Invisible Bike
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About
Invisible X is an exploitable caption used to describe photos in which the subject is posing in a distorted position that would possibly be caused by handling or interacting with an invisible object. Originally appearing on LOLcat images, the phrasal template "Invisible X" gradually spread across non-feline photographs as well.
Origin
While the details of the original instance and its caption are unclear, both "Invisible Sandwich" and "Invisible Bike" began appearing online in the summer of 2006, coinciding with the rise of Caturday. The earliest mention of "Invisible Sandwich" was posted on sports blog McCovey Chronicles[1] on July 27th, 2006. The earliest appearance of "Invisible Bike" can be found YTMND[2] on August 20th of that year.
Spread
Throughout 2006, these photos were reshared or mentioned on humor site Daily Haha[3], the Straight Dope[5] message board, Flickr[6], 4chan[9][10] and gaming forum Octopus Overlords.[7] In October of that year, "invisible sandwich" was the first caption of this type to be defined on Urban Dictionary.[4] The same month, "invisible sandwich" cat was also used in its first YTMND.[8]
The first "Invisible X" image on I Can Has Cheezburger was posted on January 17th, 2007.[11] Collections of these LOLcat images were posted to MentalFloss[13] in 2007, Buzzfeed[17] in 2010, and humor sites Innocent English[16] and Socialphy[12] in 2011. Additional images can be found on Flickr[14] and I Can Has Cheezburger.[15] The single topic blog Invisible Sandwiches[18] was created in July 2009 to collect photos of people posing as if they were about to bite into a sandwich, inspired by the cat photo.
Notable Examples
Invisible Bike Mural
In May 2008, San Francisco based artist Josh Zubkoff[19] and several friends painted a mural of the Invisible Bike cat on to the side of a three story building. Zubkoff shared a gallery of photos[20] documenting the process the next day. Deemed the world's largest LOLcat, the mural was featured on Laughing Squid[21], I Can Has Cheezburger[22], Fark[23], and Reddit.[24]
Search Interest
External References
[1] McCovey Chronicles – Ignoring the obvious….
[2] YTMND – Invisible bike
[3] Daily Haha – Invisible Sandwich
[4] Urban Dictionary – Definition for "Invisible Sandwich"
[5] The Straight Dope message board – Invisible bike mention
[6] Flickr – Invisible Sandwich
[7] Octopus Overlords – Invisible Sandwich mention
[8] YTMND – Invisible Sandwich
[9] chanarchive – Most Likely to Invisible Bike
[10] chanarchive – Invisible Ritz
[11] ICHC – nothin but net
[12] Socialphy – Invisible LOL cat
[13] MentalFloss – Image Macros: “Invisible” LOL Cats
[14] Flickr – Search results for "invisible lolcat"
[15] ICHC – Posts tagged "invisible"
[16] Innocent English – Today’s Cute Animal Pictures for November 2, 2011
[17] Buzzfeed – The 17 Best “Invisible” Cat Pictures
[18] Invisible Sandwiches – Home
[19] Blogspot – Josh Zubkoff
[21] Laughing Squid – The World’s Largest Lolcat, An Invisible Bike Mural
[22] ICHC – Lolcat IRL
[23] Fark – Caturday extra: San Francisco home to the world's largest lolcat mural
[24] Reddit – The World's Largest LOLcat
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