Fail Dogs

There was always something really charming about the LOLcats and the way they recontextualized our notions of the feline personality: instead of aloof and slightly arrogant, the LOLcats presented themselves as amiable goofballs, a little naïve but always enthusiastic. "Of course we don't know proper grammar...we're just cats!"

Well, on the other side of the coin, Fail Dogs presents dogs not as man's best friend or noble companions but as utter fucking retards:

http://faildogs.com/

And though the site is only a few days old, I find myself wondering how this most recent Internet folk art will degrade. When I first saw the LOLcats, maybe a year ago, they seemed so fresh and original...I couldn't imagine that the humor would ever get stale. So what happened?

What always happens: the fad was discovered by the mediocre, the wannabes, the bandwagon jumpers, and none of those Lollers Come Lately got the point.

I Can Has Cheesburger turned into just misspelled cutesy-pie baby talk, which wasn't at all what was so attractive to the original fans of the first LOLcats. (Plus, they don't even get the misspellings right.) At a certain point the site became indistinguishable from Cute Overload, when just a few months before it was as diametrically opposed to it as you could be while still featuring pictures of kittens.

LOLsecretz reinvigorated the form for a while, but in an act of clear-eyed self-appraisal that seems almost like a kind of heroism, they realized the vein had run dry before they wore out their welcome:

http://lolsecretz.blogspot.com/2008/01/has-been-pretty-gret-aktually.html

So I'm curious how the Fail Dogs concept will get corrupted...it's literally only pictures of unimaginably stupid dogs with the word FAIL written beside them. In theory they could run forever and still retain the same essential spirit they had on Day One.

But just because I can't imagine how the meme could possibly degrade doesn't mean it won't happen: the lamest and most hackneyed minds of our generation are undoubtedly working on it even as we speak.