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Parents' Guide to

ICanHasCheezburger

By Caroline Knorr, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 10+

Silly photos spawn offbeat, welcoming community.

Website http://icanhascheezburger.com/
ICanHasCheezburger Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this website.

Community Reviews

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age 11+

Based on 5 parent reviews

NesterPester
NesterPester Adult
March 8, 2012
age 10+

Should be fine for kids

An excellent, entertaining website with a massive pack of hilarious and adorable photos, but fair warning, some contain crude language and sometimes sexualized content. Some things may not be too appropriate for younger children. One thing I can definitely say though that there's more cute than crude on this website. Get your fill of silly kitties here.
MsMossy
MsMossy Adult
October 20, 2010
age 17+

BEWARE! One Click From Cute Cats to Violent, Raw Sexuality!

My daughter has enjoyed the funny cat pictures with captions and fail-blog (oops photos) of the cheezburger sites, but now I know they (there are a collection of them) are too risky. She happened upon one of the sites that was within one click of cute animal pictures that depicted women, some very young looking, in demeaning and sexually violent ways. There's lots of nudity, too, but that's the very least of concerns. Potential for so much damage to young girls' self-image.
See all 5 parent reviews

What’s It About?

Users take silly photos of their cats (which the site refers to as
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LOLcats), add captions with intentional misspellings, and submit them to the
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site. Started in January 2007 with a single silly cat photo,
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ICANHASCHEEZBURGER.COM has become something of a cultural phenomenon. The site receives several thousand submissions per day, of which 10 or so are posted,
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and it reported 1 billion page views in 2008. LOLcats even spawned a compilation book with the same name as the site. Most of the photos are of cats caught doing
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something catlike – hiding in a box, standing on hind legs, looking grimly at the
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camera – while the captions, along the lines of "I eated yr cookie," aptly capture the moment.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (5 ):
Kids say (28 ):

The site's content is entirely user-generated and edited for
the best submissions -- so the quality and humor quotient varies. Mostly, it feels like one giant "in" joke that you slowly catch on to as you view
each successive photo. The feeling of the site is warm and lighthearted and
appreciative of others' efforts -- this isn't a place that tolerates mean-spirited comments.

Still, kids could encounter the rare inappropriate comment before it's flagged and mild sexual references could pop up occasionally if you hit the "random" button. Icanhascheezburger.com is the kind of thing you either like or don't -- and if
your kid is one who does, keep them on the main home page if they're under 12. Better yet, enjoy it with them and try and come up with silly captions for your own pets.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about the way an online community can develop around such a silly concept as cat pictures with misspelled captions. Why do you think this idea caught on? Can you define what you like about it? Do you think it's OK to misspell so many words for comic effect? What if you tried to do that on your homework? Younger kids: can you think of a caption for something your pet did? Older kids: can you think of another book borne from the Internet?

Website Details

  • Genre: Creating
  • Pricing structure: Free
  • Last updated: November 4, 2015

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