Worship the cat: the rise of cat memes is a digital exhibit dedicated to showing the different kinds of cat memes that have been shared on the internet throughout the 21st century.
There has been evidence of cat worship since the days of Egypt and through the many depictions of cats since, but the age of the internet has rocketed the domestic house cat into inescapable visibility. Cats have become jokes to vessels for particular emotions or expressions. It is nearly impossible to visit a social media website and not find some evidence of cats and cat memes.
This exhibit focuses on some "template" memes, iterations of those memes, webcomics that have some foot in the cat meme world, videos, gifs, and articles. Together, these illustrate a vast time from early blogs to TikTok to BBC and how these formats have disseminated memes.