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LOLCats, a Storied History Spanning a Century

by Leila Brillson on December 9, 2009 at 09:20 AM

Gather around, all you Internet wanderers, for a little story of a cat and a cheezburger. Once upon a time, a young entrepreneur took a fat gray cat and put, in a sans serif font like Arial or Impact, the words "I CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER." Thus, a meme was born. But, as Mental Floss points out, the world of laughter and cats has been closely intertwined since the turn of the century. The gray cat, since dubbed 'Happy Cat,' was posted in early 2007, but image board troublemakers 4Chan started Cat Saturdays (known as Caturday) -- a day to post ridiculous pictures of cats to offset the depravity of the site -- around 2005. Though not a feline, Oolong the Bunny was discovered in 2000, spurring the hilarious meme, "I have no idea what you are talking about, so here's a picture of a bunny with a pancake on his head."

Despite the mockingly hilarious Laugh-Out-Loud cats (and their made-up history dating them to 1912-1913), Mental Floss has pointed out an early, real LOLcat that appeared in a 1929 issue of Parents Magazine. The image depicts a histrionic cat "laughing" with the caption, "Ha, Ha, Ha, It must be so!" The idea behind the photograph was to have it hang in the nursery, effectively terrifying children away from ever owning felines. While 1929 seems like a long time ago to be LOLing at cats, photographer Harry Whittier Frees, says Neatorama, took small animals and dressed them up in ridiculous clothes as early as 1903. Employed by Rotograph, a popular postcard company, Frees often added his own captions, like "How's the weather out?" or "What's delaying my dinner?" (Too bad cheeseburgers weren't even invented then!). As Frees, erm, matured, he created more costumes and relied less on punchlines, which can be seen in his later, William Wegman-style work. It seems his most LOL-worthy material was produced between 1903-1906, before he turned into a creepy cat person.

So there you have it, the history of LOLcats seems to originate from Harry Wittier Frees and his bizarre way of documenting animals, from his initial work with Rotograph to his own photography. Perhaps today, he would indeed has a flavor. [From: Mental Floss, via Boing Boing, One More River, Neatorama, and Techland]

Tags: Cats, history, humor, LOL, lolcats, meme, memes, photography, top

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