)<br />
AB: Yeah.<br />
BM: Cause you KNOW what’s going to happen if he pulls that tail. RAAARRR!! (grabbing M&Ms) I’m<br />
addicted. These are delicious.<br />
MODERATOR: Alright, so, last round, and then uh, I’ll ask for your parting thoughts.<br />
RK: (giggling)<br />
MODERATOR: You like Febreze cat?<br />
RK: Yeah.<br />
AB: (Pointing to I’m allergic to food, I break out in fat) (laughing) That’s me! I can’t see the—oh, the—<br />
the one with the--<br />
MODERATOR: Here, we’ll move this one over here.<br />
BM: (Laughing)<br />
MODERATOR: Which one are you giggling at, Ben?<br />
BM: Febreze Cat.<br />
AB: The problem with bifocals is that it’s so far, but not far enough.<br />
RK: (laughing) Why would it lie like that?<br />
MODERATOR: So for that one (Febreze Cat) is it really the picture that gets you? Or is it the caption?<br />
AB: Oh, well it’s the combination of the two.<br />
MODERATOR: The combination.<br />
AB: The, the ideal lol is a combination of the words fitting the picture.<br />
JT: Because you can believe it saying that.<br />
BM: Because there’s clearly no other reason that he’d be lying like that.<br />
MODERATOR: Right.<br />
BM: No other reason.<br />
AB: Facedesk?<br />
JT: That’s brilliant.<br />
SC: (laughing) Facedesk.<br />
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MODERATOR: Facedesk…<br />
BM: But he’s not at a desk.<br />
MODERATOR: Headdesk, facepalm?<br />
JT: I like that one too, because again, it’s sitting in a, in a human way.<br />
AB: You know that black and white cat sitting like that going, “HUMPH”<br />
JT: Yeah! (laughing)<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
JT: Because they always have an excuse for everything. That’s the thing as well. The Lolspeak and the,<br />
the captions always kind of give it an excuse, like “What?” You know, “yeah, of course”<br />
SC: This one’s okay (Break Out In Fat), but the joke is something that you might see on like a fridge<br />
magnet. It doesn’t seem that original, really.<br />
MODERATOR: Is originality important?<br />
SC: Yeah.<br />
MODERATOR: Yeah?<br />
AB: Oh yes. Yeah, and so many, so many of them, they just seem to be copies of somebody else’s lol.<br />
MODERATOR: Mmhmm.<br />
AB: And I find that annoying. I’ve, I sometimes go through the votes, the new lols up for voting, and so<br />
many of them seem to be, slight variations on the same, on somebody else’s theme.<br />
MODERATOR: Yeah.<br />
AB: Which um, you know, doesn’t seem right to me. Whether it’s two people having the same idea,<br />
or somebody just sort of, jumping on the bandwagon, I’m not sure.<br />
MODERATOR: Do the copies tend to make the front page?<br />
AB: Occasionally, yes.<br />
MODERATOR: Occasionally.<br />
AB: Yes.<br />
MODERATOR: But what do the, the commenters—do they get on board, or not?<br />
AB: Oh yes, say, “we’ve seen this before”.<br />
MODERATOR: Ah, okay.<br />
AB:And, and sometimes we get the same picture with a slightly different comment, and if that happens<br />
a bit too often, we get a bit annoyed about it.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay, So do you, are the commenters and the people who vote, do you think they’re<br />
two different populations?<br />
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AB: Um, they overlap to quite a large extent, but um, the commenters I suppose are a weird bunch<br />
anyway. But um, you know it’s, we’re basically a core of two or three hundred commenters, and then<br />
there are a lot of school, school holiday time, we get a lot of youngsters playing around and interfering<br />
and being silly.<br />
MODERATOR: Being silly, what do you mean by being silly?<br />
AB: Oh, making, making unpleasant remarks sometimes, or um, foolish remarks.<br />
MODERATOR: So um, trolls and haters? Or just…<br />
JT: Trolls on holiday.<br />
AB: Not so much, um, well youngsters, just sort of, trying to be too clever.<br />
SC: Is it work people who don’t understand, the mood, and like the kind of, like, the unspoken rules<br />
that are there?<br />
AB: Yes, I think so. Um, generally speaking, the basic rules of commenting are to keep it nice. Being<br />
polite, um, and friendly. But we do get a lot of people who aren’t, and uh, if they’re too unfriendly, we<br />
report them and get them banned.<br />
MODERATOR: Any other comments on this, on this round? So we like I’m allergic to food and<br />
Febreze cat the best, huh?<br />
AB: Yeah those two, I, what’s the other, I can’t quite see that one, I—my focus is fixed, and it’s uh…<br />
Oh yes, that one. Yes, I like that.<br />
MODERATOR: You like Jenkins?<br />
AB: Yes, I think that one’s good. (Looking at another) That one doesn’t do much for me.<br />
MODERATOR: Is it because of the fact that it’s a hamster?<br />
AB: I don’t understand it.<br />
MODERATOR: Yeah, it does make a lot of, random references.<br />
AB: I’m probably, I’m too old to understand that one.<br />
MODERATOR: Yeah, I don’t really—I assume it’s a Dungeons and Dragons reference?<br />
AB: Um, I don’t do dru-- I haven’t seen a film since um, the rerun of My Fair Lady in 1968. So, you<br />
know, I know nothing about films, I don’t watch a lot of television, so, that’s a closed book to me.<br />
JT: If there was a LOLCats program on telly, would you watch it?<br />
AB: Eh, possibly. And I watched the, they put up a link to a recording of Ben (Huh) doing a talk on<br />
television, I saw that.<br />
MODERATOR: Do you watch things like, “Walk On The Wild Side”?<br />
AB: Mmmmm, I’m not very keen on that.<br />
MODERATOR: You don’t like the voiceover animals?<br />
AB: Um, I’ve seen one or two.<br />
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JT: There’s only one bit that’s funny, it’s only the “Steve! Steve! Alan! Alan!”<br />
AB: Yes, that one’s funny, but the rest of it—either I can’t hear it clearly enough or it’s just—it washes<br />
over me.<br />
MODERATOR: Okay.<br />
GL: Chuckles.<br />
MODERATOR: You agree?<br />
GL: I, I love Walk on the Wild Side.<br />
SC: What is Walk on the Wild Side?<br />
GL: They’ve taken the old uh, craziest clips of um, you know, the Attenborough TV shows and voiced<br />
it, put voices on to what the animals are actually doing.<br />
JT: It’s comedians who do it.<br />
GL: It’s on YouTube.<br />
MODERATOR: Can you tell me what you like about Walk On The Wild Side?<br />
GL: It’s essentially has been, I don’t want to say done to death, like these, but it’s actually, moving<br />
LOLCats, but I guess it’s not just cats, it’s all animals. But it’s sort of, putting a voice to, this, essentially a<br />
stupid thing this animal’s doing, or a thing you don’t understand that LOOKS stupid, and it’s explaining<br />
what they’re actually doing.<br />
MODERATOR: So, thank you all so much for your time, I’m going to wrap things up so every one can<br />
get on, um, I know we’ve run late, I’m really sorry about that. Uh, is there just, one, any final parting<br />
words for me? Anything that you would, that I’ve missed, or that you’d like to say about LOLCats?<br />
JT: I personally think that LOLCats are one of the things that, in the history of the Internet, it is quite a<br />
formative moment. I think that’s, you know, proven by the fact that they’re still, it’s not a meme that’s<br />
disappeared. Um, and I, and I, just think it was, uh, I would love to have the artwork on my wall.<br />
MODERATOR: You say formative moment, meaning…<br />
JT: Meaning I think it was one of the original, kind of memes that broke through. That has lasted, and<br />
has become a, a cultural expression.<br />
AB: And it’s worldwide, too.<br />
JT: It’s worldwide.<br />
AB: Everyday I’m talking to a chap in Australia, another one in Saudi Arabia, a lot of Americans, of<br />
course, um, Swiss, German, French, Dutch, all over.<br />
JT: That’s amazing. (to me) I think you should do a PhD.<br />
MODERATOR: Yeah? That would be pretty… pretty… cross cultural examinations of… I wish there<br />
was more than I could possibly delve into, I could do a PhD on this. Connects to a lot of different<br />
things. But, we’ll see how the dissertation turns out first.<br />
AB: Well, good luck with it!<br />
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ALL: Yeah, good luck!<br />
SC: How much longer do you have to work on it?<br />
MODERATOR: Um, about a month… and a half?<br />
BM: Your big assignment at the end is to create your own LOLCat that perfectly represents the<br />
culmination of your research.<br />
SC: Ooh, yeah!<br />
MODERATOR: Yeah.<br />
BM: That can be your announcement. That SHOULD be your abstract.<br />
ALL: General laughter<br />
MODERATOR: Oooh.<br />
BM: Your abstract should be a LOLCat.<br />
DB: The ultimate LOLCat.<br />
MODERATOR: Yeah, although I feel like that falls into administrative research. It’s not, you know, I’m<br />
not setting out to find—<br />
JT: Your whole abstract will be in Lolspeak.<br />
MODERATOR: It should be.<br />
JT: There has to be a version of, I think.<br />
BM: Or at least the title.<br />
MODERATOR: I could do, I could translate my entire dissertation into Lolspeak.<br />
JT: You should, you completely should. I’d read it.<br />
MODERATOR: You’d read it?<br />
MODERATOR: Well, maybe after I hand it in, I can do a translation.<br />
BM: I wonder, are you going to have an announcment on I Can Haz Cheezburger?<br />
MODERATOR: They know I’m—well, I don’t know if Ben knows that I’m doing it.<br />
JT: Well, what you could do is get the community to translate it, bits of it if they wanted to.<br />
MODERATOR: Kind of like LOLCat Bible Translation. I could turn my dissertation into a wiki and have<br />
everyone translate it into Lolspeak<br />
ALL: Yeah!<br />
AB: Well, we’ve done lots of Shakespeare, uh…<br />
MODERATOR: Oh yeah?<br />
JT: Really?<br />
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AB: Oh yes, bits of Shakespeare<br />
JT: I’d love to see that.<br />
AB: Well you should read the comments column!<br />
JT: Yeah, I should, I should!<br />
AB: Mind you, it takes all day.<br />
JT: I know. I literally have the 5 minutes in the morning.<br />
AB: No, I, I log on between 9:00 and log off at half past 11 in the morning, go shopping, come back, log<br />
on for the 2:00 lol, and the computer stays on until about midnight… I’m not there all the time. Most<br />
of it.<br />
JT: Well now, now I’ve met you, I might just go on. I’ll be KittenFluff, if anything.<br />
AB: Mmmm.<br />
MODERATOR: KittenFluff? Is that a handle you already use?<br />
JT: That’s for my cat-obsessed stuff, yeah.<br />
AB: I don’t think there’s, I’ve not met a KittenFluff, so you’ll probably be okay.<br />
JT: Right, okay.<br />
AB: My son had to change his slightly, because someone—he’s puddy_tat, um, with a subscript<br />
between—he had to put the uh, subdash in, because somebody was already puddytat without it.<br />
JT: That’s a good name.<br />
AB: But my, my name goes back to… um, about 50 years. It was my husband’s nickname for me.<br />
All: Awwww! Really?<br />
AB: And the, the picture was uh, long before I JTined the group<br />
JT: So it’s Annipuss?<br />
AB: Annipuss, all one word.<br />
JT: Two, two esses.<br />
MODERATOR: Well, I’ll give everyone, you know, I can send out in, if everyone wants to keep in<br />
touch, I can send everybody’s emails, and share, so you can all talk amongst yourselves and share your<br />
favorite lols with each other, if you’d like to do that, I’m happy to do that, so.<br />
ALL: (General delight and agreement)<br />
JT: You know the group lulzsec, so I originally got really excited in my head about that. I (laughing)<br />
thought they were something to do with LOLCats<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
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BM: Everytime I see it in the paper again, I think, “Oh, I gotta send this to [MODERATOR]—oh wait,<br />
no.”<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
RK: So what is it?<br />
JT: It’s the Guys who were hacking into various security networks like…<br />
GL: CIA…<br />
BM: It’s a hackers group.<br />
RK: Oh, okay.<br />
JT: But they’re called lulz-sec, uh, L-U-L-Z.<br />
MODERATOR: But lulz—<br />
GL: Lulz means something different.<br />
MODERATOR: Yeah.<br />
AB: It’s more snide, isn’t it?<br />
GL: Yeah, it’s taking advantage of people, people’s sort of ineptitude on the web. Having a joke at<br />
others’ expense, where lol is just—<br />
JT: Stuff that you like.<br />
GL: Yeah.<br />
ALL: (General laughter)<br />
AB: If someone uses lulz in the uh, in the comments on lol, on LOLCats, they get uh, shouted down.<br />
GL: That’s the spirit. There’s no place for lulz on LOLCats.<br />
JT: Brilliant.<br />
MODERATOR: Well thank you all so much.<br />
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APPENDIX I: ICHC HALL <strong>OF</strong> FAME GENERAL <strong>THE</strong>MES<br />
Cats as humans (Anthropomorphism)<br />
‐ Sex<br />
‐ Drugs<br />
o Catnip<br />
‐ Gluttony<br />
o Obesity<br />
‐ Coffee (need of)<br />
‐ Misanthropy<br />
o Stupidity<br />
‐ Job dissatisfaction<br />
‐ Mocking groups/Othering<br />
o “Emos”<br />
o People who dress up their animals<br />
Cats as Cats<br />
‐ Cats vs. dogs<br />
‐ Cats vs. humans<br />
‐ Cuteness inherent to cat-ness<br />
o Cats as needing snuggles<br />
‐ Cats as conniving/evil<br />
Intertextual references<br />
Other<br />
‐ Pop songs<br />
‐ Science Fiction<br />
o Movies<br />
o TV Shows<br />
o Games<br />
‐ Advertising slogans<br />
‐ Computer references<br />
‐ Aphorisms<br />
o “People in glass houses”<br />
‐ Hatred of Mondays<br />
‐ Cats as antidepressants<br />
‐ Otter puns<br />
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APPENDIX J: FINAL CODING FRAME<br />
HUMOR<br />
• Textual<br />
o Anthropomorphism<br />
Familiarity<br />
Identification<br />
Lolspeak<br />
• Social<br />
o In-Jokes<br />
Intertextuality<br />
Lolspeak<br />
GENRE<br />
• Font<br />
• Placement of Text<br />
• Subject of Image<br />
• Construction of Text<br />
• Characterization of animal<br />
• Intertextuality<br />
CREATION<br />
• Altruistic<br />
o Response<br />
o Just because<br />
o Special occasion<br />
• Self-oriented<br />
o Self-Expression<br />
SHARING<br />
• Altruistic<br />
o Response<br />
o Thought Of You (spontaneous)<br />
• Self Oriented<br />
o Self-Expression<br />
o In-group demonstration<br />
LOLSPEAK<br />
• Humor<br />
o Voice of cat<br />
• Social<br />
o Bonding<br />
o Group identity<br />
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APPENDIX K: CHEEZBURGER FIELD DAY<br />
94
APPENDIX L: ADVICE <strong>AN</strong>IMAL MEMES<br />
95
APPENDIX M: MEME REFERENCES<br />
96
APPENDIX N: <strong>LOLCATS</strong> REFERENCED IN BODY TEXT<br />
97
APPENDIX O: LOLCAT VS. MEMES<br />
Many lolcat users, particularly the MemeGeeks, perceive LOLCats to be different from<br />
memes. The chart below details the four key qualitative ways.<br />
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