LukeWalker.org

Sadly, I missed the LOL-related panel (lolcats, lolsecrets, lolcode, lolbible), but I did get to the panel about pwning for the betterment of mankind. It was… a bit too serious. And in fairness, they were trying to deal with some serious stuff… net neutrality, the CIA, etc etc etc. But I didn’t think some of the panelists (iJustine…) really contributed much. ACLU guy made some really passionate points, particularly about how memes/microcelebrities need to work together to push causes, and how involvement from an org like the ACLU can only serve to make any efforts seem cornier/less authentic (echoing David Weinberger’s excellent point from yesterday that perfection is the enemy of credibility in the era of user-generated content).

I was really interested in the Bubble Project, which I hadn’t heard of before yesterday. Basically the ad exec spent a few grand of his on money and put big empty speech bubbles on ads around New York so that people could fill in their own captions… Kate took a bunch, I can only assume she’ll be putting them up around Toronto.

Leslie Hall was pretty quiet throughout (though check my flickr/youtube for some excellent bored/shocked poses), until someone started asking about the impact she thinks she having on the lives of girls with self-esteem/confidence issues.


As much as I love her just because she’s hilarious, she’s also probably really empowering for a whole lot of people. Oh, and watch for some pics/video of Leslie in concert, too!!

Cool backchannel thing: http://roflcon.backchan.nl — Ask a question, people vote it up or down, and it ends up on the big screen… then they actually answer them!

Oh, and check out Kate’s first guest blog on Spark!

The first day of ROFLcon is done. My highlight: meeting Leslie Hall, 100%, for sure. Doesn’t get much hotter than that! But seriously, she’s great, and Kate got to have an amazing chat with her (I missed out because I was visiting my friend Diana, but tomorrow, we’re hoping to interview Leslie’s mom!!)

The interesting thing about ROFLcon is that no one can really put there finger on what it is just yet. It’s a joke that’s gone too far, but at the same time, there’s some really, really deep stuff coming out, and ultimately, memes/internet celebrities are becoming a really important force in our culture, so figuring ‘it’ out is actually really important. David Weinberger (video to come, I promise–the Internet in this hotel is crap), made some really interesting points in his keynote about the future of fame… Wow, my brain is starting to die a bit (time to go to the lol concert!)… The title quote, “revenge against 100 years of broadcast” was his reflection on the insanity that’s happening today, and in an interview later in the day (this is where the video-to-come comes in… watch for an update), he made some great points about the very different nature of an accessible, grassroots fame vs. the old-school constructed form of Hollywood fame.

The moral of the story is that we can all be microcelebrities. Or really, that we will all be microcelebrities, and that everyone with a blog or a flickr account or who shares video on youtube is famous to someone, whether or not we know it, and that long tail of fame is pretty much what we’re celebrating here at roflcon.

Update: In case there was any doubt, Web 2.0 is over. Thanks for making it official, Valley Wag.

While Laura is busy posting ’serious’ things she found in the Globe & Mail (about what’s going on in Zimbabwe), I’d like to report some actually really SERIOUS stuff, namely:

Rickrolling is dead. That’s right. Stop it. Right now… Don’t even bother. It’s over. It’s been covered by the Globe & Mail. And while I take offense to the thought that “by all appearances half the participants [of the parts of the internet where these memes evolve] are livestock”, I do find it interesting when things like LOLcats, Leeroy Jenkins and Rickrolling get coverage in a big way.

I mean, I love all this stuff. Kate and I are going to a conference next weekend that exists solely to celebrate memes. But I feel like I can still talk to, oh, a good 90% of my friends about LOLcats and just get funny looks, or even better, looks of disgust. So when they get coverage outside of Spark and a few other nerdy places, it feels like… someone is blowing something fairly niche WAY out of proportion.

Oh well. All in good fun. And, watch this video. It’s not a rickroll… that came earlier (did you find it?). It’s my current favourite youtube fad.