The Meme Textbook Part 2: The Language of the Internet | Seite 8

Longcat
Cat memes have been popular since the begin-
ning of the Internet and continue to be gen-
erated into the present. An older meme is
“Longcat” which is an image of a cat being
held so that it’s body is extended. The original
photo of “Longcat,” first appeared on 2chan
around 2004. (Fig. 8) The cat, named Shiroi,
was considered to have an unusually long body
by the internet community and the meme’s
popularity grew in 2006. It infiltrated popu-
lar culture when it was featured on the show
Tim And Eric on Adult Swim in 2007. There
was also a single serving website with just an
image of “Longcat.” It became a popular icon
to be used offline as well, such as scarves made
up of the cat’s body and snowmen of long-
cats. “Longcat” memes often parodied the cat’s
apparent size, such as a comparison chart with
the world’s largest buildings or over a city as if
it was a monster about to destroy the city. Also
popular was extremely long images where the
cat’s body would be extened through multi-
ple backgrounds, often the sky or space. Since
2007, it has become an obsolete meme.
Nyan Cat
“Nyan Cat” or poptart cat was a meme that
rose to popularity in 2011. It was a simple 8-bit
.gif of a cat with a poptart body flying through
space. (Fig. 9) A video was posted on Youtube
with the looping gif backed by a Vocaloid song
which repeated the word ‘nyan’ over and over.
There were a number of games made using the
nyan cat as a protagonist, as well as a number
of computer extensions which replaced loading
bars with a nyan cat followed by a rainbow. The
combination of annoyance and cuteness made
this meme an immediate success although it
was short lived and no longer popular by 2012.
fig. 8
fig. 9
8 | Part Two: The Language of the Internet