Internet Fads: Keyboard Cat

Well, this one came out of nowhere.

The other day, I was forwarded a somewhat comical video of a kid getting in trouble by his father for going online and “making an ass of himself for all eternity”.  The video was fine by itself – cute, maybe staged – but it was the surprising appearance of a cat tinkling the ivories of a keyboard that made it worth forwarding to friends. After some brief research, I found Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat, a aggregation site of similar videos, featuring shots of people doing something embarrassing being “played off” by the cat. And then this happened the other night on The Daily Show:

So, it’s a full-fledged Internet Phenomenon at this point; even Time magazine did a story about it. So there’s a good chance a variety of these Keyboard Cat videos will be finding their way into your inbox soon. Some of these are funny, some of these are worth a glance, but most of them are awful. Still, there’s one out there, and this is really the whole point of the post, that somehow transforms Keyboard Cat from a cute, little Internet Phenomenon to a transcendent work that, in certain circles, could be considered art. Do enjoy: