there was an article in time magazine about this. it didn't start on ns
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1916286,00.html
"What's working, exactly, is a series of viral humor sites intended
simply "to make people happy for five minutes a day," as Huh puts it.
Huh, 31, a journalist turned dotcom entrepreneur, was born in South
Korea and moved to California when he was in his teens. He launched Pet
Holdings in 2007 when angel investors helped him buy a new website
called I Can Has Cheezburger?, which is a compendium of "Lolcats,"
laugh-out-loud feline photos captioned in "kitty pidgin," or artfully
misspelled imaginings of cats' inner monologues. (The original Lolcat
features a fat gray fur ball gazing longingly past the camera under the
heading I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?) Huh discovered the site, which was
started by two Hawaiian bloggers, when they linked to a photo on his
personal blog. His site quickly buckled under the traffic, and he
e-mailed to complain — then figured there was money to be made in such
a zealous online community."