Created as an
image meme which made its debut on
4chan.
The phrase originally turned up on
Something Awful, but
the image
meme came into being when 4chan users combined the phrase with a photograph of a snow owl taken by nature photographer
John White, which was posted by him to the newsgroup alt.binaries.pictures.animals, adding
text to the photo in a large, easy to read
font. The phrase "o rly" is a short form of "oh, really?" said as a sarcastic or disinterested response to a dubious statement.
Typically, the
image appears and is soon followed by other image memes, such as the
yarly owl and the
noway owl.
Orly is also the name of a
commune in the suburbs of
Paris,
France.