Keyboard Cat supplies the ending to someone else’s disaster: cue Fatso at the keys and play them off. The 1984 footage, 2007 upload and 2009 mashups give that joke a history people can actually trace. Our read: recognition is Keycat’s strongest cultural asset.
A two-frame joke that became a country competition.
Oatmeal’s mouth opens, a pop plays, and someone clicks again. Popcat.click turned that tiny action into national scoreboards. Our read: the appeal is participation with almost no explanation, which is useful for a meme that travels across languages.
Ethel spins to a nonsense vocal loop. Know Your Meme traces the spinning edit to Bilibili in April 2023 and documents later music remixes. Our read: changing the soundtrack gives people an easy way to make the same joke their own.