LOLcats

I had been hearing a lot about some phenomenon called LOLcats over the blogosphere, so I went to my trusty Wikipedia link to find out what this was all about. I could sort of tell it had something to do with some sort of weird netspeak (read: poor grammar). But after reading through the entire article on LOLcats and even clicking on all the links and going to the supporting websites and seeing several actual examples of said LOLcats, I have to admit this is one web phenomenon that I just can't wrap my mind around. How about you kids?

LOLcats definition: An image combining a photograph, most frequently a cat, with a humorous and idiosyncratic caption in (often) broken English—a dialect which is known as "lolspeak", or "Kitteh". The name "lolcat" is a compound word of "LOL" and "cat". Lolcats are created for photo sharing imageboards and other internet forums. Lolcats are similar to other anthropomorphic animal-based image macros such as the O RLY? owl.

I know, I know. Now it's all perferctly clear, right? Here's more history:

There are several well-known lolcat images and single-word captions that have spawned many variations and imitations, including "Ceiling Cat" and "Basement Cat" which have become the lolcat equivalents of God and Satan, respectively. Others include "I can has Cheezburger," "monorail cat," "I [verb]ed you a [noun], but I eated it", "hover cat", "Oh Hai I upgraded your RAM," "WANT", "DO NOT WANT!," "Fail", "Nom Nom Nom" (used for eating), "Halp!", "Invisible [object]", "Proceed," and "Pew pew pew" for shooting. A related phenomenon uses photos of an elephant seal("lolrus") on the search for a blue bucket ("bukkit").

Such astounding clarity. And now for some examples:

Don't ask me why......