July 30th 2008 12:41 pm
I am an ardent believer in free speech, which I practice between 5:30 and 6:30 every morning, often while walking across the bedroom furniture. The right to free expression is extremely important, so the following is not to be taken as a move toward censorshop, merely towards more thoughtfulness and sensitivity.
I am speaking of the "LOL-cat" phenomenon in which others, mostly humans, and perhaps a few dogs, take photographs of cats and label them with poorly-spelled and agrammatical slogans. These are supposed to represent the cats fractured, simplistic thoughts. "I can has cheezburge?" the cat will seem to say, or "moar" or "nom non nom." The memes of these outrages further insinuate that cats have pretensions to greatness, that they are dimwitted, and that they are obsessed with food.
I speak as a victim of such a vile construction, as you can see here:
http://tinyurl.com/58n5zv
The truth is that thing was stuck on my head by my humans, and they took the photograph and labeled it. I did not for one second feel like an "alleyfant," mitey or otherwise. Nor did I wish to be one, or think I had anyone fooled.
It's all too easy to create such graphics, as you can see:
http://tinyurl.com/6896m7
But being a classier animal than my humans, I won't resort to that sort of thing.
As fellow mammals, I hope that we can all agree to portray our fellows with more respect.... and maybe we can all LOL together instead of LOLling at one another.
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