LOL Virus

I am going to take it on faith that most of the readers of the Opiate are familiar with how humor works on the internet, howerver for those of you who are not sure what I mean I have included the following primer:

1. Find a picture of an animal. Ideally the animal in said picture is doing something funny or interesting, however just looking surly can work. Cute Overload is a good source for these pictures. (Please make note of Rule #7 aka the Japanese Rule aka the Paris Hilton Rule. I do have to wonder what small thing the author is referring to; is it her small animal companion or her brain?)

2. Get after the picture with Photoshop or some other progam that will allow you to add text to the image. Check out the funny animals section on Error: Access Denied, I Can Has Cheezburger?, or Meme Cats for more of these than one can shake a...well, you get the idea. (A couple of my favorites are here and here.)

3. Profit!

Okay, no, not really. The real step three is:

Post the now modified and, without a doubt even funnier picture somewhere on the web. The preferred target is a forum of some kind in which others may marvel at your hip design sense as well as your ability to make the blandest of english into an nigh unreadable mass of random characters which retains the original meaning. (This is a skill that leaves me half in awe of and half embarassed for the perps.) These are referred to, I am told, as lolcats or image macros.

Now I am not certain when someone decided this would be a good idea, however like all things on the internets, once an idea has been released into the wild there is no telling where it will go. You can rest assured that someone will take it way beyond any bounds of decency.

To the best of my knowledge this has yet to happen however the first step in that direction has been taken with the posting of LOLTrek over at Live Granades (which has one of the best taglines in the history of man.) First I want to say that this might be the best thing I have seen on the internet since the drunk monkeys and "Die Hard" double-whammy that BCK unleashed last week. Second I am a bit concerned with the amount of thought Stephen put into this little project.


Then Wil Wheaton got in on the act.


Really Wil, do we need a LOLWesley floating around out there? Think about the children.

Update

After I wrote this post I found this gem on I Can Has Cheezburger? and almost spat Coke all over my PC.


Mantisyahu? There is no word for this other than BRILLIANT!

(If there is anyone out there who doesn't get this one, check out this site and then this site.)