Cats of the Internet #1: Grumpy Cat

This is from http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/grumpy-cat

About

Grumpy Cat is a nickname given to an angry looking snowshoe cat that gained online fame after its pictures were posted to Reddit on late September 2012 and went viral. The cat is also known as “Tard” which is short for Tardar (Tartar) Sauce.

Origin

The cat is named “Tard” and belongs to Arizona resident Tabatha Bundesen. The original photos of Tard -- “The Grumpy Cat” were posted on Reddit by her brother Bryan (Cataliades). The image was submitted to the /r/pics subreddit in a post titled “Meet grumpy cat”^[1] on September 23rd, 2012 by Redditor Cataliades.

 

The Reddit post was instantly met by photoshopped parodies and image macros from others, reaching the frontpage with more than 25,300 upvotes in the first 24 hours, while the Imgur image page^[13] gained nearly 1,030,000 views in the first 48 hours. Meanwhile, three video clips of the cat playing indoors were uploaded to YouTube by Bryan (SevereAvoidance) the same day.

Precursor

The name “Grumpy Cat” has been associated with pictures of scornful looking cats prior to this instance, mainly through the LOLcat image macro series like X is not amused and Serious Cat.

  

Spread

Some Redditors responded to Catallades’ post with photoshopped derivatives of the original picture (shown below), while others chose to caption the image with various statements from the cat’s point of view (see notable examples). Later that same day, BuzzFeed^[5] reblogged the images in a post titled “This Cat Is Not Impressed” and by popular demand, Redditor Cataliades submitted a follow-up post titled “Since everyone liked Grumpy Cat here are a few more”^[2] on the next day. Within 48 hours of the original post, more than 300 posts associated with the keyword “Grumpy Cat” were submitted to Reddit and more than 100 image macros to the Quickmeme^[3] entry.

  

The newly christened “Grumpy Cat” was also featured on numerous animal photo blogs and internet humor sites, including The Daily What^[8], Paw Nation^[6], The Meta Picture^[9] and Eat Liver^[16] on September 24th and UpRoxx^[12], Daily of the Day^[11] and FunnyJunk^[15] on September 25th. Some commenters even went onto draw comparisons between Tard’s facial expression and other well-known stern-looking fictional characters like Ron Swanson (Parks & Recreation) and Dwight Schrute (The Office). In addition to its growing presence on Reddit, Facebook and YouTube, more image macros and pictures of “Tard” can be found on Tumblr^[14] under the tag #grumpy cat. In addition, Grumpy Cat T-shirt merchandises are available for purchase on Clothes That Kill.^[19]

On September 27th, Grumpycats.com^[20] was created as the official homepage for Tard, blogging videos, images and news mentions of the cat. On October 3rd, an official Twitter account, @GrumpyCatTard^[21], was also launched.