The Adventures in Aca-meme-ia Panel @ ROFLCon

Happy Friday! Glad to say that we’ve been hard at work here deep in the ROFLMines, and we’re just about ready to do the full announcement of our schedule for ROFLCon III next week, which is gonna be awesome. The line up is looking basically like the most ridiculous thing ever.

But, in the meanwhile, wanted to close out this week by announcing that we’ve just confirmed a squarely brilliant set of folks for a ROFLCon panel we’re entitling “ADVENTURES IN ACA-MEME-IA,” which will tackle the ongoing and evolving world of people studying funny cats and other internet-ness seriously in the hallowed halls of the University. This line-up to include:

• Whitney Phillips, UOregon and researcher of the fine art of the Troll
• Kate Miltner, London School of Economics and got a masters in LOLCats
• Jordan Lefler, Louisiana State University and a Linguistics masters in LOLSpeak
• Patrick Davison, of Media, Culture, and Communications @ NYU and knows a scary crapton about aniGIFs

They’ll be relating old war stories about trying to write papers about Goatse, talking about the general topic of memery becoming a “respected” (or at least accepted) part of Higher Learning, and coming siege (partnership?) of serious academia by the lolz. Welcome aboard folks!

Jonathan Zittrain Keynotin’ Like A Boss

We’ve been literally trying to get this guy since 2008, so this blog post is kind of a momentous occasion for the ROFLStaff.

Today, we’re very happy to announce that the disturbingly brilliant and talented Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard Law professor, Berkman Center for Internet and Society co-founder, EFF board member and ex-CompuServe sysop (O.G.!) — will officially be our opening keynote for ROFLCon III.

We’ve been long time fans of Jonathan’s work, from his tremendously awesome talks (see, e.g. Minds for Sale) to his book on the underpinnings of the Internet as an engine for innovation.

So, needless to say, we’re pumped to have him kick us off on May 4th. Welcome aboard!

(photo courtesy Doc Searls)

DigBoston Sponsors ROFLCon III

We’re really happy to announce today that local Boston publication-cum-media-empire DigBoston will be coming on board as sponsors for ROFLCon III! ROFLStaff have been long-time admirers of their work, and we were thrilled when the boyishly handsome managing editor J.Pat gave our underground HQ a ring.

But that’s not all! Particularly exciting is that, as in previous years, the Dig will be doing a complete issue takeover in honor of the ROFLCon proceedings (apparently they had a printer check with them before going to press because it was “filled with typos” lol). This has led to such troll-y and wonderful bits of content like this extreme advertising poncho ad. We’re pumped for it.

And, other than that, they’ll be around for livetweeting and providing general coverage of the weekend’s festivities. So you know, seek them out and go party with them – they’re a friendly bunch.

“Shit Girls Say” @ ROFLCon III

Perhaps no video in 2012 has yet been as controversial or as suddenly, instantaneously internet famous as the well-spring of activity around the high-definition minute-and-nineteen-seconds of “Shit Girls Say” (though granted: we’re still trying our darndest to get Kony – the man isn’t returning any of our Google+ messages).

The sheer number of remarkably specific response and follow up videos is hard to comprehend. Our mind still boggles at the whole thing (though we’re fond of ROFLGuest Rich FourFour’s take)

In any case, we’re officially confirming that Graydon Sheppard and Kyle Humphrey, the co-creators of the video, will be in attendance at ROFLCon III! Welcome aboard!