No subject

from Leeroy -- it was clear that the audience members knew the same
jokes and held the same values, and thus was something more than a
mere audience.   The enthusiasm of the attendees was instant,
unbridled and sustained. Given that this was a celebration of a
culture constructed by its own audience, this was appropriate. It felt
more like a movement than a conference.

But, since I am just about three times older than the average
attendee, my reaction is tainted. Oh, sure, I enjoy a funny LOLcats
now and then, but Time magazine covered that meme a year ago. I had to
have a young friend explain the complex history of Anonymous (google
that, "4chan" and "scientology" together), and the seriousness of
Leslie Hall only slowly sank in. As for Leeroy, well, I had to look
him up in Wikipedia to get the entire backstory. (This was far more a
WoW than Wikipedia crowd.)  It was a revelation to me how far outside
the Net mainstream I've become.

So, it's hard for me to judge how important ROFLcon was. It might have
been a watershed event in which the culture assembled itself into one
physical place long enough to sense its own heft. Woodstock, anyone?
Or it might have been
"merely" a place in which bonds formed and themes coalesced that will
affect the future. I do suspect that it was, in any event, more than
just a good time.

I might add that, Christina's modesty aside, the degree of looseness
the event achieved came as a result of especially meticulous,
transparent, organizing by Christina, Tim, and a large, loose cadre.

David W.

-- 
David Weinberger
Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society
self at evident.com
blog: http://www.JohoTheBlog.com
Latest book: www.EImisc.com


On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 8:04 PM, Christina Xu <kxu at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> Hi iDC!
>
> My name is Christina, and I'm a junior at Harvard studying History of
> Science. Perhaps more importantly, however, I was one of the co-founders of
> ROFLCon (www.roflcon.org), and the following is a (not-so-)quick
> introduction to and postmortem dissection of the conference...
>
> ROFLCon was an idea that Tim Hwang and I came up with while we were at the
> xkcd meetup (http://blag.xkcd.com/2007/10/01/the-meetup/) last September. We
> were fascinated by the real world manifestation of this community that had
> been constructed around a piece of internet culture--the social structures
> it took on, the way people interacted with each other once they were face to
> face, and the Stone Soup mentality of the participants involved. It got us
> joking around about what the rest of the internet would look like in real
> life (Goatse and Tron Guy and Star Wars kid all in the same room?), which we
> quickly decided was the most horrifying idea we had ever come up with in a
> storied tradition of bad ideas. Then we decided to do it--it was just too
> epic not to.
>
> The image of many internet celebrities in one room was really all that we
> had in the way of a coherent vision at the beginning, but we decided pretty
> early on that the "con" in ROFLCon would stand for both conference and
> convention. We recognized that at some level, we were doing this out of
> fandom, and that part of the appeal of the event would be being within arm's
> length of these internet stars. However, we were also interested in thinking
> about this stuff at a higher level, and being steeped in academia as we
> were, it was natural for us to consider a conference-like format with panels
> and moderators.
>
> Yet, it had to be different from the conferences we were used to. As someone
> who grew up on the internet, I had always been somewhat allergic to
> outsiders' depictions of what was going on, because they were usually
> hopelessly out of touch. At Harvard, I was fortunate enough to have become
> acquainted with a wide network of scholars thinking about the internet, but
> even so I noticed that at the conferences I had gone to, the internet
> itself--that is, the people who spend hours upon hours on it, generating the
> content that we all chuckle at during coffee breaks--remained disturbingly
> voiceless. It was easy to talk about nonprofits like Creative Commons or
> Wikipedia because they are still somewhat within the extended academic
> framework, but what about YouTube celebrities or the creators of internet
> communities? What about the people who had gotten famous themselves? We
> thought that they probably had really interesting things to say, and set out
> to make sure that they would have a voice.
>
> The tone of the conference was also something that we had to control pretty
> carefully from the beginning. We wanted to be able to discuss things
> seriously and productively, but at the same time had to do this with a sense
> of humor that wouldn't alienate us from the community we were celebrating
> and giving back to. For ROFLCon to work, it had to take fun seriously
> without taking itself seriously. Luckily, this came pretty naturally most of
> the time simply because of the personalities of the ROFLCon staff--we didn't
> take ourselves very seriously, and saw ROFLCon less as a serious project
> than an elaborate practical joke of sorts. By not trying to prove anything
> and focusing on creating an experience that would be fun for ourselves, we
> managed to create a good balance between academia and levity, legitimacy and
> lulz. This attitude, which also manifested itself in the "jankity" aesthetic
> of the conference. We made it clear that the bureaucracy and logistics of
> running the conference were subordinate to the primary objective: having fun
> and being ridiculous.
>
> Of course, there were flaws with this plan. As we tried to iron out
> discussion topics for the panels, we realized that the "internet culture" we
> were focusing on was much too narrowly defined. It was the internet culture
> I grew up with--video game/anime/geek-influenced, propagated on message
> boards and Slashdot, and overwhelmingly white and male. Oops. Doing it
> again, we would definitely broaden our conception of "internet culture" to
> other huge components that we missed the first time around: global memes
> like "Bus Uncle," for example, or the mostly-female fanfiction community.
> Despite this, I'm happy with what we DID accomplish--an excellent
> cross-section of the subculture most commonly called to mind when "internet
> culture" is mentioned.
>
> Really, there were few moments of ROFLCon that I didn't enjoy. It was a
> hectic experience to be sure, but an incredibly rewarding one. At the end of
> the first day, I think we were all absolutely shocked that everything had
> gone so smoothly when we had been bracing ourselves for shitshows and
> disasters for so long. It was wonderful to hear not just all the attendees,
> but even all the guests tell us that they had a good time. Obviously,
> meeting all of these people whose videos and jokes I'd been appreciating and
> referencing for such a long time was incredible, as was watching the memes
> have a similar experience with each other. The I Can Has Cheezburger guy was
> just as wowed by meeting Leeroy as we were!
>
> Personally, I didn't get to see most of the panels because I was running
> around the whole time, but the few I did see were pretty great. The
> Anonymous panel was especially interesting. Not only was it great visually,
> but it really offered insight into a very complex and often problematic
> community. The "Meme Infrastructure" panel was impeccably moderated by Anil
> Dash and featured an interesting diversity of guests who spoke to very
> different communities and experiences. Watching all of the various
> backchannels (Twitter, blogs, IRC, backchan.nl) was also really interesting.
>
> I'm wrapping this up so I can go to our official post-ROFLCon celebration,
> but I have plenty left to say and am happy to answer any questions you might
> have. Were any of you there? What did you think? What do you want to see
> next year?
>
> <3,
> Christina Xu
> http://spreadtoothin.wordpress.com
>
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