Play’s Republic

So, as I went through my (occasionally multiple-times) daily perusing of icanhascheezburger a little bit ago, I found a nicely done article analyzing some of the sociology of these cat-macro images. It traced all sorts of aspects, including why they are called ‘macros’ (they originated on message boards as an image which served as a shortcut for some sort of response, high-bandwidth emoticons, as it were)

His analysis here, my comments to follow…

I think his analysis is great, and this image in particular. He traces a linguistic tree of how he feels that the language and grammar of lolcat images evolved, from english, to netspeak, to image macros, to the specific patters of the cat images, and then to the derivatives of those.

I also noticed that, although it is unstated, he takes somewhat of the same approach that we must when studying and discussing play. A key feature must be removed from the discussion before a reasonable discussion can even take place. Play must be discussed without a discussion of why/if it is fun, and a discussion of lolcats must happen without any discussion of why/if they are funny. In a discussion of how they work, the most obvious function must be removed.

Just a thought.