I don’t know if you have noticed a phenomenon. In the recent popular video list of Bilibili, there are basically two or three videos with “cat meme” in the title hanging on it every day.
The so-called cat meme video actually uses many cat meme video materials and combines them into a coherent story.
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For example, this married man suddenly had the idea to rehabilitate his old arms and legs one day, so he rushed downstairs to play basketball with the boys.
In the basketball court, young and old men were sweating, Beijing Harden, Haidian Doncic, Imperial Chamberlain, and Chaoyang District Nash were fighting together.
But just when the morale was high, my brother's wife came over to bring water and cheer. The brothers in the stadium were like innocent puppies on the roadside, getting kicked while walking.
As the saying goes, a soldier cannot be killed but cannot be humiliated, so a battle between two teams turned into one for all members.
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In addition to this kind of daily content, cat memes are more of unnatural content, which are often things that are impossible to speak at ordinary times. Saying one more word is an absolute secret of social death.
For example, a sister's school organized an autumn outing. She was tired after a day of playing and got motion sickness in the car. Because the seats were selected, she could only sit next to the class teacher in the front row.
After slowly falling asleep in the car, when I woke up, my head was already tilted towards the head teacher's shoulder.
The moment she woke up, she felt that she might as well end this embarrassing life.
However, with the popularity of cat meme,People don’t just use it to recreate scenes of happy and embarrassing events.
On Bilibili, many highly viewed cat memes record things with a slightly sad background.
Suzakuque, the leader of UP, had a close encounter with a motorcycle while crossing the road at noon one day when he was in the second grade of elementary school. He was hit and flew away, and the motorcycle rider was also frightened and lost half of his life.
My mother, who was leaning against the window to watch the show with her best friend, suddenly realized that something had happened to her baby.
The anxious mother found a car and quickly took her to the hospital, and then worked for a long time before completing the operation.
After staying in the hospital for a long time, I finally waited until I was discharged. When I arrived in class, I was not greeted by my friends, but by the curiosity of my classmates: Are you a ghost?
Only later did she learn that after the car accident, rumors spread throughout the world that she had died. But reality speaks louder than words, and the ruthless man still won the resurrection match.
There are countless similar stories, some of which are cool plots with tragic beginnings.
For example, a younger brother was bullied by a group of brats, and his mother gave him a verbal scolding because he was underage. Then he went to the school to find the dean and class teacher, and also went to the other parent’s parents to apologize, and watched as the other parent beat up several brats. A meal.
But there are also special plots where the final ending is not a good ending in the traditional sense, such as witnessing his father cheating and the whole family falling apart.
No matter how you say it,Using cat memes to record life has indeed become a popular culture recently, and it has also brought a lot of traffic to UP owners.
The most famous among them is a Japanese single mother living in China. She started posting cat meme videos on February 29. In just over a month, her number of followers has increased from 0 to 350,000.
The content in her video is not that unusual, it is entirely an observation of life from the perspective of a Japanese mother.
For example, when she went shopping and saw a brightly colored dress, she was worried that it was inappropriate for her age and worried about other people's opinions.
At this time, the Chinese shopping guide who appeared in the image of a dancing kitten said to her: “It doesn't matter what other people think. If you want to buy it, buy it. If you don't want to buy it, don't buy it. What matters is whether you like it or not. ”
So the question is, how did the cat meme come about, and why has it become such a popular culture?
In fact, the cat meme appeared in 2023.
At that time, there was a type of video called Happy cat series on TikTok.
Overall, the most photographed cat idol groups include Happy Cat, Apple Cat, Banana Cat, Pop Cat, Huh Cat, etc.
Some people may recognize the happy cat as the kitten jumping behind the glass.
This kitten, which looks like a child dancing happily, paired with the song “My Happy Song”, has become a well-known meme on the Internet abroad.
It is said to be a happy cat series, but in fact there are many cats in the series. These cats come from all over the world, including cats raised by Douyin and Xiaohongshu bloggers on Station B, as well as cats raised by foreign netizens, highlighting a hodgepodge of Chinese and foreign cultures. .
For example, the cat that is often used to express grievances is the cat owner of Station B UP, the main bard Uncle Uncle Yao.
Because the corners of its eyes are downward, no matter what it does, it always gives people a feeling of grievance.
In addition, there is also “huh cat” which has already become popular on the Internet abroad. Even XQC watched Dole. It is often used in cat meme videos to make people confused.
It sits on the floor, fat and fat, and opens its mouth tremblingly at you.
Netizens later replaced its cry with huh, which is roughly equivalent to “ang”, and it looks very smart.
Although it is said to be a cat meme, in fact, there are other creatures besides cats.
For example, the goat sticks out its tongue slightly, the grinning mysterious dog, and Kenshi Yonezu who seems to have wandered into the wrong set.
However, at that time, the happy cat series of videos mainly told the stories of the cats themselves, not the stories of the video producers.
For example, there is a video with 1.2 million views, which tells the story of a group of kittens trying to open a can of Laoganma, but they used hammers, chainsaws, and grenades and still could not unscrew the lid.
Don’t ask me why it is Laoganma. Foreigners may think that Laoganma is very representative in the field of canned food, and it is indeed difficult to open.
Finally, the kitten thought of a good idea, which was to turn it upside down and pat it in a very Chinese way, and then the lid opened.
Then a group of cats licked the spicy oil from Lao Ganma's lid. The result was that the oil was so spicy that she lay on the bed, and everyone was dragged to the hospital together.
Around January this year, on Twitter, YouTube, Niconico, Tiktok and other websites, people began to use cat meme videos to tell their own stories.
However, overseas, the main users of the cat meme are Japanese.
There are people in other countries who play this trick, but not many.
But anyway,Half of the cat meme world is supported by Chinese kittens, and there is no threshold for domestic netizens to understand it.
Around February, someone had translated the subtitles of foreign cat meme videos and moved them to various domestic platforms, which caused a good response.
For example, a Japanese guy named Yokohama Zhonghua Guys came to China to study based on his feeling, thinking that everyone uses Chinese characters and it would be super easy to communicate. As a result, after getting off the plane, I couldn't even understand what the people in Beijing were saying.
After spending some time with my Chinese roommate, the two traveled to Harbin together. The Japanese man was full of confidence, but when he heard the Northeastern dialect, he was confused on the spot.
He refused to admit defeat. After studying Chinese hard and passing HSK level 6, he went out to travel to Guangdong again with his roommate.
This time not only he couldn't understand, but his indigenous Chinese roommates couldn't understand either.
The Japanese man lamented that this is no longer a problem of accent, this is not the same dimension.
Around this time, domestic netizens began to wonder if they could just watch fake moves, so I also made a cat meme video myself.
The threshold for originality is not high. There are a lot of green screen materials available on the Internet. As long as you tell your own story with subtitles and add a cat meme with a similar meaning next to it, you will be all set.
As a result, such videos began to appear in large numbers on various platforms.
This trend of making cat memes has also affected major official accounts.
With the help of all post-00s operators, Cat Meme has successfully grown bigger and stronger and created greater glories.
It’s hard to imagine that even Shandong Satellite TV, which broadcasts “Bright Sword” every holiday, is actually making cat meme videos.
Even because cat meme videos are easy to make and have high traffic, many people have emerged on major platforms to ask for help in this way.
They often make a cat meme video with no plot at all, accompanied by a large paragraph of text and real pictures to explain their current situation.
For example, I have a congenital disease, my family is in serious debt, I can't live happily, and I can't afford tuition.
The true identity of the creator of the video is currently unknown, but just talking about the video itself, there is no doubt that cat meme videos give them a channel for exposure.
Even if the video is crudely produced, it can bring them tens of thousands of views.
So, why is the cat meme so popular?
This is not difficult to understand,Cat memes, which appear in the form of videos, are as brilliant as the panda head emoticons in social software, with the help of slightly naughty pictures and funny voiceovers.
At the same time, it is precisely because those cat memes are slightly funny in nature, so when people watch them for fun, they are more willing to believe that the stories are true.
Therefore, cat meme videos with simple and crude titles, even if they are produced by some small UP creators with few fans, can often attract many people to watch them and get more effective responses.
If you say on station B, “It's 12 o'clock in the morning, I'm in emo mode and I called her,” the most likely brother will leave you a message is: Stop licking.
But if you make a video using cat memes and reveal your scars with a smile, then the brothers will have to comfort you.
In this boomerang era, many times, when you really plan to express your feelings, the first thing you encounter is not sympathy but doubt.
Just like the dialogue between Jiang Wen and Liao Fan in “The Righteous One”:
“No serious person can keep a diary. ”
“Who can write down what is in his heart in a diary. ”
“Can what is written in a diary reveal what is in your heart?”
So in this era, we replaced our diaries with cat memes.
When you use cat memes in a relieved tone and self-deprecating manner to express your feelings, people will instead wonder whether there is really such a thorn in your protagonist's heart behind the story that you can't take out, swallowing and swallowing. If I don't go on, I can only pretend to be relaxed and seek comfort, and finally say no to the past.
Behind the cat meme, there are more real people, the real life after the “new pornographic news” has faded.
People are willing to watch it, not just because the video itself is interesting, but because we are more willing to believe that every clip that appears in the video carries the weight given by time.
Editor in charge: Shang Shangwen Q