There’s no real reason why I’m posting this here, beyond the fact that this turned out to be more than just a research paper.  Really and truly, I kind of stand by this.

When examining some of today’s subcultures, it is impossible to ignore the affect digital technology has had on the masses. In a time when a plethora of technology is rapidly trickling down into the hands of most individuals, digitalization has become a common tool at the disposal of virtually anyone. As of studies conducted in 2006, it is estimated that 92 percent of UK children use the Internet on school computers, nearly 75 percent have Internet access at home, and approximately 57 percent of the adult population regularly use the Internet.1 With its potential for communication between infinite varieties of people, the Internet has certainly influenced the way subcultures develop. With strict exclusivity rendered nearly impossible by the anonymity that digitalization provides, subcultures have been forced to include much wider variations in membership. “In this fashion, subcultures associated with the Internet are involved in the revolutionary circulation and democratization of information and culture… Emergent ‘post-subcultures’ are involved in the attempt to allow people the freedom to re-define and construct themselves.”2 I Can Has Cheezburger, a user-interactive website created in celebration of an Internet subculture derived from “leetspeak” and “macro” subcultures, is steeped in this ethos of non-exclusive membership.

In order to understand I Can Has Cheezburger, one must first understand the Internet culture from which this website was born. The Internet itself is a medium with which information can be rapidly digested, replicated, and redistributed. Through websites, forums, email correspondence and newsgroups, ideas can be passed along with incomparable speed. The Internet’s potential for rapidity has bred a similar frenzy in its users. In an attempt to share information as quickly as possible (paired with the prevalent use of abbreviation already quite present in the coding language used to create the infrastructure of the Internet), a new form of language known as “leetspeak” quickly developed, mutating in a continuum of Internet prose. In its most elite form, leetspeak features spelling that integrates both letters and numbers to make constant references between everyday life and computer hacking skills. In its most basic and popular form, leetspeak is purely written language slang that has developed through instant messenger and text messages, incorporating a variety of well-known acronyms that replace common phrases.3

Leetspeakers’ attempts to compress maximum amount of information into minimum amount of space slowly developed from acronym to image. Emoticons (characters combined to create visual representations of emotions, o_O for example) became popular, soon followed by “macros,” random images selected carefully to best convey a specific idea. “A direct response to someone’s rant about the coming police state in America may be immediately followed by an image of Captain America crying…communication through images is a powerful way to pass complex ideas back and forth. You see Captain America crying, and you understand a concept that would otherwise take several paragraphs of exposition.”4 Usage of these macros increased quickly, spreading across websites and forums, breaking off into individual categories and subcategories. Elements that might have been considered no more than inside jokes if relayed through face-to-face communications quickly mutated into full-blown subculture. I Can Has Cheezburger revolves around a prime example of this phenomenon, Cat Macros, aptly renamed “LOLcats.”

A compound word that combines “LOL” (a popular leetspeak acronym for “laugh out loud”) and “cat”, a LOLcat can be defined as an image of a cat or kitten paired with a witty caption, combined in an image-editing program such as Photoshop. The captions are oftentimes observations voiced by the cats pictured, and therefore follow a leetspeak-influenced English offshoot all its own. Utilizing wildly incorrect and phonetic spelling, idiosyncratic conjunction, puns, and baby talk, this jargon can be considered a kind of “kitty pidgin,” an over-simplified language that developed as a means of communication between humans and felines.5 While the founders of I Can Has Cheezburger did not create the first cat macros (nor the jargon of Meowchat), the website can definitely be credited with single-handedly creating and recruiting the LOLcats subculture. I Can Has Cheezburger has become synonymous with LOLcats.

On its “about” page, Cheezburger proudly describes itself as “…a site that gathers, organizes, tags, and captions the funniest and entertaining pictures of user-generated lolcats and lol* (other animals) from the Internet”6, and it does just this. Simply organized, Cheezburger is divided into three main sections that relate circularly. “Home” is arranged in the form of an RSS-fed blog, releasing anywhere from 5-10 carefully selected LOLcats daily. The “Lol Builder” consists of an incredibly user-friendly application with which users can easily create and submit their own custom LOLcats to Cheezburger, and “Vote” is a forum section where users have the opportunity to score LOLcat submissions on a scale from 1 to 5 Cheezburgers. The LOLcats with the highest scores in the “Vote” section make up the lucky few that are displayed daily in the “Home” section. While the anonymous Higher Power(s) that run Cheezburger have ultimate say regarding which LOLcats make it onto the main page, the vast majority of power is left to those who actively submit, vote, and view the website. Up to 500 LOLcats are submitted daily, and each is individually inspected and critiqued by hundreds of viewers. The only true editorial slant lies in how participants in the LOLcat subculture define themselves.

The LOLcat subculture as a whole is relatively unique in its sincere non-exclusivity. This subculture is based on a very specific commonality in interest, but there are no preset social or cultural allegiances necessary for a thorough appreciation of LOLcats. While many LOLcats directly reference past LOLcats as well as other famed Internet memes previously and currently in circulation, a full understanding of all references and implications is simply unnecessary to appreciate each macro. In an interview with the Wallstreet Journal, author and LOLcat enthusiast David McRaney acknowledges this fact, musing, “Those ladies who work at the reception desk in your office, they might be sharing these lolcats with their friends, and some of these references, maybe they don’t really get it. But it doesn’t matter. ‘Im in ur fridge eatin your foodz’ is funny to everyone, even if you don’t get the reference.”7 Historically bred from message board communication, LOLcats are in essence collaborations between countless peers, inside jokes that almost anyone can claim part. The widespread appeal of I Can Has Cheezburger has as much to with LOLcat imagery as it does with Internet culture itself.

While the Internet has been extensively utilized to promote the development of far-reaching capitalist globalization, the vast majority of online subcultures are primarily interested in diverting this global network into a tool with which to struggle against its own capitalistic tendencies.8 LOLcats might seem like an unlikely contrivance for rebellion against capitalism, particularly considering the fact that they’re nothing more than cutesy animal snapshots paired with obtusely amusing text. But in its pointless sincerity, LOLcat subculture finds meaning. Lacking in ulterior motive, LOLcats simply aim to coax appreciative giggles from all viewers, hackers, housewives, and businessmen, adults and children alike. By epitomizing whimsical pointlessness, LOLcats help to divert attention from the utilitarian practicality of Web commerce, reminding users of the Internet’s infinite capabilities for visual communication. In this sense, Cheezburger and the LOLcat subculture are unquestionably linked with the Do It Yourself ethos and culture that preaches artistic freedom and open access in the rebellion against capitalism and institutionalized control. Dick Hebdige has famously written that “‘the subcultural response’ is neither simply affirmation nor refusal, neither ‘commercial exploitation’ nor ‘genuine revolt’…It is both a declaration of independence, of otherness, of alien intent, a refusal of anonymity, of subordinate status…And at the same time it is also a declaration of the fact of powerlessness, a celebration of impotence.”9 I Can Has Cheezburger is a key example of this phenomenon; individual LOLcats epitomize trivial and negligible impotence, while I Can Has Cheezburger, simply an immense collection of LOLcats that possesses a massive readership, cannot be associated with insignificance.

Similarly, LOLcats also offer a key example of a subtle attempt at rejecting the dominant association between art and elitism. Institutions and practices labeled ‘high art’ are historically categories of exclusion. While high art certainly acts to encourage a limited amount of artistic specialization, it also manages to discourage and discount society’s more general examples of symbolic creativity, exhausting anything without an official ‘art’ label of its artistic content.10 While LOLcats are hardly considered an example of high art (and fail even to earn the lower status of ‘art’), one cannot deny the creative validity that goes into creating each cat macro. Utilizing the very same programs used by many of today’s contemporary artists, LOLcat creators build images that combine photo and collage techniques often practiced in the contemporary art world. In true DIY form, LOLcats continue to be produced by non-commercial individuals, for value rather than pricetag. LOLcats act as a light rebellion against the commerciality of the art world. In an essay regarding an exhibition organized by Glasgow artists in 1991, Ross Sinclair describes an attitude expressed by DIY artists alike, “Artist initiatives are a valuable way of demystifying the business of art. They promote a sharing of information, skills and experiences while also nurturing relationships between artists that can often become fertile breeding grounds for a horizontal and organically developing infrastructure of cultural activity. They often embrace a desire to communicate with the great unfashionable and unknown quantity, the general public”11. I Can Has Cheezburger is, in it’s own quirky way, an organization that demonstrates many of the attributes Sinclair uses to describe these artist initiatives. Much like the genre of initiative gallery exhibition, images are democratically chosen for Cheezburger’s exhibition space. The LOLcats on display unquestionably affect fellow LOLcat artists, thematic content constantly spreading, mutating, and duplicating horizontally, shifting to encompass an ever-increasing chain of cultural and subcultural references. Furthermore, LOLcats are most certainly created with the intention of communication with the general public.

I Can Has Cheezburger is a collaborative website that is the quirky epitome of DIY culture. A welcoming gallery that democratically displays the best LOLcats for the benefit of everyone, Cheezburger sincerely commemorates the Internet’s underappreciated ability to unite the most unlikely of people. With its potential for communication and camaraderie between an exceedingly infinite variety of participants, the Internet has nurtured this new genre of subculture. The faceless identity of the Internet user marks a decided shift in cross-cultural relationship opportunity. No longer subject to initial evaluations based solely on perceived culture, class, ethnicity, age or career, the Internet allows people the opportunity to forge relationships and associations based purely upon commonality of interest. I Can Has Cheezburger and its legions of LOLcats embrace this cross-cultural opportunity, using cute pictures of cats paired with humorous captions to skillfully bring countless people together. In response to an article that dubbed LOLcats “the latest internet meme…also probably the most stupid,” Eliza from Burlington, Vermont eloquently described LOLcats and Cheezburger, saying, “I really love viewing the icanhascheezburger site…what is the harm in enjoying this? It is innocent humor, it makes me laugh, I ‘awww’ over some of the funny or adorable cats/kittens, and the site can bring a smile to my face even after a horrible day… please don’t belittle the experience for those of us who enjoy it”12. Cheezburger and its LOLcat subculture exhibit subversive implications. But in essence, LOLcats are simple images that miraculously find appreciation with a wide audience, conveying a sentiment of sweet, funny sincerity that is almost impossible to disregard as insignificant.

Endnotes:
1.Mark Henderson, “Scientists: Internet, Chat Room Good for Teenagers”, The Times of London, Fox News, 24 February 2006 , accessed 2 April 2008.
2.Richard Kahn and Douglas Kellner, Internet Subcultures and Oppositional Politics: A critical/reconstructive approach, Cultural Politics, 1, 1 (2005) , accessed 25 March 2008.
3.David McRaney, “A Special In-Depth Analysis by David McRaney – L337 Katz0rz”, I Can Has Cheezburger, 8 May 2007 , accessed 3 April 2008.
4.David McRaney, “A Special In-Depth Analysis by David McRaney – L337 Katz0rz”.
5.Anil Dash, “Cats Can Has Grammar”, Anil Dash: A Blog About Making Culture, 23 April 2007 , accessed 5 April 2008.
6.“About: WTF is going on?”, I Can Has Cheezburger, 11 January 2007 , accessed 5 April 2008.
7.Aaron Rutkoff, “With ‘LOLcats’ Internet Fad, Anyone Can Get In on the Joke”, Time Waster, The Wallstreet Journal, 25 August 2007 , accessed 7 April 2008.
8.Richard Kahn and Douglas Kellner, Internet Subcultures and Oppositional Politics: A critical/reconstructive approach, Cultural Politics, 1, 1 (2005) , accessed 25 March 2008.
9.Dick Hebdige, Hiding in the Light, Routledge, London, New York, 1988.
10.Paul Willis (with Simon Jones, Joyce Canaan and Geoff Hurd), Common Culture: Symbolic work at play in the everyday cultures of the young, Open University Press, 1990.
11.John Calcut, “There + Then”. In Katrina Brown and Rob Tuffnell (Ed.), Scottish Art 1990 – 2001 (p 19). Dundee Contemporary Anthology, 2001.
12.Tom Whitwell, Microtrends: LOLcats, The Times Online, 2 May 2007 <>, accessed 9 April 2008.