Internet Nostalgia

Let’s Revisit Keyboard Cat

Remember when people felt enough shame to be walked off by a cat?

Welcome to part seven of our Internet Nostalgia series, which looks back at phenomena that captured the imagination and attention of the internet for a fleeting moment and then vanished as everyone moved on to something else. This series looks back at those olden times, and what they told us about the internet and ourselves. If you have a suggested topic, email me at williamfleitch@yahoo.com. Last week, we looked at Peanut Butter Jelly Time. This week: Keyboard Cat.

Date: 2009

The story: The cat in the original Keyboard Cat video was captured by a camcorder in 1984. The cat’s owner was a man named Charlie Schmidt, who thought he was being just hilarious. But it was 23 years later, in 2007, when Schmidt first posted the video to YouTube, and two years after that when video website (remember the term “video website?”) My Damn Channel began, with Schmidt’s permission, to begin putting the cat at the end of “FAIL” videos. The idea: The cat was playing the person off stage, like in an old vaudeville video. The cat was not the star of the video. His appearance simply let the person in the FAIL video that he (or she, but mostly he) had failed and that it was now time for them to go. Play…