Y ou are browsing the Internet, checking Facebook, tweeting on Twitter, watching a video on YouTube, when all of a sudden, you see a kitteh, asking if he can haz cheezburger. Of course you say yes after seeing a picture of a cat sitting in a bowl saying, âif it fits I sits.â These days, it is impossible to go online without seeing âlolcatzâ somewhere. I have spent months just looking at cats. When I first stumbled upon them, I thought, âWow! These cats sure are cute.â Eventually I got sick of them, but even the smallest doses of something can lead to an addiction. Do you want to know what it is like to be high on cats? Go to www.omgcatsinspace.tumblr.com and you will know. I fell into relapse and began looking online for more kittehs. Before I heard of Reddit.com, I saw the occasional cat photo or meme. But on Reddit, I feel like Iâm living in ancient Egypt, where cats ruled the world and humans were their slaves. â Cats are undeniably the most inane and obsessive infatuation the internet has ever known,â senior Charlie Rathe said. âCats are an overused yet underappreciated part of the Internet.â It is almost impossible to browse Redditâs front page without finding a picture of the cutest cat youâve ever seen. Why is this? âWhy wouldnât cats be popular on the Internet? They are so cute and fuzzy!â junior Hyeon âI suck at League of Legendsâ Kang said. â I’m sure if you traced the origin of the word "meme" back to its roots, cats would certainly be one of the earliest known uses of the definition we hold now,â Rathe said. âCats are important in that they have perpetuated themselves into the internet because they helped MAKE the internet.â Itâs difficult to think of an Internet without cats. You donât have to be a cat lover to realize the impact that cats have made to the Internet. Many other memes have sparked into existence because of cats. People used to take cat pictures and add silly text to it to make it a funny meme. Now, people can take pictures of anything to make it a potentially popular meme. Cat memes are the predecessors to popular memes such as College Freshman, Insanity Wolf, Scumbag Steve etc. Cats are connected to the internet in that cats are the simplest form of internet culture, and embody the first sparks of "memeism" which is considered an integral part of E-culture today.
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Cats, a Necessary Part of the Internet?
Alex Qin
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April 5, 2012
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