Keyboard Cat – The story behind the internet sensation!
Keyboard Cat is an Internet meme. It consists of footage of “Fatso”, a cat (now deceased) owned by Charlie Schmidt of Spokane, Washington, “playing” an upbeat rhythm on an electronic keyboard. The clip has gained popularity by being appended to blooper and other viral videos as if to “play” that person offstage after the mistake or gaffe, usually accompanied with the title Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat or a variant. The first such video was created by Brad O’Farrell.
Keyboard Cat was further popularized by Stephen Colbert on May 18, 2009, during a “toss” with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. At the 2009 MTV Movie Awards, Andy Samberg‘s opening monologue suggested that award winners whose speech went on too long would be played off with Keyboard Cat. In the upcoming Nintendo DS game, Scribblenauts, in which the player can summon numerous objects to assist in solving puzzles, Keyboard Cat appears as one of several possible Internet memes that can be called up in the game. The timing of the popularity of the Keyboard Cat meme with the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo Convention was considered partially responsible for Scribblenauts’ success during the convention.
Ok, well i’ve not done a blog post for some time now so i thought i’d freshen up the blog with one of the main videos that has been effecting my daily internet browsing since a few months back.
First came Charlie Schmidt and Fatso. Then Brad O’Farrell mashed them together. The rest is history!
Keyboard Cat!!
Originally created by Charlie Schmidt in a 54 second video placed on youtube. In which he holds a orange tabby through it’s cute little blue jumper and then proceeds to puppet it so it appears as if the cat was playing the tiny piano all by itself.
Either way this video was a hit and shortly after became one of the biggest memes known to date up there with dramatic chipmunk etc. So in a nutshell the meme produced by this original video was dubbed “Play Him Off Keyboard Cat” and to explain it in an easy to read manor i’ll number the steps.
- Create or find a video which contains footage of someone failing very hard, or someone being really awesome.
- Mix some background music, a good choice is the background track actually in the keyboard cat video.
- Find the right moment to spring the keyboard cat into place to play off the person / thing / object which the meme would be focused around.
And there you have it, the meme “Play Him Off Keyboard Cat” explained, pulled apart and simplified!
Here are some of my favourite keyboard cat moments, you can find more here.
Play them off keyboard cat!
