The original I Can Haz Cheeseburger was created by Eric Nakagawa, a blogger from Hawaii and his girlfriend, Kari Unebasami. The theme was "Hey! Lets do a site about cats doing crazy stuff and post pictures of them!!", together with humorous phrases in Geek-Textingspeak that Nakagawa and Unebasami added -- including LOL, which Nakagawa and Unebasami didn't invent, but used everywhere they could in connection with those crazy cat photos.
It was a hit -- in the millions, to be exact; because at one level the Intertubes are still just a shiny toy, and sites like Cheezburger provide us with Teh Funny. It's that simple: Funny = Big Traffic, and big traffic can mean ad sales, and ad sales = money. It's all about the money, you see.
Not all that long after, Ben Huh, more entrepreneur and businessman than free-thinking artist, took one look at the level of traffic to Cheezeburger and thought he saw Opportunity.
Huh pulled together a group of investors, kicked in $10K of his own money, and in 2007 bought the domain name from Nakagawa and Unebasami for $2 Million. It became the first site for Pet Holdings Corporation Inc., and the beginning of a dandy little Internet empire.
Not Everyone At FAIL Blog Is A Loser. Well, Okay; Everyone.
Using the same concept, also in 2007 PHC launched the FAIL Blog -- just in time for the implosion of the economy.
As a Dog, I have a different viewpoint on most things. For one, I think original ideas which make us laugh shouldn't be turned into vehicles for profit. There's something about that which, as an artist, just makes me want to sit down and howl: Does everything on this godforsaken dirt ball have to end up being about acquisition, ownership, and arbitrary value??
Okay; I know, I know. It just seems that practical, Left-Brain rationalizing frequently grabs our culture's whimsical, Right-Brain creativity and throttles it, or dumbs it down, in service to the profit motive.
Not that the dumbing down of a concept like Cheezeburger was such a huge step, or anything. But you get my drift.
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