What the Heck is a Lolcat and Who Came Up with the Atrocious Dialect?

I saw what is called a "lolcat" for the first time the other day (I guess I really am behind the times). While I have always liked cats and some of the images and sayings are cute, overall I was appalled to find out these lolcats have become such a phenomenon. There is no excuse for using intentionally poor grammar and spelling. At any rate, I decided to learn a bit more about this phenomenon.

According to Wikipedia, a lolcat is "an image combining a photograph, most frequently of a cat, with a humorous and idiosyncratic caption in (often) broken English—a dialect which is known as “lolspeak,” ”kitteh,” or “kitty pidgin” and which parodies the poor grammar typically attributed to Internet slang. The name "lolcat" is acompound word of the words "LOL" and "cat".

After reading this I was even more appalled to learn that this supposed dialect has been given not only one name, but three different names. I guess nothing should surprise me in this day and age of chatlish.