Chocolate Milk Threads

About

Chocolate Milk Threads refer to the recurring celebration of chocolate-flavored milk on4chan and other imageboard communities. Such thread typically begins with the original poster (OP) sharing an image of a glass of chocolate milk or another edible substance and asking others to “watch it” during his/her absence, which leads to a chain of reply posts either agreeing with the OP or denouncing by posting an image of a spilled glass.

Origin

On January 31st, 2008, a thread was posted to 4chan’s /b/ (random) board with a clip art image of a carton of chocolate milk and the original poster proclaiming his love for the drink. In the thread, an anonymous poster was reportedly banned for confessing his/her preference for regular milk, as seen in the screenshot (shown below):

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On December 19th, 2010, another discussion thread about chocolate milk was started on 4chan’s /b/ with the OP asking others what he/she should do with it. On November 4th, 2011, a screenshot of this exchange was posted to /r/Funny,^[6] where it earned 3736 upvotes and 717 points overall, as well as on FunnyJunk^[3] on the following day.

On January 10th, 2012, another thread (shown below, left) surfaced on /b/ with a photograph of a glass of chocolate milk, asking the readers to watch it until the OP returns.

Throughout 2012, screenshots of similar threads worshipping chocolate milk were posted on FunnyJunk in January^[5], March^[6] and April.^[7] In September 2012, an image showing Twilight Sparkle spilling a glass of chocolate milk was posted on the My Little Pony subreddit, leading to a comment thread^[4] discussing how spilling chocolate milk is “the greatest offense on the internet.” As of January 2013, there are a handful of archived threads featuring the key phrase “can you watch this for me” on the Foolz 4chan Archive.^[8] Additionally, there are hundreds of post results for “chocolate milk” on Foolz.^[5]

Notable Examples

 
 

Owling

About

Owling refers to the act of sitting in a perched position while looking off into the distance as to mimic the posture of an owl. The fad was created as a response to another photo fad called “planking”.

Origin

A thread was posted to Reddit^[1] on July 11th, 2011, entitled “Seems to be an increase in planking photos, so…” featuring a demotivational stye image macro of a woman perched on railing with the caption “OWLING because planking is so two months ago”.

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On July 12th, 2011, the story was posted on Salon^[2], HuffPo Urlesque^[9], NowPublic^[4]. and BuzzFeed^[5], even spawning a few user-generated images on Tumblr^[6] and Reddit.^[7]

Cat Breading

About

Cat Breading, also known as Breading Cats, is a photo fad that involves taking pictures of cats with slices of bread placed around the neck. The name of the series is meant to be a pun for “inbred.”

Origin

The original cat bread photo was posted to both Reddit^[1] and Tumblr^[3] on August 2nd, 2011, where it received over 51,000 notes in six months. It was reshared on humor blogs Tastefully Offensive^[4] and Bits and Pieces^[5] the same day. On the 19th of that month, it was posted to the pics subreddit^[2], receiving 8,095 up votes and 6,964 down votes.

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That same month, examples of inbred cat photos were posted onto Uproxx^[17] and a Facebook page^[6] was launched to compile in-bread cat images. On October 2nd, Tumblr blogger lightrup^[7] posted a photoset of her cat in bread, which accumulated over 11,000 notes in three months. Another photo was posted to the blog When Parents Text^[12]in December 2011.

On January 31st, 2012, Gawker published an article^[8] describing the practice of breading cats as a “hot new internet meme.” Throughout the day, two follow up articles were posted with relevant tweets^[9] and submitted photographs^[10]of cats with bread hats.

The same day as the Gawker posts, cat breading was featured on the International Business Times^[13], Metro^[14], the Tosh.0 blog^[15], and humor site The FW.^[16] On February 1st, the photos hit Australia’s Herald Sun^[18], Kansas City’s Fox 4 News^[19], and fashion blog Refinery29.^[20]

Notable Examples

  
  

South Park Appearance

On March 28th, 2012, South Park aired an episode titled “Faith Hilling”^[26] parodying photo fad memes. During the episode, a pair of men investigating the spread of photo fads find that cats shown partaking in cat breadiing are doing it themselves and thus creating their own feline photo fad. This leads the investigators to believe the cats are evolving and are a threat to humans.

iOS Game: Bread Kittens

On November 21st, 2012, mobile gaming startup Bake450^[21] released a game titled Bread Kittens^[22], in which the player battles stray cats that have been brainwashed due to tainted food. The player can also rescue cats by placing different types of bread around the opponent’s head, similar to Pokemon’s method of capturing new monsters with Pokeballs. The game was featured on VentureBeat^[23] and Pocket Gamer UK^[24] following its release. Within 5 days, the game received the highest rating of 5 stars out of 326 reviews. Bake450 also maintains a Facebook fan page^[25] for the game, providing players with tips on how to capture new cats.