LOLcats

[futabachan]

I've come to the conclusion that the whole lolcats craze is really a sneaky way for (straight) men (in the dominant culture) to justify squeeing at cute kitty pictures. After all, if there's a geeky joke caption, it's geeky guy humour, and not just an adorable little kitty to coo over in an inappropriately girly way....

Comments

[beaq]

My favorite example of the same principle at work:

http://xkcd.com/c231.html

[epi_lj]

Wait, what?

The seems like an odd assessment, given that the vast majority of LOLcats fans I know are either female or not straight. The one straight guy I can think of on my friends list who is really into LOLcats was really into unlabelled cute-kitty photos anyway and often posted links to Cute Overload and so on.

Is it possible, as an alternate theory, that it's just a combination of cute+funny that people like?

[futabachan]

Well, if that's true, that would blow large holes in that theory. I've mostly seen links to lolcats from straight 20-something gamer d00dz, with a couple from my friendslist (which has a much less straight and much more female bent).

[tedesson]

I think it's pretty acceptable for straight guys to go gooey over their (cat|dog) child substitutes. It's a lot more acceptable than for them to go gooey over high school girls, for example.

I don't get the geek part of it much, but then the first one I ever saw was this one:

http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/Ceiling_cat