Filed under: ROFL
Rolling on the floor sobbing.
The LOLCATS: I CAN HAZ CASE STUDY? Panel at ROFL Con was pretty amazing. More on the really smart talk about really dumb stuff later. For now, had to put this up after Ben "Cheez" Huh, the CEO of I Can Has Cheezburger said his favorite LOLs are Emo LOLs.
Ian Chillag
6:49 PM ET
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04-25-2008
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Filed under: ROFL
NYROFL
Ian Chillag/NPR
My girlfriend Nora, having endured days of me talking about LOLCats, poses this question as I sit in the LOLCATS: I CAN HAZ CASE STUDY? panel at ROFL Con: what if LOLCats met the New Yorker Magazine caption contest?
Ian Chillag
3:30 PM ET
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04-25-2008
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Filed under: ROFL
Right now, Kyle Macdonald, Joe Mathlete, Ian Spector, Andy Ochiltree, Andrew Baron, and Alex Tew are on stage, talking about making money from the internet. It just opened up to questions. I'm paraphrasing here, but the conversation quickly became about more than money.
From a woman in the audience: I can't help but notice you're all young white males. What do you think about that?
From the panel: A lot of other cultures have better things to do.
From Tron Guy in the crowd: I'm a geek and proud of it damnit. Everyone in this room is. The question of this internet fame skewing toward white males, it's about the fact that geeks are mostly white males. As more women become geeks, we'll see it even out as time goes on.
From the panel: Also, you have to have a stupid idea and jump on it. Women aren't stupid like men are.
From a woman in the crowd: It's not about stupidity. Men are allowed to be funny. Women aren't allowed to be funny like men are in our society.
From a man in the crowd: I love Tina Fey!
What do you think? Is internet fame--or even internet culture itself--more open to men than to women? Is Tron Guy right? Is it changing?
Ian Chillag
1:34 PM ET
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04-25-2008
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David Weinberger, so smart he's pixelated.
Ian Chillag/NPR
The ROFL Con opening keynote is now going on. David Weinberger, Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, is at the mic deconstructing what fame on the internet means, and why we take things on the internet and make them famous.
Part of what he's saying is that we feel like we know people on the internet, and we trust bloggers precisely because they do not seem expert. If what they're saying isn't polished, how could it be spin? In his words, "we pre-emptively forgive bloggers," and "perfection is the enemy of credibility." To paraphrase, internet consumers believe if it was made by a human being it should smell like a human being.
He goes on: "fame, in the broadcast world, is binary. You're famous, or you're not." In internet fame, it's a continuum. There are people here who are wildly famous in this room, but wouldn't be recognized right outside. I have to say, everyone seems to treasure that fact. There's a sense in this room that these aren't distant celebrities, they're family.
Ian Chillag
12:39 PM ET
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04-25-2008
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Alexis Ohanian shows off his OLPC.
Ian Chillag/NPR
At a baseball game, you get your baseball signed. At ROFL Con, you get autographs on your XO Laptop. Alexis Ohanian of Reddit is collecting the signatures of iCelebs, and he's already got Tron Guy, Denny Blaze, Leeroy Jenkins, and plenty others. Once he gets the entire internet, he's going to put it up ebay to raise money for One Laptop Per Child. Noting this week's OLPC news, Ohanian adds, "I'm doing this with the caveat that I'd really like them not to go with Microsoft."
Ian Chillag
11:43 AM ET
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04-25-2008
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ROFL Con has ample Light Cycle parking.
Ian Chillag/NPR
Greetings from ROFL Con, where the big names are filing in. Tron Guy had to instruct the many photographers taking his picture not to use flash, because it washes out his suit's awesomeness.
The Mozilla Firefox is shuffling around handing out apples. Some promotion about Firefox being 100% organic software. As far as I can tell it's just a human in a furry fox costume. I am not going to care about him unless he takes off his mask and it turns out to be Tay Zonday inside.
Near-disastrous celebrity encounter so far: Denny Blaze's dad dropped my iPhone. This reminds me of my grandfather's big brush with fame: he once slammed Senator Jay Rockefeller's hand in a car door. The iPhone is fine. And J-Rock is still in office.
I hung with Denny and his dad for a little while. Denny says he's been making music since the famous Average Homeboy video. I told him I wouldn't want to look back at anything I did twenty years ago. He says, "I have no regrets."
Ian Chillag
11:09 AM ET
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04-25-2008
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What the World Looks Like Through Beer Googles
Ian Chillag/NPR
ROFL Con: it's the entire internet in one place, in its human forms. Those human forms do what other humans do: they drink beer. Scott Beale of Laughing Squid made it easy last night. He opened up a tab at a pub in Cambridge, and the internet was thirsty.
"You can see if you walk in that room right now, there's a lot of drunk memes," Beale said. He had a beer in one hand and was twittering with his iPhone in the other. "There are probably some brand new memes that are being hatched tonight. And we will see in six to eight weeks."
As for those future memes, they may be meta-memes, which is a word I just made up. River Laker flew up from Virginia to make youtube videos at ROFL Con of ROFL Con. He says he's "currently researching Web 5.2." Look out for that.
I'm off to grab some noms, which is a word I didn't make up. I'll be going to a few sessions today, but I'm most excited about "LOLCATS: I Can Haz Case Study?" It'll examine the roots of cat macros, and how we might look back on them thirty years from now. The human form of this will be there, if the people swarming him last night ever let him leave the bar.
Ian Chillag
8:24 AM ET
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04-25-2008
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