Leet, also known as eleet or leetspeak, or simply hacker speech, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via reflection or other resemblance. Additionally, it modifies certain words on the basis of a system of suffixes and alternative meanings. There are many dialects or linguistic varieties in different online communities.
eBaum's World is an entertainment website owned by Literally Media. The site was founded in 2001 and features comedy content such as memes, viral videos, images, and other forms of Internet culture. Content is primarily user submitted in exchange for points through a monetary point system "eBones."
An Internet meme, or meme, is a cultural item that spreads across the Internet, primarily through social media platforms. Internet memes manifest in a variety of formats, including images, videos, GIFs, and other viral content. Key characteristics of memes include their tendency to be parodied, their use of intertextuality, their viral dissemination, and their continual evolution. The term "meme" was originally introduced by Richard Dawkins in 1972 to describe the concept of cultural transmission.
O RLY? is an Internet phenomenon, typically presented as an image macro featuring a snowy owl. The phrase "O RLY?", an abbreviated form of "Oh, really?", is popularly used in Internet forums in a sarcastic manner, often in response to an obvious, predictable, or blatantly false statement. Similar owl image macros followed the original to present different views, including images with the phrases "YA RLY", "NO WAI!!", and NO RLY.
An image macro is a piece of digital media featuring a picture, or artwork, with some form of text superimposed. The text frequently appears at the top and bottom of the image. Image macros were one of the most common forms of internet memes in the 2000s, and often featured witty messages or catchphrases, although not all image macros are necessarily humorous. LOLcats, which are images of expressive cats coupled with texts, are considered to be the first notable occurrence of image macros. Advice animal image macros, also referred to as stock-character macros, are also highly associated with the image macro template.
A lolcat, or LOLcat, is an image macro of one or more cats. Lolcat images' idiosyncratic and intentionally grammatically incorrect text is known as lolspeak.
The LOLCat Bible Translation Project was a wiki-based website set up in July 2007 by Martin Grondin, where editors aim to parody the entire Bible in "LOLspeak", the slang popularized by the LOLcat Internet phenomenon. The project relies on contributors to adapt passages. As of March 27, 2008, approximately 61% of the text had been adapted, and Grondin stated that he hoped the entire New Testament would be complete by the end of 2008.
LOLCODE is an esoteric programming language inspired by lolspeak, the language expressed in examples of the lolcat Internet meme. The language was created in 2007 by Adam Lindsay, a researcher at the Computing Department of Lancaster University.
Eric Nakagawa is the co-founder of the humor site I Can Has Cheezburger?.
Cats That Look Like Hitler is a satirical website featuring photographs of cats resembling Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945. Such cats are often referred to as kitler on the Internet. Most of the cats are piebald, with a large black splotch underneath its nose, much like the dictator's toothbrush moustache, and other features that suggest a typically stern expression. Some have diagonal black patches on their heads resembling Hitler's fringe. The site was founded by Koos Plegt and Paul Neve in 2006 and became widely known after being featured on several television programmes across Europe and Australia. The site was later run only by Neve. By February 2013 he had approved photographs of over 7,500 cats. The website has not been updated since April 2014.
Fail Blog is a comedic blog website created in January 2008.
Know Your Meme (KYM) is a website and video series that uses wiki software to document various Internet memes and other online phenomena, such as viral videos, image macros, catchphrases and Internet celebrities. It also investigates new and changing memes through research, as it commercializes on the culture. Originally produced by Rocketboom, the website was acquired in March 2011 by Cheezburger Network, in turn acquired in 2016 by Literally Media. Know Your Meme includes sections for confirmed, submitted, deadpooled, researching, and popular memes.
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.
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 and others, with messages being sent from users who often have their identities removed. The first "fail" was placed onto the website on December 3, 2009. It is often regarded as a sister website to Fail Blog, a website which focuses on people failing at tasks that they attempt. Failbook is a subdivision of I Can Has Cheezburger?, which is owned by Pet Holdings Incorporated.
Techno Kitten Adventure (TKA) is a side-scrolling video game developed by 21st Street Games and published by creative design studio Elite Gudz for the iOS App Store, Xbox Live Indie Games market, Android Market and Windows Phone market. In the game, players control a flying kitten that must avoid obstacles and distractions timed to hardcore music. The game was first released on Xbox Live Indie Games on September 6, 2010 by Nick Kinkade (xMonox). The game was originally developed using Microsoft XNA and is no longer available to purchase.
Neetzan Zimmerman is an American journalist and blogger. He gained attention for his tireless aggregation of Internet ephemera at his blog The Daily What, which Cheezburger acquired in 2010, and Gawker. In 2023, The New York Times described him as a "a well-known digital traffic maven".
Images and videos of domestic cats make up some of the most viewed content on the World Wide Web. ThoughtCatalog has described cats as the "unofficial mascot of the Internet".
youPIX is a platform focused on discussing internet culture and how the youth uses the internet to create cultural, social movements and information. It was created by Bob Wollheim and Bia Granja in 2006.
DoggoLingo is an Internet language that is created from word conversion, meme lexicon, and onomatopoeia. Emerging in the 2010s, DoggoLingo is implied to be a dog's own idiom, and is presented as a canine's thought process. Elyse Graham, assistant professor at Stony Brook University, describes DoggoLingo as "upbeat, joyful, and clueless in a relentlessly friendly way".
