What breed of cat is Bingus?

Bingus is a Sphynx or a Don Sphynx, both hairless cats which went viral back in March of 2020, thanks to an Instagram video. Bingus is far more likely to be a Sphynx, a breed with its origin in Canada. The Don Sphynx comes from Russia. That answers the question and I could stop there but I’ll try and add some extra details. The Sphynx is fairly rare but quite popular. Although being hairless due to a genetic mutation they have to be full-time indoor cats and they need washing regularly as the oil from the sebaceous glands is deposited on their skin which attracts grim. Enough of the cat stuff. This page is about memes.

With Bingus you enter the word of memes and weirdness. You delve into the young persons’ internet. They have their own language within a parallel universe.

I am told that name ‘Bingus’ was first coined by a bloke who runs the Subaru Rocks Instagram page! Or is it the ‘subarusocks’ page?! 😕 It is more likely to be the latter as there are pics of cats and dogs on that page (see above). He’s a Subaru nut who for some unknown reason posted a video of a Sphynx on his page. I have no idea why and I can’t find that original Instagram vid. Here is one crazy video from that Instagram page:

Note: This is an embedded Instagram video. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.

In fact, the origin of Bingus is a bit of a mystery (at least to me). The original Sphynx cat video posted on Instagram came from China apparently. A Chinese fan of the Subaru car? Is that it? The person had a TiKTok account but it has been deleted. The trail runs dry and the mystery for me deepens. The bottom line is that someone made up the word ‘Bingus’ for a hairless cat (always photogenic) and it caught on as a meme.

Now there is a ‘bingus.official Instagram page with 203k followers. You can lap up all the images and videos of Bingus that takes your fancy on one page. There is a blurred pic of Bingus said to be made up of 17 pixels that has been seen 41.3k times! The power of meme.

The Bingus meme gained traction. Then the massive social media website Reddit.com picked it up and a user by the name of u/haydongers posted an image to the subreddit /r/ambien (a place dedicated to ‘things you did on Ambien’) back in September 2020 with the title “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. hi bingus’ – see below.

Note: This is an embedded Reddit post. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.

Note: embedded YouTube videos eventually stop working in time. If that has happened, I am sorry.

A highly successful Youtuber, with 7.58m subscribers, by the name of Corpse Husband who is fascinated with horror picked up the meme and used the word according to the dexerto.com website as his ‘activation word’. It works like this: when he is the imposter (see video above) and someone shouts ‘Bingus’ he kills whoever they are standing next to. Get it?! He also tweeted the meme on his Corpse_Husband Twitter page. All this boosted the popularity of the Bingus meme.

Note: This is an embedded Instagram post. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.

Memes can be powerful things. They can spread like the Covid virus! They are highly contagious when they catch on. Bingus is an example. To people who don’t inhabit this parallel universe in the internet’s ether, memes are described as “an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations.”