ROFLCon: Internet Memes In Real Life (Slideshow)
Posted by Alex_Pasternack on Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Also see our documentary on ROFLCon!
Walking directly into a glass window with a thousand-dollar video camera on your shoulder is pretty dumb, especially when it happens at America’s brain trust, MIT.
But when you do it in front of the guy behind FAIL Blog, well, it’s the kind of thing that could make you huge on the internet.
That was exactly the animating force driving ROFLcon II, the second conference on internet culture and the many strange web celebs it’s spawned. When we were there earlier this month, we met a whole slew of the folks that keep us rolling on the floor laughing, including David After Dentist, the owner of Keyboard Cat, Mahir (the inspiration for Borat), the Gregory Brothers (“Autotune the News”), the woman behind Regretsy, Alexei “Impossible is Nothing” Vayner, and Ben Huh, he of FAIL photos, LOLcats, and the meme empire, Cheezburger Network.
The camera wasn’t rolling when Motherboard cameraman James walked directly into a perfectly transparent pane of glass in front of Ben at the MIT Media Lab. But it was rolling the rest of the time, promise. We’re making a documentary about the internet that should be out next week. In the meantime, here are some of our highlights from ROFLcon.
Johannes Grenzfurthner of monochrom, and comrade, in full Soviet Unterzoegersdorf get-up
Researcher Danah Boyd
David and David DeVore, of David After Dentist fame
Gettin’ jiggy wit the boombox briefcase
Mahir was the OG Borat, obvs
Mahir and friend from Turkey
Onion web editor Baratunde Thurston
Usenet heroes Laurence Canter, Brad Templeton and Jason Scott
MIT Media Lab can haz Ben Huh
Brad ‘Keyboard Cat’ O’Farrell and Matt ‘Where the Hell is Matt’ Harding
Pizza tyme!
Dan Lacey, painter of pancakes, naked Obamas on unicorns
They-didn’t-get-the-memo WAFLCon
Alexei Vayner) and Motherboard’s Alex Pasternack
4chan’s m00t
The internetz
PHOTOS: Brayden Olson, Flickr: Mirka23, Rageoss, Brennan Moore
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Email: alexp at motherboard dot tv. @pasternack,
