Seriously, this video is like roflcon in a box… errr… short, accessible video. More memes than you can count on two hands (I think… didn’t try counting).
In other slightly behind-the-times news, check the latest episode of CBC Radio One’s Spark for Kate’s doc on memes! Pretty awesome stuff.
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!
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.