Origin

The phrase "O RLY?" was first popularised on Internet forums in mid-2003 as one of many phrases that arose during a Something Awful Forums fad of compressing words by removing unnecessary letters. The earliest publicly viewable archives of its use date from somewhat later, but older uses exist in the registration-only complete forum archives. Something Awful users created the first image macros using the phrase, but these did not include (registration required) the now ubiquitous Snowy Owl image.

The owl image macro comes from 4chan, where for a short while, the word "repost" was wordfiltered to "owl"[1]. The photo was taken by nature photographer John White.[2]. The image originated on the gaming and chat boards at IGN and was brought to the random board, /b/, at 4chan by an anonymous poster. There, the already popular "O RLY?" phrase was photoshopped in.

The owl image macro quickly became popular on 4chan, and then spread to many other community websites such as Fark and YTMND, spawning many more image macros involving owls. The frequent posting of the O RLY? owl has annoyed some webmasters to the point that the posting of it on some message boards will result in a user ban.