I CAN HAS CHEESEBURGER! AN EXEGESIS


The Seraphic web page I CAN HAS CHEESEBURGER offers lots of cute animals with misspelled captions added by semi-anonymous contributors. I laughed until I choked.

There are many variations of the "I'm in your base killin ur doodz" meme, which is defined here as an internet "catchphrase that can be roughly translated to 'LOL [laughing out loud] you got pwned [owned] and don't even know it yet.'" It caught on (is there a folklorist in the house?) and now there must be hundreds of chat room name tags reading "I'M IN UR [noun] [verb]ING UR [noun]", for example:

"I'm in your fridge eating your f00dz

"I'm in your house impeachin ur doodz"

and expressing-the-expressible: I'm in ur macaronis warming my feets.

It supposedly originated with on-line multiplayer games such as Command and Conquer, a taunt used when one player surprises another-- though I suspect it has deeper roots in street taunts from pick-up basketball games and such.

The creative spelling is part of the charm. Even the mistyped "pwned" is retained ironically. Deliberate misspellings were first legitimized by Prince in the printed lyrics on his album covers. Misspelled words began as a sign of ignorance, then as an indicator of street authenticity or "keeping it real", then were winked at by weak teachers, then mocked ironically by hipster youth, and finally achieved affectionate status as a form of creative wordplay among the young.

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