Many people in the world have pet cats and seem to think that cats are funny. A lot of materials regarding cat humor can be found in the television and the internet and this ranges from videos of cats to joke books. The popularity of cats is further evidenced by the advent of an internet culture based off cat humor.
What humans find comical about cats is the way these domestic animals mimic human activities in a poorly executed manner. In an activity such as standing in front of a mirror, cats react very differently from humans. A typical reaction is one where a cat, out of curiosity, walks towards the mirror gingerly, only to be scared by their own reflection and jumping away from the mirror quickly. The cat’s fearful reception towards the mirror provides much of the laughter for humans. In order to spread the amusement cats bring, many funny cat actions have been caught on video.
Funny videoes are not the only form of cat humor. Recently, photos of cats in a funny pose coupled with a caption have been uploaded by many users. These digitally altered images, known as “lolcat”, often portrays the cat as having human habits or controlling modern technology. The name comes from the internet slang abbreviation “lol”, which means to “laugh out loud”. Internet users would use the abbreviation when they come across something funny.
How would a typical lolcat look like? Image editors have successfully taken pictures of cats stretching out while standing on their hind legs. Coupled with a humorous caption associated with rock and roll, the domesticated pet is dramatically transformed into a rock star. While it adds to the humor, the photograph of the cat need not be unusual. A picture of a cat sitting around could become hilarious when the right caption is included.
The language of the captions plays a part in creating the humor. Ungrammatical, misspelled English parodied off internet slang is often the language of choice. This language has been termed “lolspeak” or “kitty pidgin”. A guide on how to use kitty pidgin has even been written on the internet.
The rules of lolspeak is highly dependent on grammatical errors. This would include inaccurate usage of the verb “to be”, or using the wrong tenses in a sentence. Words could be rearranged so that regular English sentence structure is ignored.
Lolspeak also consists of deliberate misspelling. Consonants such as s and z can be used interchangeably, and a common misspelling “teh” is often used in replacement of “the”. In addition, lots of exclamation marks could be used in a single sentence, as well as using different internet abbreviations together in one word.
Funny cat video. have been around for a long time, but lolcat is a recent cultural sensation that has appeared several times in news feature. Other common pets have also been added to the “lol” bandwagon. Books has been inspired by lolcat and even the bible has been translated into lolspeak. The attention cats have managed to garner seems to show a consensus that cats are funny.
