Woman Yelling at a Cat

The **woman yelling at a cat** meme is actually a combination of two different internet memes. It juxtaposes an image of Taylor Armstrong and Kyle Richards from an American reality television series to the picture of a cat, Smudge, from Ottawa, Ontario. The **woman yelling** meme is taken from the series *The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills*. It is from Season 2 Episode 14, "Malibu Beach Party from Hell", premiered in the United States on December 5, 2011. The **cat meme** comes from a post by deadbefordeath on Tumblr. It was captioned "he no like vegetals" and got over 50,300 likes and reblogs in just one year. It is popularly known as the "Confused Cat at Dinner" meme, too. The **woman yelling at a cat** meme was put together by twitter user @MISSINGEGIRL by combining the images and posting them on Twitter on May 1, 2019. The caption was "These photos together is making me lose it." The tweet went viral and got more than 78,900 retweets and 276,800 likes in two months. The meme has been circulating since then.

## Recognizable Feature

The most obvious recognizable features of this meme are two horizontal panels where the left panel represents someone arguing aggressively and the right panel shows a cat at dinner. Usually the image at the right panel remains the same. A cat at dinner is featured at right, whereas the image at the left can be of anyone who is talking. Even when the iteration switches the right and the left panels, the left image shows two entities pointing fingers whereas there's one entity at the right, answering calmly.

Following Limor Shifman's explanation of *memetic dimensions*, the recognizable features of this meme can be understood in terms of its content, form, and stance. The first dimension, its content, includes ideas and ideologies conveyed by specific texts. As the examples presented in the galley shows, the basic idea of the graphic texts embedded in this meme presents a visualization of two opposing views. The meme's recognizable feature in terms of content, then, is a representation of two different opinions through a combination of two images.

The second dimension, its form, is the sensory perception of the meme. The recognizable visual aspects of this meme are two panels. The left panel usually features two entities where one is aggressively pointing finger at someone at the right panel and the other one is holding them, seemingly to control and mitigate the situation. The right panel represents someone responding casually while sitting at a dinner table.

The third dimension, stance, suggests the potential positionality of the memer. It is usually included as embedded texts over or around the images as well as through the caption used for the meme. The stance of the meme is to mock and ridicule the overreactions presented by the image featured in left panel, whereas the ideas presented through the right panel is used to symbolize civility and the voice of reason.

## Cultural Context

The meme originated in the West, but is widely circulated in different cultural contexts all around the world. Although it has been taken up by people in various countries, it is easily recognizable as the "women yelling at the cat" meme representing two opposing views.

The meme showcases Taylor Armstrong as someone who is overreacting. It plays along with the cultural currency of sexism, where women's reactions are perceived as overreactions. The stereotype of reality television and white upper-class women adds another layer to the context. As discussed by Shawn Laib, "women are not expected to be violent, either physically or vocally". The cultural context of the meme, then, is rooted in sexism, where Armstrong became a meme, possibly because she, as a woman, reacted violating the gender expectations put on her by society as a whole.

It's interesting that the popularity of this meme comes from positioning Armstrong against Smudge, a cat. An Xiao Mina noted, owning a cat is rather a private act. Here the cat is not seen in a "tender moment" being cute or "kookier", but rather reasonably condescending. Although both the woman and the cat images are apparently breaking societal expectations in the meme, the favor seems to lie with the cat and not with the woman. The meme is, then, echoing the cultural context of both sexism and misogyny, where it's accepted as funny to see the anger of a woman as something as absurd as arguing with a cat. It is in fact a digital reiteration of the idea behind Mad Woman in the Attic, where the woman is represented as unreasonable, quarrelsome, and dramatic.

## Audience

The meme is popular among Twitter and Facebook users, but it pops out in other social media outlets too such as in Tumblr and Reddit. The audience of this meme can be varied, as it has been used in very many ways and also in diverse contexts. However, the quick wit used in this meme goes more with the youth than older people. Thus, it seem to resonate more with younger generations such as millennials than older ones like boomers.

The humor of this meme relies on metis, "to virality and to an ethic of fast circulation". The audience is this meme, too, is primarily inclined towards metis, and not phronesis, which explains the fast circulation of the meme in a comparatively short span of time. The audience of this meme are comfortable engaging with polarity and controversy. As the meme is defined by two opposing views, audiences with a balanced perspective may not find any humor in it.

According to Lynn Lewis, "images act to construct identity in particular ways". The audience of this meme can be defined based on Lewis's idea too, as the meme reduces the anger of a woman and normalizes laughing at her emotions. The identity of the audience who resonate to this meme, then, is characterized by ethical ambiguity. Although the meaning of the meme depends solely on its context, its audience, still, are seemingly of the sorts who aren't keen on the prudent judgement and practical wisdom of phronesis.

## Circulation

After its first appearance on Twitter on May 1, 2019, people started interacting with the meme immediately. lc28\_ posted an iteration of the meme on May, 3, 2019, and captioned it as "“Me accusing my cat of cuddling with other people when I come home drunk after bottomless brunch". A breakthrough moment in terms of the circulation of this meme happened on June 2, 2019, when another iteration was posted in Reddit by PerpetualWinter. This meme was about sports and poked fun at the fans of New York Knicks, the basketball team. From then on, the meme has been in circulation in Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets such as r/DankMemes in Reddit and in communities via WhatsApp.

The meme is circulated through other mediums as well. It has been used as a protest sign in an antimining rally in Guatemala on Sep 4, 2019. CodyPalm first posted a picture of himself in a Halloween costume made up of the meme in Twitter on Oct 27, 2019. It was picked up by The Daily Dot on the same day. Taylor Armstrong retweeted the news using her Twitter handle on the next day. It was then taken up by Mashable immediately. Business Insider featured a news on the meme on Dec 16, 2019. A Sims 4 fan SimplySimmer19 created the meme in Sims 4 and posted about it in Reddit. The news is covered by pcgamesn.com on Apr 28, 2020, thus helping the meme circulate even further. It won the Meme of the Year Award at the 12th Annual Shorty Awards on May 4, 2020.

Bruce Sterling illustrated the meme using different art styles in Tumblr, while Ochre Jelly recreated it using Lego, which was then featured in boingboing.net on Feb 25, 2021. The meme is sold as digital art and merchandise products through ecommerce sites like Etsy and Redbubble till date. Its popularity and further circulation owes much to the interviews taken by Know Your Meme and Buzzfeed as well. Smudge's owner Miranda Stillabower's interview was featured in the Youtube Channel of Know Your Meme on May 15, 2021. Taylor Armstrong and Kyle Richards, on the other hand, were featured in the Youtube series "I Accidentally Became a Meme" of BuzzFeedVideo on Jul 9, 2022, and Buzzfeed UK on Aug 3, 2022, respectively.

## Ethical Issues

The meme is ethically ambiguous, as the context of the image of Taylor Armstrong and Kyle Richards is breech of privacy and domestic abuse. Armstrong had confided about her abusive marriage to a participant of the show *Real Housewives,* who outed her secret in national television. It created a huge safety issue for her, making her further vulnerable in her marriage and in her own home. Although Armstrong responds to the meme positively, the way her images are used and circulated so far is far from ethical.

The meme is made out of the screenshot of Armstrong's show aired in 2011. Immediately after the episode was aired, tabloids and gossip magazines picked it up and used the images as a feud among girls to keep traction for their outlets. The images have been normalizing the negative stereotypes of women in reality television as silly and dramatic for more than ten years now. The meme created by combining Armstrong and Richards's image and that of Smudge's as opened up possibilities of interacting with it in new ways, but even then it is often used in derogatory manner to dismiss the experience of women.

## Impact

The meme has been quite popular and is used in many different contexts. As this screenshots of three Google Trends searches on 12/12/2022 suggests, it still has a huge impact on people around the world.

Although the meme is not entirely ethical, it's ramification includes positive social change, too. While it is often used as a dank meme templete, it is employed in political discourse as well. The impact of it, therefore, is varied. Depending on the contexts and iterations, it is used to perpetuate both progressive and regressive values.

## References

1. ↑ Woman Yelling at a Cat. knowyourmeme.com.
2. ↑ Aaron Parsley (2011), "Taylor Armstrong on 'Real Housewives' Meltdown: 'I was a Train Wreck'". people.com.
3. ↑ deadbeforedeath, "He no like vegetals", tumblr.com.
4. ↑ missingegirl, "These photos together are making me loose it", twitter.com.
5. ↑ Limor Shifman (2014), "Defining Internet Memes", *Memes in Digital Culture*.
6. ↑ Shawn Laib (2020), "Is the 'Karen' Meme Sexist?", *An Injustice!*
7. ↑ An Xiao Mina (2019), "The Revolution of the Cat", *Memes to Movements*. (89)
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Katherine DeLuca (2020), "Fostering *Phronesis* in Digital Rhetorics: Developing a Rhetorical and Ethical Approach to Online Engagements", *Digital Ethics*. (232)
9. ↑ Lynn Lewis (2012), "The Participatory Meme Chronotope: Fixity of Space/Rapture of Time," *New Media Literacies and Participatory Culture Across Borders*. (114)
10. ↑ Stacey Ritzen (2019), "How an unlikely marriage of memes gave us ‘woman yelling at cat’", dailydot.com.
11. ↑ "Woman Yelling at a Cat". wikipedia.org.
12. ↑ Renee Fabian (2019), "The Story Behind Popular 'Woman Yelling at a Cat' Meme Was Actually the Result of Abuse", yahoo.com.
13. ↑ Michelle Rennex (2019), "The Dark Story Behind The ‘Woman Vs Cat’ Meme", junkee.com.
14. ↑ Sadho Ram, (2019), "You Have Seen & Shared The 'Woman Yelling At Cat' Meme. Now Read The True Story Behind It", says.com.
15. ↑ Rachel Carlson (2021), "MEMES, Part 4: Woman yelling at a cat", wbur.org.