Never the twain shall meet.

You forget the distance between mainstream media and the way the internet operates until you see something like this: an article in The Wall Street Journal that attempts to explain and provide the history of lolcats.

They just can't accept that shit happens on the internet. They have to try to explain how it happens and where it came from. This is a lot like explaining a joke, it just doesn't work.

Even more curious, despite the scholarly tone of this article (which makes it even more laughable), the name of the guy's column is "Time Waster." Check out the sidebar, which tries to connect the dots of all the levels of interconnected neologisms that make up this crazy meme.