I’m officially a lolcats expert (and a fluent French speaker, to boot!):

Invasion de chats mal embouchés sur le web

My Aussie friend Kat had it translated with babelfish, with some hilarious results:

Invasion of cats badly embouchés on the Web

Nicolas Ritoux, special collaboration
September 25, 2007 – 08h42

Did you receive these laughing images of cats in new positions, decorated of a poorly spelled English legend? They are called the “Lolcats” (all stupidly, “cats which make laugh”). The phenomenon took as well width as they are now million, increasing the ones on the others to create one of these long “running planetary gags”, called “even” whose Internet has the secrecy.

New images of these “lolcats” are added tous.les.jours in sites like iCanHasCheezburger.com sent by courriel to the friends and colleagues.

One does not weary any more these photographs of cats to the humanized remarks. Does a cat open large the mouth by tightening its legs? The legend indicates “invisible Sandwich”. Another does the depths seem lost in of a sofa? It shouts with the assistance so that one left it from there.

But the “lolcats” are not right animals put in situations the human ones. They have a very technological side, which returns some their jokes difficult to include/understand. And due, they draw from the depths of the subcultures of Internet, the forums of clavardage to the video games on line, where one speaks the “leet” (or “l33t”), a kind of technological Creole born from Internet.

As in these more or less √©litistes places where the language holds place of cultural membership, Lolcats speak in “ur” (your), in “teh” (the), in “mah” (my), combine the first nobody with the third (“I edge haz” instead of “Edge I cuts”) and finish all their plurals in Z.

One of the latest to date: the famous photograph Stephen To grip cherishing its cat, diffused on its Web site, transformed into “lolcat” on the blogist Torontoist. COM: “I’ m in ur house, snugglin ur PM”, known as the legend (I am in your house, in the train of c√¢liner your Prime Minister). It is the grammatical construction most run to the “lolcats”; it is inherited the video games on line when an unfavourable player exclaims for example “I am in your base stealing your flag”.

A “idea-virus”

“What is most interesting in it, it is to know that you form part of the gang which included/understood! joke Sylvain Carle, a contractor Web of Montreal and specialist in emergent technologies. That combines at the same time pussies very cute with sentences used for a long time to joke in the rooms of clavardage. That makes these jokes accessible to more people.”

One really does not know where this history started. All which one is sure, it is that it acts again “even”. What “same”? It is a recurring gag of Internet, which evolves/moves at any speed by multiplying allusions to itself. If the first episodes are missed, one is foutu. Reason moreover to appreciate to form part of those which include/understand.

“” same “, it is a shared vision of the world, indicates Sylvain Carle. It is an idea which takes the form of a virus and which retorts itself, on the basis of a handle of initiates until reaching whole planet.”

Example of replication of very “the lolcat”: a cat taking a sandwich in its hands, of which the legend known as: “visible Sandwich”. If one missed the joke of the “invisible sandwich”, one missed the train.

Hardly appeared, already last of mode

“the lolcats leave a long tradition likewise, but they became particularly famous because they are nice and does not require technological knowledge to be included/understood, indicates Kate Raynes-Goldie, enquiring of Toronto specialized in the cyber-culture. At the beginning, they referred to obscure references of Japanese video games, but maintaining the joke evolved to more human things to which everyone can stick.”

But when the “same one” becomes too popular and too accessible, it is there that he dies. “In Expo Web 2.0 in San Francisco, last spring, it was the large trick. But now that one speaks about it in the media general practitioners, it is inevitably the end, analyzes Sylvain Carle. It will be taken again soon by an unspecified publicity campaign and it will be the fatal blow.”

A site to create your clean “lolcat”: http://wigflip.com/roflbot.

(Next post is deleting Facebook, part 2. I promise!)