I Can Has Cheezburger?

I Can Has Cheezburger?
Name	I Can Has Cheezburger?
Type	Humor, Image macro
Language	English
Owner	Cheezburger, Inc.
Launched	2007
Current status	Active

I Can Has Cheezburger? is a humor website and blog that popularized the "lolcat" image macro format, combining photographs of animals—most famously domestic cats—with captions rendered in intentionally ungrammatical, idiosyncratic text. The site became a landmark of early social media virality, intersecting with platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, and Tumblr and influencing mainstream outlets including The New York Times, Time, CNN, BBC, and Wired.

History

I Can Has Cheezburger? was founded in 2007 during the rise of user-generated content alongside YouTube, Flickr, and Blogger by entrepreneurs who tapped into the success of early meme propagation on 4chan, Something Awful, and Ebaumsworld. Early coverage by Gizmodo, Engadget, The Guardian, Salon, and Fast Company amplified the site's reach. The site's growth paralleled developments at AOL, Yahoo!, and Google, which reshaped web traffic and advertising models. Subsequent milestones intersected with acquisitions and media consolidation trends involving companies such as The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Ziff Davis, and IAC.

Format and Content

The site's signature format pairs candid photographs—often sourced from amateur photographers and photo-sharing services like Flickr—with captions in a stylized dialect influenced by online subcultures such as 4chan and Something Awful. Typical posts emulate the conventions seen in image macro history exemplified on Demotivators, Know Your Meme, and imageboard communities like Reddit. The captions echo linguistic play found in works referencing Internet linguistics and online vernacular documented by scholars at institutions including MIT, Oxford University, Stanford University, and Harvard University.

Notable Memes and Viral Posts

The site's output spawned prominent examples that entered broader awareness, comparable to the spread of Rickrolling, Distracted Boyfriend, Success Kid, Grumpy Cat, Nyan Cat, and Doge. Viral phenomena linked to the site were covered by Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Telegraph, and became reference points in academic studies at University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University, and Princeton University. The site's early catalogs overlapped with archives maintained by Internet Archive and meme documentation on Know Your Meme.

Community and User Contributions

Community participation mirrored the dynamics of other participatory platforms such as Digg, Slashdot, DeviantArt, and LiveJournal, with users submitting images, captions, and remixes. Moderation practices echoed policies debated in forums seeded by Wikipedia, MetaFilter, and Stack Overflow, while community moderation tools have been compared to systems used by Facebook and Twitter (now X). Contributors included amateur photographers, bloggers affiliated with HuffPost, columnists for Slate, and cartoonists whose work crossed into mainstream syndication like King Features Syndicate.

Business Model and Ownership

Cheezburger, Inc. developed monetization strategies blending display advertising, branded content, and merchandise, in line with digital media practices at Gawker Media, Vice Media, BuzzFeed, and Mashable. The company engaged with advertising partners including Google AdSense and programmatic ad exchanges used by AppNexus and OpenX. Ownership changes and investment rounds reflected patterns seen with acquisitions by SBNation, The Onion, and other digital media roll-ups. Corporate governance and venture funding tied into networks involving Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and other Silicon Valley investors.

Cultural Impact and Reception

The phenomenon influenced popular culture in television, print, and academia, echoing meme diffusion seen in Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show, and animated programs on Adult Swim. Critics and scholars in journals such as New Media & Society, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, and presses at Oxford University Press and Routledge analyzed the site's role in participatory culture alongside studies of memetics, digital folklore, and viral marketing. Coverage and criticism appeared in editorial pages of The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, and commentary by cultural critics associated with The Guardian and The New York Review of Books.

Legal and Copyright Issues

Legal questions around user-submitted imagery engaged precedents from cases involving Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube, Inc., Eldred v. Ashcroft, and debates under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act administered by agencies like the United States Copyright Office. Disputes over attribution, fair use, and licensing intersected with practices at Getty Images, Corbis, and stock agencies, and drew attention from legal scholars at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, and Columbia Law School. Resolution strategies paralleled content-ID and takedown practices implemented by YouTube and platform policies under review by regulators in the European Commission and Federal Trade Commission.

Category:Internet memes Category:Humor websites Category:Online communities