4 June 2009

Longcat is long

I've had the Longcat/Ragnarok image for my wallpaper at work for a while. A co-worker has never heard of it nor longcat and so I had to go through the best description I could of why longcat exists. I didn't have much except that it just... does. Even though he was not familiar, he seemed to like the image. I mean, really, what's not to like?!

LONGCAT_TACGNOL_00

LC started as a photo of a cat; was shopped to look longer than it is; was repeated everywhere; battled its nemesis, Tacgnol; and now is a trope used for reduplicated emphasis (boring blog is boring). I suspect that longcat is part of the incipient mythology that is being created on the internet and try to think of it in terms of tapping a primal energy (cue trite Jungian terminology...). These images and memes are part of the stumbling birth of culture. Grunts that eventually develop into language proper. Like spoken and written languages, the systems and images that will result in 50 years will be marked in some small way by their origins but have little obvious connection.

Or something like that.

[ posted by sstrader on 4 June 2009 at 9:30:09 PM in Internet ]