I Can Has Cheezburger?
 | |
Type of site | Blog |
|---|---|
| Owner | Ben Huh, Pet Holdings Inc.[1] |
| Created by | Eric Nakagawa and Kari Unebasami |
| Revenue | Advertisement |
| URL | http://www.icanhascheezburger.com |
I Can Has Cheezburger? (ICHC for short) is the name of a blog featuring lolcats and other animals. It was created by Eric Nakagawa (Cheezburger), a blogger from Hawaii and his partner, Kari Unebasami (Tofuburger). The website is one of the most popular lolcat sites on the internet,[2] receiving as many as 1,500,000 hits per day.[3] [4] ICHC was instrumental in bringing animal based image macros and lolspeak into mainstream usage.[5]
According to TIME Magazine, the website was acquired by a group of investors in September 2007 for US $2 million. [6][7]
ICHC was created on January 11, 2007, when Nakagawa posted an image from Something Awful of a smiling grey cat, known as Happycat, with a caption of the cat asking, "I can has cheezburger?" in a style popularized by 4chan. It is from this image that the site derives its name. After posting similar images, Nakagawa then converted the site to a blog.[4]
Content
ICHC's content is submitted by the site's readers, and hosts "the cheezburger factory", a lolcat builder that allows users to create their own lolcats. The number of submissions has risen dramatically with the growth of the site. In July 2007, ICHC received as many as 500 submissions per day.[8] By January 2008, the average was over 9000.[5] Only about a dozen or so submissions per day are posted to the website,[2] while updates are timed to coincide with when readers are most likely to be visiting the site - morning, lunch time and evenings.[4] As of early 2008, ICHC gets about 2 million page views per day.[9]
The site attempts to maintain a community feel, encouraging interactivity with readers via a voting system where users can rate an image from one to five "cheezburgers", and through running themes as one image will spawn responses into a running narrative. According to Nakagawa, "It's like you're creating a story supplied by people in the community, and then the people in the community supply the next part of the story."[4] ICHC also hosts a wiki called "The Lolspeak Wiki" designed to be a collection of key lolspeak phrases.
Popular trends on the ICHC website for captioning have included: 'ceiling cat', 'basement cat', the 'itteh bitteh kitteh committeh', invisible [something], the walrus and his 'bukkit', fail (now moved to a separate blog), 'nom' (as in eating), references to cheeseburgers, 'doin something right/wrong', 'monorail kitteh', and 'oh hai'.
Image creation services
LOL Builder
The LOL Builder is the captioning program used to make most of the captions for the ICHC, I Has a Hotdog, FailBlog, ROFL Razzi and Pundit Kitchen sites. Using the LOL Builder requires uploading a picture to caption, or choosing one of the already uploaded images provided. Then, the picture must be captioned with one of the three builders.
With the Basic Builder, the image is captioned by placing a certain size, font, and color of text on the top, middle, or bottom of the photo. Different styles, effects, and opacity values can also be applied. With the Advanced Builder, the same text formatting is used, but the text can be placed in more specific areas of the image by using a text box. Both the title and the subtitle can use a specific font, style, and color. Once the caption is finished, it is either saved on a URL or added to the user's account, if they have one. Other users can then view the "LOL" by using the URL, or the LOL can be saved to a user account, where other users can view the LOL from the the creator's page. Also, if the LOL has been saved to an account, it has a possibility of making it to one of the site's front pages.
Poster builder
A service is available on the site for creating an image mimicking a motivational poster, or de-motivational depending on the content added to the image. Pictures created with this builder consist of a title and a subtitle beneath the image, with a surrounding black border.
Breaking News Builder
Creating images mimicking a breaking news report is also possible using the Breaking News Builder. It consists of a title, which is "Breaking News" by default, and the headline, at the bottom of the image.
Graph Builder
For the site GraphJam, users can use the Graph Builder to make bar/line graphs, venn diagrams and pie charts. For pie charts, you can adjust the size of each 'slice' and change colors and their names on the legend.
Look Alike Builder
This is used for the site Totally Looks Like. Here, the user can choose two pictures of people that seem to resemble each other.
Fonts
The computer typing font Impact is used in almost every picture on all the I Can Has Cheezburger websites, and has even gone as far as to be attempted to be replicated in an oil painting representation of the original "Happy cat" (the original lolcat to say "I Can Has Cheezburger?") on the ICHC website. This use of the font stems from it being the default font on the site's Lolcat Builder, but many people creating lolcats in other software have used the same font to make it more traditional to the content of I Can Has Cheezburger. Other standard fonts are available for use as well on the builder.
Spin-off sites and projects
A network of related sister sites has developed alongside ICHC:
- "I Has a Hotdog", which follows the same themes as ICHC but predominantly features dogs.
- "Roflrazzi", making fun of celebrities in general and showing pictures of funny things in show business.
- "Totally Looks Like", which matches celebrities and famous people with humorous animals, other people, cartoons, and others.
- "Pundit Kitchen", which pokes fun at news, politics, and politicians, and also features fierce political debate by commenters.
- "Graph Jam" featuring humorous office graphs such as line graphs, Venn diagrams, bar graphs and pie charts
- "FAILblog", containing pictures and videos of blatant stupidity or incompetence with captions involving the words "[Epic] Fail" prominently. "Owned", and "Pwned" have been used periodically, but the site itself no longer advertises its support of these images, as they are no longer featured prominently.
- "Engrish Funny", supplying pictures of humorous foreign translation errors.
- "Once Upon a Win", featuring nostalgic success of products, people, TV shows and movies. The post subject is supplemented by informational text and videos showing its use, parodies, advertisements, etc. Content is often quoted from Wikipedia and videos from YouTube demonstrating the uses of the product/style in question. Every Friday a "Friday Fail" will feature a failed attempt at a hit product.
- "140pedia", which contains humorous definitions of encyclopedic terms, each of which is written in 140 characters or less.
In addition to sites, ICHC has recently spawned a book publishing deal with Penguin/Gotham to produce "I Can Has Cheezburger?: A LOLcat Colleckshun" available for sale at The Book's Official Website and released widely on October 7, 2008. A browser toolbar was created shortly after.
The site was also the inspiration for LOLCODE, a computer programming language.
See also
References
- ^ benhuh!com
- ^ a b Rutkoff, Aaron (2007-08-25). "With 'LOLcats' Internet Fad, Anyone Can Get In on the Joke". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2008-02-13.
- ^ Huh, Ben (2008-03-09). "SXSW 2008 Panel LOLWUT? Why Do I Keep Coming Back to This Website?". Rocketboom. Retrieved 2008-03-16.
- ^ a b c d Tozzi, John (2007-07-13). "Bloggers Bring in the Big Bucks". Business Week. Retrieved 2008-02-13.
- ^ a b Steel, Sharon (2008-02-01). "The cuteness surge". The Phoenix. Retrieved 2008-02-13.
- ^ Grossman, Lev (2008-07-09). "The Master of Memes". TIME. Retrieved 2008-07-11.
- ^ Moses, Asher (2008-07-18). "Huh? He's a weird burger and a net cult". Sydney Morning Herald.
- ^ Grossman, Lev (2007-07-12). "Creating a Cute Cat Frenzy". Time Magazine. Retrieved 2008-02-13.
- ^ Wortham, Jenna (2008-04-25). "Behind the Memes: Kickin' It With the I Can Has Cheezburger? Kids". Wired Magazine. Retrieved 2008-05-08.