Kate Miltner Writes LOLCats Dissertation For The London School Of Economics

Whoever said LOLCats were mindless might haz the wrong idea, according to Kate Miltner, who wrote her London School of Economics masters dissertation on the Internet memes.

Titled "SRSLY PHENOMENAL: An Investigation Into The Appeal Of LOLCATS," Miltner set out to answer, "'Why in the name of Ceiling Cat are LOLCats so popular?' What is it about LOLCats that not only fueled their initial popularity, but helped maintain it for years?"

Miltner noted that despite LOLCats' enormous popularity, they've received no serious academic attention.

As readers would expect from scholarly works, Miltner's paper includes heavy research. She traces the kittens' evolution out of the Web 2.0 space and examines how the rise of participatory culture and user-generated content mixed with "vernacular creativity" and joys of "the production of the everyday" launched the cats onto the ruling seat of the Memesphere.

After extensive research and six focus groups, what she found was "how seemingly trivial pieces of media -- pictures of cats with captions -- can act as meaningful conduits to central elements of our humanity.

"I found that when it came to LOLCats, sharing and creating were often different means to the same end: making meaningful connections with others."

HuffPost College has reached out to the London School of Economics and Miltner. This report will be updated. Meanwhile, read the LOLcats thesis.

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Comments

[ZeeAli]

05:55 AM on 12/10/2012

Ahhh the more emphasis is on they didn't get much academic attention ... why is that so? The college is even a greater place to have recognition ... This LOLCat dissertation is more like a mode of getting more fame or the rating or just another service experts helped like http://www.bestdissertationwritinghelp.com/

[lilsebastlan]

12:32 PM on 05/12/2012

YOUR MEME IS BAD, AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD!

[rkeeeballs]

09:38 AM on 05/12/2012

Purrrrfect..Meow where's the story ?......maybe next time....?

[littleblackcat]

09:24 AM on 05/12/2012

Reply to insert: It wasn't supposed to go into Tumblr; I don't even know what Tumblr is.

[Amalek]

12:35 AM on 07/01/2012

You soon will.  Big mistake.

[littleblackcat]

09:23 AM on 05/12/2012

I enjoy LOLCATS but I have to say that some of the mis-spellings get beyond ridiculous. As a mother, child-caregiver, and friend of small children, I have seen some pretty funny renditions of common words. In nearly every case though, some attempt at correctness through phonetics was made. This would be truly humorous IMHO, whereas the bit of being as deliberately bungled as possible tries the patience.

[tlpfliger]

09:44 AM on 05/12/2012

...yore sew wright.

[gingercurls]

10:09 AM on 05/12/2012

LOLcats have their own language and that is the way it's supposed to be.

[MarkInTampa]

08:46 AM on 05/12/2012

"Miltner noted that despite LOLCats' enormous popularity, they've received no serious academic attention." Gee, I wonder why? Maybe because they *deserve* no serious academic attention?

[sharlevoix]

06:33 AM on 05/12/2012

DOGS RULE!!!
cats drool!

[cookv]

07:51 AM on 05/12/2012

Dogs and Cats are Equally AWESOME!! LOL!!

[jackiegr81]

06:32 AM on 05/12/2012

Where is the LOLCats???!???!!!

[sharlevoix]

06:24 AM on 05/12/2012

Reading that was a lot like paying for a bad movie.
Even though I didn't loose any money I'm pissed off, what a waste of my time.

[etcld]

08:40 AM on 05/12/2012

And then you went and compounded your FAIL by taking the time to leave a message complaining about it. Good jorb, you kan haz cookie.

[carinined]

09:37 AM on 05/12/2012

lmao at Etcld

[exedor]

04:33 AM on 05/12/2012

A story about LOL cats and not a single picture on this page?!?!?!??

There was one picture by the link that brought me here to this page, but to have NO LOLcats on here is a serious malfunction on someone's part!!!! Shame!

[keeniisite]

04:22 AM on 05/12/2012

attention spans.(kittens) point and click.(kittens) dumbing down.(kittens) intellectual baked good sale.(kittens)

[hiitsjoan]

03:37 AM on 05/12/2012

I am an LOLCats addict!

[Tim Kunk]

01:52 AM on 05/12/2012

Silly human, simple answer to all cat questions. Cats rule!

[rolando4rocks]

03:18 AM on 05/12/2012

But of course...!!!

[bfrjds1981]

09:59 AM on 05/12/2012

I am just glad our 2 cats let us live in their home. They put up with us. We do love them so much !!!!!!!!!!!

[swanderman]

01:41 AM on 05/12/2012

Can I haz a PHD from a British shool ?

[wreninak]

02:39 AM on 05/12/2012

No.

[Ossit]

01:00 AM on 05/12/2012

This was a lot of nothing until "I found that when it came to LOLCats, sharing and creating were often different means to the same end: making meaningful connections with others." hit near the end.

I've been hobby writing for 15 years. My stories are on a writer's list. You know from beginning to end what the story is going to be about, the plot is developed and by the last chapter, the point of the story has been explored. I don't assume everyone's read my serial from the beginning and I constantly refresh people on characters and how they look and relationships. My readers know the who, what, where, why. In the 15 years that I've written 48 serial stories so far, you don't get the gist of the story two paragraphs from the end. You don't learn who the characters are and relationships are in the 48th story two paragraphs from the end. For a Master's dissertation, this is awful writing.

[joebikerchef]

09:47 AM on 05/12/2012

Well, Mr Smartypants...Was this the actual dissertation, or a story, written by an interweb reporter, about a student's Masters dissertation?

Also, the student was not a Master, so it wasn't a Master's Dissertation...

[Ossit]

10:04 AM on 05/13/2012

Laughing. That's Miss Smartypants, joebikerchef. My screen name, Ossit, isn't a gender. It's the name of one of my fictional tribes in my hobby serial writing.They're the enemies of my 'good' tribe of women warriors. I took the name Ossit because one of my Ossit characters was a good natured story teller.

It was lousy writing. It didn't explain what this LOLCats was until the end. Ironically I saw this LOLCats on a show called Cats101 talking about breeds and it merely explained, without anything fancy, that people like to watch videos of cats because they're funny. The suprise cat where an owner would rub her kitten's belly, and pull back, the kitten would adorable lift his paws, open his mouth and looked surprised. Cute.