![CatLolCatExample](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/CatLolCatExample.jpg)
I Can Has Cheezburger? (abbreviated as ICHC) is a
blog
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order s ...
-format website featuring videos (usually involving animals) and
image macros. It was created in 2007 by
Eric Nakagawa (Cheezburger), from
Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only state ...
, and his friend Kari Unebasami (Tofuburger). The website was one of the most popular Internet sites of its kind receiving as many as 1,500,000 hits per day at its peak in May 2007.
ICHC was instrumental in bringing animal-based
image macros and
lolspeak
A lolcat (pronounced ), or LOLcat, is an image macro of one or more cats. Lolcat images' idiosyncratic and intentionally grammatically incorrect text is known as lolspeak.
Lolcat is a compound word of the acronymic abbreviation LOL (laugh ou ...
into mainstream usage and making
Internet memes
An Internet meme, commonly known simply as a meme ( ), is an idea, behavior, style, or image that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. What is considered a meme may vary across different communities on the Internet ...
profitable.
ICHC was created on January 11, 2007, when Nakagawa posted an image from comedy website
Something Awful
''Something Awful'' (SA) is an American comedy website hosting content including blog entries, Internet forum, forums, feature articles, digitally edited pictures, and humorous media reviews. It was created by Richard Kyanka, Richard "Lowtax" K ...
of a smiling
British Shorthair
The British Shorthair is the pedigreed version of the traditional British domestic cat, with a distinctively stocky body, dense coat, and broad face. The most familiar colour variant is the "British Blue", with a solid grey-blue coat, orange eyes, ...
cat, known as Happycat, with a caption of the animal asking, "I can has cheezburger?" in a style popularised by
4chan
4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from anime and manga to video games, cooking, weapons, television, ...
. It is from this image that the site derives its name. After posting similar images, Nakagawa then converted the site to a monetized blog.
A group of investors acquired the website in September 2007 for US$2 million.
The blog became the flagship site of the
Cheezburger Network
Ben Huh is a South Korean-American internet entrepreneur and the former CEO of The Cheezburger Network, which at its peak in 2010 received 375 million views a month across its 50 sites.Chard, TheaCheezburger CEO Ben Huh on Surrounding Himself w ...
, led by
Ben Huh
Ben Huh is a South Korean-American internet entrepreneur and the former CEO of The Cheezburger Network, which at its peak in 2010 received 375 million views a month across its 50 sites.Chard, TheaCheezburger CEO Ben Huh on Surrounding Himself w ...
. The network also includes
FAIL Blog
Fail Blog (stylized as FAIL Blog) is a comedic blog website created in January 2008.
FAIL Blog features disastrous mishaps and general stupidity in photos and video which have captions such as "fail", "epic fail", "X Fail", or "X; You're doin' it ...
and
Know Your Meme
''Know Your Meme'' (''KYM'') is a website and video series which uses wiki software to document various Internet memes and other online phenomena, such as viral videos, image macros, catchphrases, Internet celebrities and more. It also inves ...
. In 2016 the network was acquired by Literally Media.
Content
ICHC's content is submitted by the site's readers, and the site hosts "the LOL Builder", an image macro creation tool. 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. By January 2008, the average was 8000.
Only about a dozen or so submissions per day are posted to the website,
while updates are timed to coincide with when readers are most likely to be visiting the site – morning, lunchtime and evenings.
, ICHC gets about 2 million page views per day.
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 themes as one image will attract responses to form a continuous 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."
Until 2013, ICHC also ran a
wiki
A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...
at SpeakLolSpeak.com designed to be a collection of important lolspeak phrases.
Popular trends on the ICHC website for captioning have included "ceiling cat" (usually a white cat); "basement cat" (a black cat); the "itteh bitteh kitteh committeh"; invisible
omething the Lolrus and his "bukkit"; fail (now moved to FAIL Blog); "
om nom nom
Cookie Monster is a blue Muppet character on the long-running PBS/ HBO children's television show ''Sesame Street.'' In a song in 2004, and later in an interview in 2017, Cookie Monster revealed his real name as "Sid". He is best known for his ...
" (as in eating sounds); references to "cheezburgers"; "happy caturday"; "monorail kitteh"; "oh hai"; and "kthxbai" ("OK, thanks, goodbye"). ICHC has popularized
snowclone
A snowclone is a cliché and phrasal template that can be used and recognized in multiple variants. The term was coined as a neologism in 2004, derived from journalistic clichés that referred to the number of Inuit words for snow.
History and ...
s such as "I'm in your (noun), (verb ending in ''ing'') your (noun)"; "
ome activity or emotion/nowiki>, ur doin it right/wrong"; and "I gave/brought you omethingbut I eated it/uzed it all up".
Fonts
The typeface Impact
Impact may refer to:
* Impact (mechanics), a high force or shock (mechanics) over a short time period
* Impact, Texas, a town in Taylor County, Texas, US
Science and technology
* Impact crater, a meteor crater caused by an impact event
* Impac ...
is used in almost every picture on all the I Can Has Cheezburger websites (though not as much on its subsidiary websites, such as Memebase), 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 font of choice in Something Awful image macros for many hence it is the default font in the site's Lolcat Builder. Many people creating lolcats in other software have used the same font to retain the classic I Can Has Cheezburger look. Other standard fonts are available on the builder.
Spin-off projects and publications
A network of related sister sites has developed alongside ICHC, called the Cheezburger Network. 25 of these are linked to each other via a navigation bar at the top of each site. LOLwork on Bravo chronicled employees lives at the ICHC office.
ICHC produced a book, ''I Can Has Cheezburger?: A LOLcat Colleckshun'', in 2008. A second ICHC book, ''How To Take Over The Wurld: An LOLcat Guide 2 Winning'', was published in 2009. Also, FAIL Blog released its first book, ''Fail Nation: A Visual Romp Through the World of Epic Fails'', on October 6, 2009.
Cheezburger was the subject of the ''LOLwork
''LOLwork'' is an American reality documentary television series on the Bravo. The series premiered on November 7, 2012.
Premise
The series follows Ben Huh and his staff at Cheezburger, located in downtown Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a se ...
'' reality television
Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring unfamiliar people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early ...
series on the Bravo television network. The series followed Ben Huh and his staff as they created new content for the site.
#ICanHazPDF, derived from I Can Has Cheezburger?, is a hashtag used on Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
by researchers seeking academic papers for free to get around academic journals' paywalls.
See also
* Pet Holdings – the company that originally owned the Cheezburger Network
* Fail Blog
Fail Blog (stylized as FAIL Blog) is a comedic blog website created in January 2008.
FAIL Blog features disastrous mishaps and general stupidity in photos and video which have captions such as "fail", "epic fail", "X Fail", or "X; You're doin' it ...
* Failbook
Failbook+ is a comedic blog website which primarily focuses on screenshots of humorous genuine status updates uploaded onto Facebook, although the website has acknowledged expansion into other Social Networking websites, such as Google+, Twitter, ...
* Know Your Meme
''Know Your Meme'' (''KYM'') is a website and video series which uses wiki software to document various Internet memes and other online phenomena, such as viral videos, image macros, catchphrases, Internet celebrities and more. It also inves ...
* List of Internet phenomena
Social and cultural phenomena specific to the Internet include Internet memes, such as popular themes, catchphrases, images, viral videos, and jokes. When such fads and sensations occur online, they tend to grow rapidly and become more wides ...
* Texts From Last Night
Texts From Last Night (TFLN) is a regularly updated blog that re-posts short text messages submitted by its users, originally formed as a sorority email chain by creator Lauren Leto. The site tends to post texts that are shocking or scandalous.''WH ...
References
External links
*
{{Literally Media
American comedy websites
Internet humor
Internet properties established in 2007
Internet memes
Companies based in Seattle
Animal websites