On June 19th, 2018, Tumblr user deadbefordeath posted a photograph of a white cat with a confused expression sitting in a chair in front of a plate of vegetables, titling the post “he no like vegetals.” According to the Literally Media database, the post gained over 120,000 likes and reblogs in one year, and the popular feline was eventually identified as a cat from Ottowa named Smudge. Meanwhile, a formidable reaction screen cap of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills cast members Taylor Armstrong and Kyle Richards was getting its own internet exposure and on May 1, 2019, Twitter user @MISSINGEGIRL fused the two photographs together. This amalgam was titled “These photos together is making me lose it” and the tweet gained over 78,900 retweets and 276,800 likes in two months. But on May 2nd, Twitter user @lc28__ made the first known meme based on the format, titling it “Me accusing my cat of cuddling with other people when I come home drunk after bottomless brunch.”

A fresh meme must contain an essential irony, which can vary from wry observations to volatile political incorrectness. Consequently, the Woman Yelling At Cat meme—which features the image of Armstrong and Smudge expressing differing opinions, also known as “object labeling” in the meme lexicon—took off. And, since an important attraction of a meme is that the viewer is able alter it in any way they choose, the Woman Yelling At Cat meme went viral on October 13th, 2019, when Facebook user KucingMenangid posted a remix video of it. After replacing Smudge with the feline Thurston Waffles , the post received more than 727,000 views, 25,000 shares, 12,000 reactions and 3,500 comments in a little over one week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwMwvuGOsX8

This transmogrification into a four-second video delivered the meme to a wider audience; plus, Armstrong herself contributed greatly by her engagement with people who tag her in their social media posts. But after kapwing.com posted their Woman Yelling At Cat Meme Maker, the internet was instantly flooded with Armstrong and Smudge dank memes. And once the meme became an internationally recognized format for commentary of any kind, it became obvious that, in fact, each individual Woman Yelling At Cat meme was also obliquely making reference to every other Woman Yelling At Cat meme. In essence, it became meta-commentary, its apex evident in womanvscatmeme’s tweet titled, “I don’t understand these memes/Who gone tell her.”

With such cultural resonance, it was inevitable that the digital Woman Yelling At Cat meme would become the subject of traditional analog formats such as painting and drawing. Still, even as a legitimate contributor to the contemporary artistic zeitgeist, it’s doubtful that the meme will be in the Whitney Biennial anytime soon. Which is unfortunate, because internet memeology shares its cultural and psychic intrusions with Street Art; in fact, memes are basically graffiti on the Information Superhighway. But the main reason that  galleries and museums will snub the Woman Yelling At Cat meme is that it introduces a rival 21st century art form with its own commercial network. And that’s something the Fine Art Establishment doesn’t want to see go viral.