ROFLCon

Internet memez taek ovar Boston ... & this headlien

By Nicole Jones

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Batten down your laptops and back up your hard drives: The internet is coming to Boston. Cyberspace is all a-blog about ROFLCon, the two-day conference set for April 25th and 26th. Internet celebrities, academics and casual nerds will invade MIT for a group dissection of the internet, examining the history and future of online culture.

Six hundred people are expected to show up to catch a glimpse of the actual human beings responsible for sites like Homestar Runner and Stuff White People Like. Tickets have been sold out for a month. For the n00bs, ROFL is internet slang, aka leet speak, for "rolling on the floor laughing."

The team behind the cyber shindig consists mostly of undergrads, led by Harvard senior Tim Hwang, who got the idea for ROFLCon after XKCD webcomic artist Randall Munroe held a get-together for fans in Cambridge last September. "I thought it would be really fun if we did the exact same thing, except with the whole internet," says Hwang.

Hwang began emailing web personalities and soon had a lineup of viral video superstars. Matt Melvin, one of the four creators of the webcomic Cyanide & Happiness, is one of many famous attendees. "It's a pretty grand idea, and to be included is an honor. It's cool to know that we're almost as respected as a guy who took pictures of his butthole," Melvin told the Dig via email, referring to goatse.cx, the inexplicably popular site where a man posted a graphic picture of his anus.

Rob DenBleyker, another of the Cyanide & Happiness creators, is fascinated by such trends. "I'm interested in how content spreads like wildfire online," he writes. "On the internet, you don't have to find your audience. They find you. I doubt any newspaper would publish our comics, so they'd never reach the audience they do now if it weren't for the internet. Also, the internet likes necrophilia jokes. Who would've thought?" The Cyanide & Happiness creators are scheduled to appear on a panel called "Making It Big," along with Rooster Teeth (Red vs. Blue), Brad Neely (Superdeluxe.com), and the Brothers Chaps (Homestar Runner).

The making of an online meme interests Dr. David Weinberger, co-author of the New York Times best-seller The Cluetrain Manifesto, and a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Institute for Internet & Society.

"Marketers have been trying to figure it out, but there doesn't seem to be a formula. It's a very complex thing, which is great," Weinberger says. "We have felt resentment in having media and broadcasters see who's going to be famous, whereas now I think we take joy in making people famous on our own."

Jay Manard experienced this in 2004, when he dressed as Tron for a costume contest at a sci-fi convention and within weeks was making regular appearances on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Now the 47-year-old computer consultant is better known as Tron Guy. "My roommate describes it as like standing next to somebody when lightning strikes," says Maynard, who will give a talk on "Surviving Internet Fame" with Matt Harding (of Where the Hell is Matt?). "I believe this is one of the first attempts to explicitly gather folks who make the internet a cult phenomenon."

Some of the internet's most famous personalities will convene for panel discussions on topics ranging from how to form online communities (Incubating the Mindvirus: Meme Infrastructures) to the LOLCat phenomenon (LOLCats: I can haz case study?). The event includes a pre-party at the Asgard in Cambridge on Thursday April 24th, hosted by artsy web community and sponsor Laughing Squid, and a screening of "Second Skin," a documentary about virtual role-playing games like Everquest and World of Warcraft, at the Somerville Theater. Festivities wrap up with a "huge-ass dance party" at Great Scott in Allston on Saturday night.

Dr. Weinberger gives the opening keynote speech at ROFLCon on the meaning of internet celebrity. "The way in which fame was defined was by quantity, the number of people who know you," Weinberger says. "I think web fame is more about quality. You can be famous to 15 people."