Driving down the highway the other day, I saw an American staple, one that’s been part of my framework for understanding the U.S. for as long as I can remember – the Chik-Fil-A cows. These poorly educated and perpetually inept endorsers of every Chik-Fil-A sandwich ever invented have encouraged the American populace to “Eat Mor Chikin” since 1995. As the ad campaign nears its twentieth anniversary, I found myself wondering if maybe it had run its course.
Then another thought struck me. These cows, sometimes dressed in workmen’s overalls, at other times awkwardly perched on one another’s backs, and always accompanied by a sloppily painted and atrociously spelled endorsement (along with a dash of controversy over anti-marriage equality contributions), have finally grown into the era they were meant for. The era no one, except perhaps their eerily-foresighted creators, could have anticipated.
I’m talking, of course, about the age of I Can Has Cheezburger and the thousands of members of its animal-meme family (memimals). The Chik-Fil-A cows were a meme before memes existed. They misspelled words before it was cool. If the longevity of the cows is any indication, you’re going to be hiding the reposted lolcats in your Facebook news feed for longer than the Facebook news feed will be around.
I can has immortality?
The truth is out. These cows haven’t just been trying to save their own bovine behinds; they’ve been secretly teaching America’s pets to comically misspell adorable messages as a means of worming their way further into our susceptible human hearts for years. The cats learned the lesson well, and these days I Can Has Cheezburger has over 201,000 Facebook fans (with over 523,000 fans on the main Cheezburger Network page) and the site receives about two million views each day. The cows aren’t doing too shabbily either, with almost 700,000 Facebook fans of their own. That’s right. 700,000.
In an age where lolcats run amok and adorable animals rule the Internet, the Chik-Fil-A cows have finally come into their own. To their advantage, the cows corner a niche market, as few other memimals brave life in the wide world instead of on the world wide web. The cows rule the skies just as their furry compatriots rule the internet. Even if a decade of painting signs has taught them the proper spelling of the word “chicken,” why on earth would they use it now?
If you’d like to be truly amazed at the number of things a cow can pretend to be while still encouraging you to eat more chicken, check out the photos on Chik-Fil-A cow Facebook page.
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