Image macros as a technique have been around much longer than lolcats and icanhascheezburger, and there is actually no requirement to write like a retarded badger drunk on bad scotch. The term "image macro" originated on Something Awful forums as they had short text phrases one could type which the board software would expand into an image with digitally superimposed text. Usually it is used as emphasis to get a point across without using a lot of words (as we know, pictures have a thousand words in them).

Cat macros became very popular on imageboards like 4chan and eventually spawned what was called "Caturday". Then, sometime last thursday, Eric Nakagawa "found a picture on the internet" and started icanhazcheezeburger with it, bringing Caturday to the masses in a watered down and somehow lacking form that basically killed it.

So, to have the "perfect" lolcat, you will ideally have a picture of a cat no one else has (possibly because it is YOUR cat) in a funny or interesting pose, some witty text to go with it, an image editing tool such as Photoshop or theGIMP, and be in before January 2007. Anything else is suboptimal.
Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_macro
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Lolcat

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