The internet is divided into 2. Those who actually like and understand Internet phenomena such as ceiling cat and basement cat and those who really couldn’t give a damn because they see it as a totally idiotic, transient, meaningless reflection of the idle, fat, insouciant and feckless youth of the developed world. I wrote that when I was angry about something else. It is a bit harsh. What about…see it as youthful humor that has taken on a cult status and which is unlikely to be appreciated by silver surfers or even the middle aged.
One group would say that the other group are the white youth of Britain and America who don’t know how to graft. They’ve exhausted all their energy on writing comments to ceiling cat and basement cat cr*p. A large percentage of what I would term “the old school” believe that the modern youth have lost the work ethic. That is certainly true in the UK due to dumbed down education and overly generous welfare benefits. That is no longer a right wing viewpoint.
You have to be involved with the cheeseburger, lolcat set to understand ceiling cat and basement cat. Even when you look it up on the Internet all the information that you find is written by 18 year kids who spend all their time looking at funny cat videos and dreaming up fancy cheeseburger captions to funny cat “pix”. Boring. I was bored with it years ago. Ceiling cat and basement cat are just the creation of idle minds looking for cheap thrills. Why don’t you guys do an honest days work instead and try and do something that improves society?
This is ceiling cat:
That’s it. Around that single image people have developed the battle of good versus evil, God versus the Devil and light versus darkness. The ceiling cat is the heavenly one on high spying on us or looking down on us while basement cat is in…yes you guessed it, the basement, in the darkness, down there. He is ceiling cat’s adversary.
Here is basement cat and his army of zombies:
There is little more of note to say about these inventions of people who are addicted to the more banal side of the Internet. Millions of people really like ceiling cat and basement cat. I can understand the funky side of it. It’s a bit like making funny sounds. It’s larking around. It is a version of playing practical jokes.
What is extraordinary is that millions of teenagers and youth have, for some bizarre reason used the domestic cat as a centerpiece to their crazy language and internet genre. They could have chosen any animal. Leave the cat alone, please. I think this genre devalues the cat. I think it hurts the cat and encourages idiots with rifles to shoot the cat. And God knows there are enough bloody assault rifles in the living rooms of America .
So what exactly is ceiling cat and basement cat? They are just the inventions of the youth of today having fun making up cool funky iconic images accompanied by silly but “cool” words. It is a fad, a phase and one day it will be in the history books like Bakelite telephones.
You can see that I am not in the group of people who appreciate this Internet phenomenon. These are personal views. I respect the views of others.
I’d never heard of this before and I don’t think it’s funny, it’s just another way to demean cats.
It’s frightening how ignorant many people are, how they get pleasure from the stupidest things is beyond me.
Thanks for being around Ruth and your support. I have changed the text a bit because I wrote is when I was annoyed at something (I have put a line through it to show what I had said). That said the whole phenomena does irritate me. It is teenager stuff. Guess I am too old to appreciate it.
Me too Michael, but I don’t think our generation were as stupid, if we had time to waste on rubbish things our parents soon gave us something useful to do instead.
Our generation got a decent education compared to today. I think we had a better work ethic too. We were not perfect but in London immigrants have taken all the jobs that should have been taken by young British people because they have a poor reputation.
This fad is beyond me. There are a couple that were funny and in most cases, you are correct. College kids, nothing else to do, fooling around on the net. I’d like to point out that it’s better than trolling that the 14 year old’s do. They post offensive stuff on message boards and comment areas. The 16 yr old’s pretend to be predators and scare their female friends. So, it could be worse. Kids always ruin it for the rest of us. 🙂
I totaly agree with you there Dan. Kids really do ruin it for the rest of us. There is so much wanton nonsense around teenagers. What is it about our society that makes them like that…. I can think of a few possibilities. What I didn’t know is the ceiling and basement cats were an invention of teenage youth.
I was annoyed when I wrote that (about something else). I guess you can see that. Also, I have just had enough of the the youth messing around with cats on the internet. I’m just a grumpy old man these days. But where has the real art gone? Has it all got to be reduced to this sort of stuff? Where is the refinement and sensitivity, the wit and intelligence? All we have here is the endless repetition of silly comments (with the F word sprinkled liberally) about silly captions on pictures of cats. It is time to move on from funny cat pix.
The internet is really about young people, which is why it is so flooded out with dumbed down pap. There is no question in my mind that there has been a dumbing down, certainly in the UK. It makes the world less refined and it leads to leaders who can’t resolve problems properly due to poor thinking.
I agree that the youth of today who aren’t educated and who don’t really have much a future are the ones who really do cause alot of problems – take the recent London riots for example. Clearly there is a problem with moneymaking in our culture if it results in the media creating a world for these sorts of kids that results in them being total a**holes – which, to be honest, many of them are. Upbringing had clearly also gone downhill a massive amount. I think alot of them don’t particularly even want jobs with all this media gangster stuff and the usual rich flash lifestyle being the 2 main things waved in their faces everyday. There are some real 15 year nut jobs out there who it’s better to steer totaly clear of. Even in Canada I had to stay good with the local gang to make sure my cat and my bikes were safe. In the end they protected me but I can’t even begin to tell you what a bunch of enormous idiots they are. I am with Dan when he says the internet stuff isn’t as bad as the real nut jobs. But still, the internet has its own brand of nut job. Personally I hate spammers – seriously, I hate them. Alot of the lolcat stuff brings out some real pointless crap, but youtube is far far worse than locats. I don’t even go on youtube anymore because I can’t stand it. If it’s embedded I’ll watch it. The world is less refined in these core areas I agree. I suppose they don’t want to be refined because they associate that with stuff they can’t get anyway. There is a massive gap in my personal experience, between street culture and the rest of the world and thats how they like it.
One thing I will say though – no matter how young or inane some of the people on lolcats are, a very large percentage of them do like and care for cats, they are just not very sensitive. It’s like my neighbour who loves his cat Jerry but doesn’t realise how terrible a job he does of looking after the poor thing. I’ve read the comments on lolcats a lot – sometimes they just don’t get how derogatory their humour is but I think they will learn, if they already like cats. Where there is a need for change is usually where the change is actually happening. The change has to play out. It can’t just be decent all of a sudden. Lolcats is a big mix of different stuff. Some I like and some I hate. But there is change happening because of it. When something is clearly wrong to the cat on lolcats people comment and say it and others discuss if it really is bad or not. The discussion has to happen if they are really gonna like and care about cats. Better than no discussion at all.
Having said that – like all processes involving change for the better, if you find yourself ahead of it then its extremely frustrating to watch it so I understand totally how you feel. I am only playing devils advocate here.