Popcat.click

Submission 12,409

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About

Popcat.click is a clicker website that allows visitors to click on an interactive image of the Pop Cat meme to have it pop its mouth. The site tracks the number of clicks and the visitor's country, with countries competing on a global leaderboard. The website went viral in several countries in August 2021, with users from Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia entering a competition with each other to bring their country to the top position on the leaderboard.

History

In November 2020, the internet meme Pop Cat, an edited video of a cat named Oatmeal opening and closing its mouth, went viral on social media. On December 11th, 2020, University of Sheffield students Ed, Josh and Freddy launched Popcat.click,^[1] a clicker website where visitors can click on an image of Pop Cat to have it pop its mouth.

They all liked the meme, realised there wasn’t anywhere you could click on it to make it pop so decided to make it a reality.^[2]

On February 9th, 2021, the official Twitter^[3] account for the website was launched. The website originally went viral in Brazil, with the Twitter^[4]^[5] account reporting the first one-million pop globally and in Brazil on February 10th, 2020.

The website attracted even larger attention in April 2021 when it went viral in Finland. The official Twitter^[6]^[7] account reported 9 million pops reached by Finland on April 10th and 2.9 billion pops on April 22nd, as the website was banned by several schools in the country.^[2]

The website achieved worldwide recognition in August 2021 when it became viral in several Asian countries. In mid-August 2021, the website saw active competition between users from Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia, all trying to bring their countries to the top leaderboard position.

Features

Popcat.click allows visitors to click an interactive image of Pop Cat (Oatmeal), upon which the cat will briefly "pop" its mouth, accompanied by the popping sound associated with the meme. The website tracks the country and the number of clicks made by the users, pooling all clicks made by users from the same country to determine its position on the global leaderboard.

Highlights

In early August 2021, the website went viral in Taiwan and then in several other Asian countries. Between August 8th and 11th, Taiwan^[8]^[9] climbed from 150 million pops to over 2.5 billion pops. On August 11th, Twitter^[10] user @cookiemonstaly wrote about the website, with the post gaining over 7,400 retweets and 11,200 likes in one week (shown below).

Starting in mid-August 2021, the website and the budding competition between users from Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia became a subject of memes and discussions. For example, on August 12th, the Facebook^[11] page A RAY posted a webcomic about the only click logged from North Korea. The post received more than 25,000 reactions and 3,300 shares in one week (shown below, left). On the same day, Facebook^[12] page 台灣迷因 taiwan meme posted a screenshot of Taiwan surpassing Finland to take first place on the global leaderboard. The post (shown below, center) gained over 25,000 reactions and 880 shares.

On August 15th, Facebook^[13] page Princess Hinghoi posted a Crying Wojak Taiwan #1 meme that received over 8,500 reactions and 1,900 shares in three days (shown below, right).

Traffic

As of August 16th, 2021, the site had logged over 116 billion clicks from users worldwide, with the top leaderboard positions taken by Thailand (42 billion clicks), Taiwan (29 billion clicks) and Malaysia (14 billion clicks).