Like a Kardashev Scale but for Lolcows ?
The New Zealand Board of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry -Kardashev Scale of Lolcow Civilization
A Typology of Energy Output in the Chronically Online
Type 0 — The Ambient Emitter
Radiates incidentally. Posts exist but carry no gravitational pull. Drama happens around them the way weather happens around a mailbox. Their humiliation is local, contained, and leaves no fossil record. Most people who have ever been mildly embarrassing on a forum are Type 0. The internet forgot them before it even noticed.
Type I — The Planetary Lolcow
Has achieved escape velocity from dignity within a single platform. The drama is self-sustaining — one incident generates enough energy to power a thread, which generates enough energy to power a follow-up incident, which generates a Reddit post, which generates a YouTube video running twelve minutes longer than it needs to. They have a wiki section. They don't know about it yet. When they find out, that event gets its own wiki section.
Type II — The Stellar Lolcow
Has learned to harness their own collapse and is actively feeding energy back into the loop. At this stage, the lolcow has discovered the audience — not in the way a comedian discovers an audience, but in the way a wound discovers a finger. Every response to coverage becomes new coverage. They post receipts that constitute evidence. They file legal threats that become exhibits. The parasocial relationship is now load-bearing infrastructure on both sides. Kiwi Farms has a subforum. The subforum has internal drama.
Type III — The Galactic Lolcow
Operates at civilizational scale. The lolcow has metastasized beyond their own drama — they now generate lolcows. Associates get their own threads. Former allies defect and produce tell-all content that itself becomes a secondary lolcow event. The original incident that started everything is now discussed the way scholars discuss pre-Socratic philosophy: incompletely, with reference to fragments, and with genuine uncertainty about the original sources. Merchandise has been produced. Some of it by the lolcow. Some of it by enemies. The quality differential between these is not what you would expect.
Type IV — The Quartering
Transcended the scale. The Quartering is not producing energy — the Quartering is the background radiation. The lolcow event horizon was crossed at an unknown point in the past, and everything since has been interior to it. The catalog is so vast and internally contradictory that researchers disagree on methodology. He has been right about things. This makes it worse. He has been wrong about the same things simultaneously. There are compilation videos longer than theatrical cuts of prestige films. He has, at various points, been the protagonist, the antagonist, the cautionary tale, the unexpected hero, and the evidence cited by both sides of disputes he is not aware of. He does not log off. He cannot log off. The logging off is the content. He is what remains when a man fully metabolizes his audience and they fully metabolize him, and neither party can locate the transaction anymore. The heat death of the universe will be a YouTube thumbnail. He will have posted about it. The title will be misleading. He will be correct.