“A linguistic essay about memes wow” is an article, written by Annalee Newitz, that addresses the ongoing Internet meme war between cats and dogs. LOLcats and doges both consist of images and text that are typically humorous. Both originate from a cute photo of an animal that has exploded and expanded into various photos with different fonts and jokes. LOLcats use black and white blocky text and doge uses the comic-sans font of various colors. Font style is not the only different between the two; the relationship of text to image is as well. LOLcats texts are either at the top, bottom, or both where as doges have spread out texts all over the image. The texts of LOLcats work as statements that are said aloud or serve as captions. Doge texts are supposed represent what the dog is thinking or what the viewer is thinking. Over time, each meme has developed a specific vocabulary set and grammatical quirks making them easy to differentiate from one another. According to Newitz’ findings on Tumblr, doges may be linguistically easier to understand than LOLcats; however, doges express more complicated ideas. The competition between the two memes is a question of which one will remain popular and which one will eventually fade out. Right now, doges are coming out on top. Newitz believes that doges can last and grow as long as LOLcats have. Only time will reveal the outcome.

     Memes have become an Internet sensation. They have taken over and people can’t scroll through social media newsfeeds and dashboards without seeing at least one meme. In my opinion, Newitz presents the information about the memes, LOLcats and doges, in an organized, humorous fashion. She introduces the Internet war between the memes and goes onto to describe different aspects of each into different sections. Each section tackles and breaks down the meme from image, font, and linguistic tendencies. She closes the article with her by providing her thoughts on LOLcats vs. doges. The humor she uses connects with the topic that she is writing about because it is in the meme language. I think that this article is informative and hilarious. There is more to memes that I expected. Previously, I did not think that anyone studied memes so intensely. After reading Newitz’ article, I gained more knowledge about memes and the Internet culture. Now, I am waiting to see whether LOLcats or doges will come out victorious. I believe that memes will keep trending regardless of who is victor.

(Original blog post can be found here)