Aug 19 2008
In Ur Suburb, Selling U Burgers
OMG!!! The local Burger King Slurpee machine sez: “cool it with ur fav flav.” Lolspeak is in ur multi-national!
Corporate America can has teh funny? No wai, only wants sell cheezburgers! Co-option of kulcher? Mebbeh. Or mebbeh teh kittehs win!
LOL!
Mai theweh, let me show you it. Lolspek is awsum meme, like new languish, even haz dik-shun-ary. Teh hoomans who lieks kittehs lieks cheezburgers too, so teh burger stoar lurnz lolspeaks.
But mebbe if enuf mawket-urs has teh lolspeak, iz not “authentic” n e moar? I doan no! Kwestions of “authenticity” in kulcher make mai hed asplode!
Hm…
I don’t want to be troll-ey, but I’m fairly certain that the burger king ad is referencing sms-speak (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_language), which has been in use for some time longer than lolcat. “cool it with ur fav flav.” is standard grammar (cool it with your favorite flavor) rather than backwards/lolcat style grammar (ur fav flav can cool it/can has cool), which seems to be the defining point of lolcat speak. Additionally, advertising agencies have been hip to sms-speak for some time now. Mostly you’ll see it in the mobile sector (Boost mobile’s “where u at dawg” campaign) though occasionally, you’ll find some other market trying to be hip to the way the young people talk.
Ok, I’ll totally buy that.
Still, it was fun to write a blog post in lolspeak. And I’m fascinated by how underground/internet culture makes its way into mega-corporate communications.