Nyan Cat / Pop Tart Cat

Nyan Cat, also known as Pop Tart Cat, is an 8-bit animation depicting a cat with the body of a cherry pop tart flying through outer space. While such absurd themes like flying kittens and pastry cats have been around for some time, the surreal humor behind this particular combination has captivated YouTubers and online art communities, spawning dozens of fan illustrations as well as receiving some mainstream coverage in April 2011.

(Click on the image to see it move)

On April 5th, 2011, YouTuber saraj00n posted a video titled Nyan Cat³, using comic artist prguitarman’s Pop Tart Cat animation set to the well-known Japanese Vocaloid song Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya by Japanese artist daniwellP looping in the background. The video gained over one million views in its first two weeks:





In other news, here is slipknot's video, psychosocial. Just listen to about 20 seconds of it. I find it painful to listen to, but I'm trying to prove a point.

YouTuber xDaZJMx¹¹ commented on the original Nyan cat video by saraj00n telling viewers to watch Slipknot’s Psychosocial (muted) with the Nyan cat song playing in the background. The comment went as follows:

Step 1: Put this song to the start and Pause it.
Step 2: Open up Slipknot Psychosocial in another tab.
Step 3: Mute the Slipknot video.
Step 4: Play this song and the Slipknot vid at the exact same time
Step 5: ????
Step 6: PROFIT!

xDaZJMx’s comment quickly gained hundreds of likes, was featured as the highest comment, and many users began flooding the Psychosocial video’s comments¹² with Nyans. As of April 26th, 2011, Slipknot’s “Psychosocial” music video page on YouTube has over 111,000 comments, with tens of thousands reading “NYANNYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYA.” This caused confusion among Slipknot listeners, and further spread the Nyan cat meme and its hilarity.


So now you know where the meme came from. Credit for this post to this site.