Kot

Confirmed 78,490

Part of a series on Cats. [View Related Entries]

About

Kot refers to a viral photograph of a white cat with its mouth held partially agape. The image has been frequently used on the 4chan image boards /s4s/ (shit 4chan says) and /bant/ (international / random) as a reaction image or in-joke.

Origin

On May 9th, 2016, the earliest known usage of the image was posted on 4chan's /int/^[1] board by along with the comment "Kaum ist das Wetter gut, sind auf einmal diese ganzen Angeberwichser mit Furzauspuff am 1.6er Golf bis in die Nacht unterwegs. Haben die alle keine Arbeit oder was?" (shown below).

Spread

On September 20th, 2016, Tumblr ^[2] user yuramec posted the image in response to the comment "☆O☆ OMG I LOVE YOUR OW OC IT'S SO AWESOME!!" The post (shown below, left) received more than 50 notes in less than two years.

Three months later, on January 7th, 2017, Imgur ^[3] user killkillkilldiediedie posted the image in a "Cats meme dump." The post received more than 1,600 points and 94,000 views in a year and a half.

On May 4th, 2017, 4chan^[11] user posted an image of a cat in the /bant/ image board with the caption "KOT THREADA."

On January 5th, 2018, an anonymous 4chan ^[10] user posted the first of a series of image edits featuring the character.

On June 9th, an anonymous 4chan^[4] user posted the image in the /bant/ board. The image features the cat photoshopped onto the body of a person typing on a computer and is captioned "Participate in Kot Threads/Bump Kot Posts/Always Reply To Kot Posters."

Online Poll Raid

On August 18th, 2018, a poll on the site Rename For All^[6] to rename the Stapleton neighborhood in Denver, Colorado was submitted to the /pol/ board, urging readers to raid the poll with troll write-in options.

On August 20th, the poll was submitted to /bant/,^[8]^[9] where users urged viewers to vote for "Kotville" in the online poll. Within 72 hours, "Kotville" became the top-voted result on the online poll with more than 1,440 votes (shown below).