Image Macros: Intro to LOL Cats

I've long been interested in Image Macros, which are best described as web based images with text superimposed on them. Okay, that's a poor description. Here's an example:

Image Macros apparently started as web forum responses -- a way to respond to a message with an image containing some embedded textual content (the image at left says "Oh Really?"), rather than typing a response. But, like many things on the web, things get out of hand quickly: there are many subgenres which continue to evolve daily.

This week I'll explore some common forms of Image Macros. First up: LOL Cats are Image Macros featuring cats, and boy are there a lot of them. In general, they anthropomorphize the cat in the photo, sometimes using purposely bad grammar (conjugation seems to be a real problem for the cats) or web-speak. Here's an example of a LOL Cat that kicked off its own subgenre:

Many more after the jump.

There are many varieties of LOL Cats (which are themselves a subgenre of Image Macros), and we'll explore some major forms starting tomorrow. But for now, here's a selection of classics (at least, classics to me):

Some of these images are snagged from I Can Has Cheezburger, a blog which catalogs all forms of LOL Cats (the blog is named after this image). Many others come from flightpad.net. You'll see more of the grammar weirdness/web-speak later this week.

This article is part of a series. Read the rest:

• Image Macros: Intro to LOL Cats
• Image Macros: "Invisible" LOL Cats
• LOL Cats: I Can Has Cheezburger
• Image Macros: I'm in Your X, Y'ing Your Z
• Image Macros: Oddballs and Advanced Forms