I'm in ur base...

Loosely defined, “In your base, killing your d00ds” is a catchphrase that basically means “right now, I’m pwning you, and you don’t even know it."

The phrase originally came about when a ‘N00b’ player, playing multiplayer Starcraft online typed in a message asking his opponent “dude, where are you?” At the time, the more experienced player had managed to rush into the N00b’s base and had started destroying everything in sight. His response is now famous: “I’m in you’re your base, killing your d00dz.”

Screenshots of this famous exchange were posted on imageboards, and the meme spread from there.


Initially, people took the phrase and placed it on a number of different pictures. But as the meme grew, the phrase took on a life of it’s own.




The formula: take a picture and add any variation of "Im in ur (noun), (verb-ing) ur (noun)".









During the height of the LOLcat meme, it became very popular to put an “im in ur” phrase together with a cat picture.




















Political images were also very popular at one point. The meme is quite old now, but you still do see references to it popping up from time to time.

LOLcats

What are they?
LOLcats are images that combining a cute cat photograph captioned with a humorous phrase in broken English. They are a form of ‘image macros’ and originated on Internet message boards.

LOLcats are a form of 'meme' - an internet phenomenon that spreads rapidly like a fad.


How they began:
Not so long ago, message boards contained text-only conversations. As they developed to include images, message board users started adopting their own ‘language’. For example, message board users would post a picture of a snowy owl with the caption ‘O RLY?’ (Oh really?) to indicate that a previous person’s comment was really obvious. As this language developed, cutesy cat pictures became the flavour of the month. The first LOLcats appeared on the 4chan imageboards as the Caturday internet phenomenon. The name 'LOLcats' " is a compound word of "lol" (an abreviation of Laugh Out Loud, a term frequently used in chat rooms) and "cat".


I can has cheezburger?
www.icanhascheezburger.com was the first site to gather, organise and tag the lolcats. The site now features a lolcat builder, so you can create your own.



Their own language:
The wording on LOLcat images is written in a form of baby-talk, which has been called Kitty Pidgin, Kitteh, or lolspeak. The wording is meant to be the direct speech of the pictured cat.



Sub-groups within the meme:
As the in-joke grows, contributors veer off on a tangent, creating their own form of in-joke - they may, for example, employ different grammatical patterns or use different contexts. For example, within the LOLcats meme, you get an 'invisible' sub-group featuring pictures of cats eating invisible sandwiches or dancing with invisible tango partners.

Another sub-group involves another Internet in-joke that was started by computer gamers. The "I'm in ur X, doing Y" construction originates from an old video game taunt: "I am in your base, killing your d00ds."


Extending the in-joke
Why stop at kittens? Other captioned creatures have made an appearance – notably the walrus whose bucket was stolen. But don’t think it ends there - a new LOL-spinoff is created every week. The Lolpresident series pokes fun at Bush, using humorous pictures with the same baby-like talk.




Fame!
LOLcats gained international attention when they were covered by Time magazine, which wrote that non-commercialised phenomena of the sort are increasingly rare, stating that lolcats have "a distinctly old-school, early 1990s, Usenet feel to [them]."