I got the chance to moderate and speak on a panel at ROFLCon this past weekend in Cambridge, MA. In the midst of relentlessly plugging reddit, getting superstar geek signatures for my ROFLaptop and handing out LOLmagnetz, I came face to face with Internet legends (can I call them legends? To hell with it, I am). Pics of me with Tron Guy to come...
One of the highlights for me came on my panel, INCUBATING THE MINDVIRUS: MEME INFRASTRUCTURES, hosted by the moderator-extraordinaire, Anil Dash. And yes, he was rocking his infamous NYTimes-photographed Goatse shirt.
He asked the panel for some significant moments when you realized your meme (in my case, the whole reddit-thing) really took off. I didn't have a good answer for us, but there were two fantastic memes I saw at their humble beginnings on reddit -- one was even in attendance...
And if that weren't enough, here's an excerpt from a recent IM convo we had:
5:06:03 PM xkcd-dude: I hope you aren't hurtHurt? Randall, I'm in love.
5:06:13 PM xkcd-dude: but I've added a line to my hosts file
5:06:28 PM xkcd-dude: so reddit resolves to localhost
5:06:36 PM xkcd-dude: where this page is served: http://xkcd.com/no/
pic from Scott Beale / Laughing Squid
In case you're curious, the other meme I hinted at is Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame, but I'm cooking up a separate blog entry just for him.
All in all, it was a fantastic weekend. Our ROFLhosts did a masterful job and I'm counting on them to repeat next year. Consider me signed up. If you didn't make it this year, the videos should be floating around. I've got nearly all the footage from the LOLspeak panel I moderated -- just need to find the right techno soundtrack to loop in the background.
