I can haz column? Yes, LOLcat, yes you may haz column. Even though my last two columns have been about music, I thought it was time for a change of pace, so here's something that everyone can relate to. Take your pants off, grab a glass of Shiraz and settle in for some of the most cerebral reading you're going to do this semester.
Let's begin with a simple statement: LOLcats are massively more important to modern media than most think. Or at least they're more important than I thought they were a few months ago.
While having breakfast with my parents, with whom I still live during the summer (I'm REALLY cool), I was looking for a box of cereal and, stuck in my school routine, remarked, "I can haz Bunches of Oats, plzkthx?"
The fact I said that is pretty sad in itself, but it gets better. My mom answers with, "we had Bunches, but we ated them." WTF? My mom knowing my generation's lingo FTL.
What the hell is my mother, a 58 year-old, kinda-still-with-it person, doing with the knowledge of a meme that is almost exclusively shared amongst people of my generation? Don't you need a permit for that or something?
But let's think about it. Over the past year, the cultural phenomena that is LOLcats has been featured on the AOL welcome page, plastered on the pages of The New York Times, and more importantly, sent via a link to nearly anyone who has an e-mail account.
Even if your crazy aunt, who still thinks the Internet is a complex series of tubes (it actually is, look it up), gets a link to a LOLcat, she knows what a cat is, and can piece together syntactically what exactly the cat is trying to get across. But in the process your beloved aunt has done something terrible, something beyond words.
Okay maybe not.
The best thing about LOLcats in relation to the general Internet and text lingo that has taken over of late (hint: can u rd ths? Think b4 u type lke this, 4 yr own sake), is that it has this new grammar in a laughable position. As an English major and someone who has the ability to type at a normal rate without difficult abbreviations, I'm relieved to see pre-teen AOL lingo assigned to cats. If something that poops in a box, chases its own tail and is fascinated by a flashlight on the wall speaks in this language, do humans really need to use it?
I speak for myself, and hopefully many more, when I say this: When I get a text, IM, or email that contains "u," "yr," "OMG," or "awsum," I immediately assume I'm talking to a LOLcat, and I will treat the sender as such.
Furthermore, in a world where grammar rules have been thrown by the wayside, it's nice in general to have a reminder that animals speak using improper verb forms.
By this point in time (right now) LOLcats have fallen by the wayside of Internet memes, but they will be remembered for all that they have done for those of the feline persuasion. In truth, they just reminded us all that cats can't speak English. But they can try and fail humorously.
Punchline: unless you have retractable claws and can lick your own butt, take the time to practice proper English; otherwise you're no better to the world than your complacent cat. Also, if you have either of those features, call me?
