Teh Hisstory of LOLcats: How silly kitties conquered the internet, one cheezburger at a time

Chapter 1: The Victorian era

When cats first became comedy legends (1870s - 1900s)

Long before the first meme was uploaded, before the first dial-up modem screeched, several feline fanatic photographers were already making a living doing something that today is purrfeclty commonplace: photographing cats in ridiculous situations and adding funny captions. The most notable ones are Harry Whittier Frees and Harry Pointer. 

During the 1870s, Pointer debuted his one-of-a-kind series of photographs known as the Brighton Cats. These Victorian-era felines were posed in amusing scenes and given captions that encouraged viewers to imagine what the animals might be thinking.

Hmmmm… doesn't that sound furrmiliar?

A few decades later, Harry Whittier Frees continued on Pointer's work by photographing kittens and puppies dressed in tiny hooman outfits. They did everything from learning meowthmatics to baking cakes, purrticipating in everyday hooman activities.

The technology was different, but the formula was the same: take a cute cat, give it an adorably human purrsonality, and let people's imaginations run free. Even back then, it was a home run for laughter. They might not have had a share button, but seeing as they made their careers from these pictures, I'd say that they certainly understood the appeal of cats acting like people.

Chapter 2: The prehistoric internet

Motivational kitties and the dawn of catposting (1970s - early 2000s)

Fasten your seatbelts because we're fast-forwarding about one century later. Both comedy and technology have gotten a serious upgrade, and some people consider the image above the first cat meme.

In the 1970s, a photograph of a kitten dangling from a branch became the basis of the iconic Hang in there, baby motivational poster. It checks all the boxes of what makes a cat meme a cat meme: an awwdorable kitty, a relatable hooman emotion, and a caption that we, the audience, can identify with.

Many people recreated this poster with their own cats, and it was even mentioned on an episode of The Simpsons in 1997. This was an impurrtant ancestor of what we would eventually recognize as the meowdern LOLcat.

Now we're catching up to our childhood, where purrsonal computers and the internet became more accessible. In the 1990s and 2000s, cat pictures began circulating across the internet like wildfire through email chains, forums, and early websites. The feline fascination was spreading, and humanity was only one technological breakthrough away from surrendering the entire internet to our whiskered overlords.

Chapter 3: Caturday

The sacred Caturday tradition (2005-2006)

Can you feel the tension building?

Around 2005, members of 4chan (an anonymous imageboard site) began purrticipating in the curious weekly ritual we now know as Caturday. The concept was simple: Saturdays are for cats, thus coining the famous term we use every weekend when we want to do nothing but bed-rot with our kitties. It spread across the interwebz like a cat spraying litter out from their litter box, becoming pawpular on other forum sites like Something Awful and MySpace.

Users shared pictures of felines doing what felines do best: being adorable little weirdos, demanding attention, and generally demonstrating a complete disregard for hooman desires and dignity. A lot of these pictures (like above) had oversized captions written in purposefully mangled English. And thus (how many times will I get to use “thus” in this article?) a new internet language was born.

Lolspeak.

“The” became “teh," kittens became “kittehs," setting the stage for our future famous cat to want his cheezburger in his hisstorically memorable way. The age of of the LOLcat had finally arrived.

Chapter 4: The cheezburger that changed everything (2007)

On January 11, 2007, Eric Nakagawa and Kari Unebasami launched a little website called I Can Has Cheezburger?. The inspiration is yours truly, a photograph of a round-faced, smiling happy accompanied by one of the most influential questions in internet history.

I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?

They didn't invent funny cat pictures, or lolspeak, but they did recognize that these pictures deserved a place to call home. Cat memes cheered them up, and they thought that if something so simple and silly could cheer them up, then maybe this quickly growing meowvement would be something that could bring joy to the whole world.

Chapter 5: The golden age

When teh kittehs took over (2007 - 2010)

The popularity of I Can Has Cheezburger didn't just introduce people to funny cats, it helped create an entire feline universe. There were cats that rode invisible bicycles, eated ur cookies, and edited ur wiki pages. It was absurd, adorable, and pawsitively unstoppable.

Time magazine reported that, in July 2007, I Can Has Cheezburger received between 200 - 500 meme submissions every day. By 2008, Ben Huh (the then CEO) was reporting 8,000 user submissions and 2,000,000 page views daily.

Lolcats had officially become a full-blown cultural phenomenon. Of course, we had no doubt that this would happen. This caused Cheezburger to expand into the brilliant brands you know today - FailBlog, Memebase, Animal Comedy, and yours truly, I Can Has Cheezburger?.

Chapter 6: Lolspeak

The language that made cats internet intellectuals

I would be doing a disservice to feline scholarship if I ignored one of the most meowrvelous achievements of the LOLcat movement: lolspeak. The chaos was part of its charm, even if it was nearly impawssible to read at certain points. The internet finally gave cats a voice, and just like cats, it was 100% unique. Innocent, demanding, slightly confoosed, and convinced they possessed supreme authority over not only your household, but the whole world.

It was not merely bad spelling - it was a shared cultural language that. made people feel like they belonged to the same wonderfully weird community. And I love that for us.

Some relevant examples (or reminders, depending on how old you are) can be:

The = Teh
I have = I haz
Kitten = Kitteh
Please = Plz
I'm in your house = I'm in ur house (last one is a little strange, but you had to be there to get it)

Chapter 7: Beyond teh cheezburger

The evolution of internet cats (2010s - 2020s)

As the internet evolved, so did the way we worshipped cats. Felines were now starting to pop off as internet celebrities all around the world! With the rise of videos, reaction memes, and cats entering mainstream media, we started to see icons like Grumpy Cat steal the spotlight for themselves.

But if you look closer at meowdern cat memes, you'll notice something furrmiliar: the absurdness, the ridiculous language, and the hooman emotions attached to fluffy feline faces all remind us of the original LOLcats. In other words, our feline ancestors waddled so the cats of today can zoomie all across people's purrsonal feeds.

A final word from your expurrt hisstorian (me)

The greatest legacy of LOLcats is why we're still laughing

Friends, we've officially reached the end of our hisstory lesson. It's been almost 20 years since I Can Has Cheezburger launched, and a lot has changed, but also, a lot hasn't. But that's a topic for a different article.

Why was the LOLcat phenomenon so impurrtant? Wasn't it just a collection of silly cat pictures on the internet?

No!

LOLcats helped make internet humor accessible to everyone: you didn't need professional photography equipment or a comedy writing background to purrticiapte. All you needed was a cat, a camera, and a delightfully clawful grasp of the English language. And even more important than that is that it demonstrated that humor could bring complete strangers together through their love for cats. 

In the digital world of today, where people disagree about purractically everything, cats have offered us a shared source of silliness, comfort, and connection. We hope that this is one of the things that never changes in all of hooman history.

The scholarly verdict of this I Can Has Cheezburger hisstorian? LOLcats isn't just the story of how cats conquered the interwebz, it's how we discovered an entirely new way to laugh together. So, can you has cheezburger?

Yes, sweet kitteh, you can has cheezburger. You've earned it (metaphorically, of course. Please keep actual cheeseburgers out of your cat's dinner plans).

Fun fact!

We here at I Can Has Cheezburger still keep the tradition of LOLcats alive! You can still submit your own, home-brewed cat memes easily through the meme-generator on our website. We feature new ones every week on Caturday, so if you want to show off your funny bones and your hissterical kitty, then we highly encourage you to do so! 

Have a purrfectly pawsome day!