Domo

Domo-kun (or just Domo) is the mascot for the Japan's NHK television station. The station made various 30-second stop-motion promo spots for their channel featuring Domo. They are rather strange to say the least…

Domo spends most of his time hanging out in a cave with the wise rabbit Mr. Usaji and watching TV. Apparently, "his body is stout, but his heart is pure". The clips also feature a bunch of bats (one of which has a drinking problem), a hungry bear and a girl-weasel.

For more on the Domo characters, check out their official website.

Without ever being shown outside of Japan, Domo-kun became an Internet hit. And while the strange-but-endearing movie clips had something to do with his fame, it’s mostly thanks to Domo’s ability to be Photoshopped into some amazing situations that made him the Internet star he is today.

A lot of his original fame can probably be attributed to this image of kittens running from Domo-kun.

The image was created by a Fark user, who used this student magazine front page as his inspiration.

More recently, this Domo-kan image has found its way onto forums and boards, and is used after a noob has made a stupid comment…

A quick search on Flickr and Deviant Art will show you just how widespread Domo-kun’s fame has become, especially amongst Anime fans. Domo plush toys, t-shirts and other merchandise are all the rage.

Domo’s popularity continues to grow – he’s now appearing in the UK on Nicktoons (part of Nickelodeon) in short 2-minute spots.

He’s also being used as the theme of Target’s 2008 Halloween promotions.

If you're looking for a Halloween costume, here's a Domo-costume how-to.

And just in case you haven’t had enough Domo for today, go check out the Domo-Kun’s Angry Smash Fest flash game.

Garfield

Lets face it; Garfield comics can be decidedly unfunny a lot of the time. Personally, Garfield was ruined for me as a kid when I saw the TV shows where they gave Garfield a voice – he just shouldn’t sound like that! But I digress – Garfield comics – not really funny. But with a little help from the Internets, we can change all that. Introducing the Garfield meme!

By Photoshopping or rearranging Garfield comics in different ways, a new meme was born.

Here are just a few of the different ways Garfield comics have been changed:

First – the Garfield Randomiser.
This website lets you randomly rearrange Garfield comic strips – often with great results.

Then, put new words in their mouth
By changing the words in the speech bubbles, the comics take on a whole new meaning.

Then there’s ‘crazy-eyes’ technique
By simply changing Garfield and Jon’s eyes in Photoshop, the comic strip tells a different story. The basic idea is that whenever Jon says something stupid, Garfield makes crazy-eyes – which causes Jon to go all crazy-eyed - which shuts him up!
 

Realfield
Replace Garfield with a real-looking cat and see the results:

Make Jon seem crazy

Someone figured out that if you simply take out Garfield’s thoughts the cartoons suddenly seem a lot funnier – Jon plays the role of crazy man who talks to his cat far too much.

Then some real genius realised that if you take out Garfield altogether, and it’s even funnier!

Check out this blog dedicated to Garfield – minus Garfield! 

It turns out that Jim Davis, Garfield’s original creator, reads Garfield Minus Garfield and enjoys it.




Taking it too far
Removing all the characters... one step too far.

More cats?!

For some reason, cats really seem to resonate with online communities.

LOLcats are not the only kitty internet phenomenon. Enter stuffonmycat.com. Their tagline is ‘stuff + cats = awesome’. The concept is incredibly simple – pictures of cats with stuff on them.

One thing stuffonmycat does very well is their merchandising. You can buy the latest calendar, books, postcards, personalised t-shirts – and …(wait for it)… cat apparel – so you can dress up your cat and take pictures.

And just in case you dog lovers are feeling left out, they've also created stuffonmymutt.com

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]."