is it lolcats, memecats, or cat macros?

[rxw]

I have trashed three drafts about lolcats. I was doomed to fail because trying to explain why one finds something funny is a losing proposition; one ends up looking like a moron (get any fan of the Three Stooges to explain why it's funny and you'll see what I mean).

But I'll try anyway: lolcats appeals to me because it's a fascinating intersection between language and technology. The funny part comes from takeitez's post about pets; [e]xcept cats are almost totally silent, so it's much more amusing.

1. Language. Grammar and spelling errors used to reliably drive me insane until I had a conversation with a cunning linguist at zeitgeist. She was very sympathetic to my rant, but as I wound down, she gently posited that written language has and always will be secondary to spoken language. That the thing to keep in mind above all else is that we are trying to communicate. Sure (she went on to say), good spelling and grammar are important. But written communication now more than ever has this quality of disposability; we're not taking the care to write for the ages. Instead, we're telling a friend to bring a dozen large rubber bands, nitrile gloves, KY jelly, and goggles to the park behind the mortuary. Other writers have suggested that lolcatspeak is a kind of pidgin; they are wrong. lolcatspeak is fucking baby talk. Pidgin is what people speak to each other if they have no common language; words are strung together ad hoc. The children of these pidgin speakers speak creole; it takes less than one generation for pidgin (which has no grammar rules) to become creole (which is a complete language).
2. Technology. lolcats can only exist because of the network. AOL offered everyone, even the unsophisticated, the opportunity to get online; so they post pictures of their pets. And when a third of the bits represented by voltage differences or light pulses (or even other media) are pictures of cats, it is inevitable that the collective boredom of computer users will produce something with it.
3. Captions. I will assert that cats do not speak; I understand this is contrary to opinion and may result in some retribution from the FADL (Feline Anti Defamation League), but wtf are they going to do? Do they even exist? What I'm trying to say here is, the anthropomorphizality of domesticated animals ensures hilarity ensual.

In any case, here's my entry to the canon: