A Brief History of Philosoraptors

Did you know someone holds a copyright on the "philosoraptor" meme? Or that modern usage is credited to a 10-year old?

Half the fun of the Internet (besides free porn) as been the mass proliferation of inside jokes that are more commonly known as memes. One of my favorite's has to be the Philosoraptor! Here's one of my favorites:



According to some stupidly exhaustive research and the fine people at KnowYourMeme.com, philosoraptors have quite the history.

The first usage of the word "philosoraptor" online occurred on December 28, 1998 and was used by a 10-year old named Hope from Kentucky.

"I like the philosoraptor because it spits an acidy type of substance in its victims eyes. I saw this dinosaur in the movie Jurassic Park and I did a report on it also. This dinosaur is da bomb."

Perhaps the earliest roots of the philosoraptor can be seen in the wildly amazing (and all-to-brief) animated FOX show, The Critic.



Here's a clip from The Critic's, "Revenge of the Raptors".

The modern philosoraptor meme got it's start with Sam Smith on t-shirt Web site LonelyDinosaur.com Believe it or not, Smith actually holds a non-commercial creative commons license for the image.

Facilitating the growth of the philosoraptor meme, Internet jokesters 4chan.org locked onto Smith's image and started adding text. Smith says he's not sure who started adding humorous sayings to the photo but he's a fan.

The term officially entered commonly accepted Internet parlance on July 19th, 2008 when philosoraptor entered the Urban Dictionary. The rest of the story is pretty familiar.

Today, the popularity of philosoraptors has never been higher.

Here are a few of my favorites:



Internet meme + Internet meme = Modern Philosophy



Because I'm still confused:



And the one that inspired this post: