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There's no denying there's plenty of humour and creativity in the work people put into creating LOLcats and similar works. But looking at the meme in context, we have to see it for what it is: a phenomenon in which an internet audience -- comprised mainly of privileged White middle-class folks between 18 and 40, if I remember my demographics correctly -- creates and posts content consisting of pictures of animals with captions written in a dialect most closely resembling Mark Twain's version of African-American English.
In other words, (relatively) wealthy White people are creating images where animals are made to "speak" in the imagined dialect of poor Black people, in order to laugh at them.
Let's be clear: the language used in LOLcat captions isn't simply "mangled English". The deliberate misspellings and misuses of words like the verb "to be" reflect the ways in which White folks misunderstand the way Black folks talk in America. Dixit Jay's article may elide any discussion of race, but postings like this one (http://bp2.blogger.com/_48pIyTbrm4A/Ruc4lWH0clI/AAAAAAAAADE/Xn7698M88ME/s1600-h/I+just+wishes+i+wuz+white..jpg) make it pretty clear that race is very much a factor in these posts.
Does that mean I think that all people who post LOLcats are racists with an agenda? Of course not. But to me, many of these cartoons reflect an unconscious equation, in the mind of their creators, of Black people with animals, and of Black culture (as perceived, or mis-perceived, by people outside of it) as something to be ridiculed.
And I guess that's why I don't find these things funny.
