ROFLcon is looking for a few personable and responsible individuals to give us a hand on one of the two days of the event. There are many different volunteer opportunities available, including registering conference guests, running the information desk, and liveblogging during the panels. We’ll accommodate your schedule and preferences to the best of our ability. In return, you will get free admission to the rest of the conference. Pretty good deal!

Interested? Email us before noon (EST) on Monday, April 30th!!

Deshawn Raw, AKA Supa Hot Fire released the first Parody Rap Battle video less than a year ago, and had us seriously considering the importance of hype crews in our lives. By part 4, which was released in March, he’s nabbed a cameo from none other than CHRIS ROCK. How the hell did he do that??

Catch Deshawn at the “Channels killed the Internet Video Star” panel on Saturday, 1:30 PM in 26-100. He’ll be joined by co-panelists Liam Sullivan (OMG Shoes), Judson Laipply (Evolution of Dance), and perennial ROFLCon favorite Matt Harding (Where the Hell is Matt?) The whole shindig will be moderated by Christian Sandvig, one of our favorite internet scholars, so this panel? You should catch that.

At ROFLCon HQ, the only thing we like more than food is FREE food. What’s that, you say? You like free food too? Well, you’re in luck!

On ROFLSaturday, after you’ve worked up an appetite learning about Supercuts, meeting the foodie champions of the internet, or debating LOLitics, our friends at the Boston-based startup LevelUp will be giving you $10 credit for lunch at any of their merchants if you install their mobile payment app with our special promo code: ROFL.  LevelUp allows you to make payment with your phone (via giant QR code) and has reward programs built-in; it’s our favorite way to get free cupcakes around Boston!

This discount will be available at a bunch of locations near the MIT campus, so grab your new friends and get some delicious nosh!

PS: One of the locations is our wonderful ice cream sponsor Toscanini’s. We’re not saying you should eat ice cream for lunch, but we’re also not NOT saying that.

If you love smart, insightful, and critical writing about pop culture, chances are that you have some gummy bears in your information diet. Since its founding in 2004, Racialicious has been a beacon in the night for much-needed commentary about race and gender in the shows, games, movies, and internets we all love.

That’s why ROFLCon is excited that Latoya Peterson, the superwoman owner and editor of Racialicious, will be joining us at ROFLCon to offer her take on identity-centric memes like the “Shit People Say” phenomenon. She’ll be joining up with previously announced guests Dan Sinker and Biella Coleman to talk about the political power of memes–definitely don’t sleep on that one!

We’re very happy to announce a slew of exciting things happening on Saturday that you definitely don’t want to miss. They all involve internet celebrities AND/OR dancing! What more could you ask for?

***Dance with Matt Harding***

Matt, of “Where the Hell is Matt” fame, is shooting one of his famous dancing videos at ROFLCon this year at 1:30PM on Saturday during the lunch break. If you are interested in learning a short dance and becoming internet famous, there will be a group leaving from where the pizza is 5 minutes before, or you can just make your own way over here.

***ChatRoulette Bingo, Round Two, FIGHT!***

Dr. Beth Coleman and her CMS.100 class have created a ChatRoulette Bingo game for ROFLcon participants and fans of emoticon-based games everywhere. The first sound on Friday was EPIC.

There will be a repeat session on Saturday from 1 – 2 PM during lunch in the Bartos lobby of E15. Beth reports that initial playtests saw “lots of laughs, participation, and full frontal nudity…” What’s not to love??

***TopatoCo Signing Schedule***

Thanks to the amazing comic artist wrangling skills of TopatoCo VP Holly Post, a wide assortment of webcomic masters will be available to autograph things, shake hands, and kiss babies throughout Saturday at the TopatoCo merch table outside 26-100.

11-12 Ryan North, Dinosaur Comics
12-1 Zach Weiner, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
1-2 Wes & Tony, Amazing Superpowers
2-3 Emily & Joey, A Softer World
3-4 Jeph Jacques, Questionable Content

***ROFLafterparty at Machine’s No Tomorrow***

I was going to write something clever, but I can’t top this poster:

ROFLCON AFTERPARTY AT MACHINE!!!111!!one!!!1!1!!one!
1254 Boylston Street., Boston, MA
21+, $5 cover ($10 after midnight)

(Many thx to Mike McKay and the No Tomorrow team for getting up close and personal with the Goatse hands to make this poster, and for having us!)

Dr. Beth Coleman and her CMS.100 class have created a ChatRoulette Bingo game for ROFLcon participants and fans of emoticon-based games everywhere. The first session will take place from 11 to 1 AM on Friday in room 633 of E14, right next to where reg is going down. There will be a repeat session on Saturday from 1 – 2 PM during lunch in the Bartos lobby of E15. Beth reports that initial playtests saw “lots of laughs, participation, and full frontal nudity…” What’s not to love??

Additionally, many of our guests will also be selling their swag. These include the people behind Chad Vader, Wondermark, Chainsaw Suit, Keyboard Cat (they’re bringing the sweater!!), Stuff White People Like, Regretsy, FU Penguin, and I Can Has Cheezburger. Meanwhile, MemeFactory will be asking you to participate in some “meme iteration” exercises for their performance. So far what we know is that it involves dancing, photography, and worksheets. A+++.

Remember that time we closed registration to ROFLThing NYC really suddenly? It was a sad time for us too, and we’ve lost just as much sleep over it as you have: your wailing and gnashing of teeth have tormented our dreams. We’re sorry, we really are.

So sorry that we’ve decided to give you one last chance to get involved in this awesomeness. We’ve decided to bring you guys some Change You Can Believe In. Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to LOL free! But you must act NOW.

We are auctioning off the last five tickets to ROFLThing, the ones we had been saving for our parents in case they ever chose to undisown us after creating the mess of ROFLCon the First*. The auction will only be open for 24 hours, so GET YOUR HUSTLE ON. Proceeds from each ticket will benefit a different charity or nonprofit that we <3, so you’ll actually be supporting a good cause in addition to repenting for your earlier procrastifail on obtaining tickets. Win-win!

Without further ado, the links to the auctions:

* ROFLTicket supporting the Electronic Frontier Foundation
* ROFLTicket supporting Big Cat Rescue (in honor of our guest Sockington)
* ROFLTicket supporting the Internet Archive
* ROFLTicket supporting Global Voices
* ROFLTicket supporting New York Cares

All of these organizations need your help more than ever because of the recession. Coincidentally, you need ROFL in your life more than ever because of the recession too! Gee golly, sounds like you’d best click on them links and start bidding!

* Don’t worry guys, this isn’t actually true. Although I did have to explain Goatse to my mom, and that was really awkward…

(pic by JourneysCoffee)
That’s right. Lattes. They are caffeinated, they are delicious, and if you’re at a shishipoopoo coffee shop they sometimes come with art. Drinkable, caffeinated art. How cool is that?

“ROFLDudes,” you say. “That’s alright I suppose, but it’s not actually that cool. And how is this cutting edge? Stuff’s been around since like 1847. I expected more from the guys who brought us Brawndo and ROFLCondoms and…”

Oh MAN. Is that our logo rendered on a latte? IN CARAMEL? The answer is yes, and it’s all because a cool new Bostonian company called OnLatte has a) perfected a wondrous machine that can print images onto latte foam and b) agreed to give us a demo of said wondrous machine at ROFLThing! Over the course of ROFLThing, they’ll be making lattes to order for you guys with one of ten super-secret tubetastic images printed on them. One of them is obviously the ROFLThing logo, but the other 9 will remain a mystery until the event…

(Okay, you guys know me too well. Yes, one of them is Goatse. I love my life.)

We blogged about the wonderful “Where the Hell is Matt” 2008 video a while ago. We suspect you are now in one of two camps (it’s like a choose-your-own-adventure!):

1) You are lazy and haven’t watched it. Shame on you. Watch it! Go on, now! Once you watch it, you’ll probably be in…

2) You marveled at the greatness of our planet and the jiveness of Matt Harding. Now you are filled with warm fuzzies and also a slight twinge of jealousy and regret that you didn’t get to participate in such a wonderful project. Are there any cool projects like this now that I can participate in, you ask?

Well, does Team ROFLCon have the answer for you. Our friends at This American Summer have been roadtripping the country for almost a month now and documenting their wacky adventures online in the form of pictures, tweets, blog posts, videos, and even a constant update of what music they’re listening to in their van. Basically, they’re doing all the hard work so we can reap the benefits vicariously. Nice.

And now they’re taking it one step further. Check out this invite for a video flash mob they’re planning in NYC!

When: Monday June 30, 2008, 7 PM EDT
Where: Outside Grand Central Terminal on the southside (E 42nd St), across the street and under the pedestrian bridge
Why: It’s an interesting thing to do (and the footage should be cool).
Who: You!

Did you hear that? YOU! So if you’re in the area, grab a video recording device and join them! They’re a meme in the making, they were proud attendees of ROFLCon, and they’re wonderful people.

Writers have Pulitzers, musicians have Grammys, the Boston Celtics have the NBA Championship, and scientists (& Al Gore!) have the Nobel Prize. Today, the ROFLCon staff was surprised with accolades of similar magnitude in our own field—that of running really freakin’ geeky conventions.

It’s no annual event and there’s no red carpet, but that can’t stop us from basking in the glory of being named the #2 Most Pathetic Geek Convention by Cracked.com.

In and of itself, this ranking would be no big deal. After all, most geek conventions are slightly puzzling to behold and take some concept or another “to a whole new, frightening level.” What makes this honor truly epic is the other conventions we’re sharing it with. Guys, we beat out Klingon Feast, a furry convention, and the Ohio Valley Filk Festival (which, incidentally, is happening in my hometown. And I thought there were no nerds here!), and we did so with reasonably good overall conference hygiene. If that doesn’t mean we just leveled up as a ‘Con, I don’t know what does.

If not, you should catch the episode anyway, because it’s online right here. Hooray for technology!

On Saturday afternoon, a few ROFLCon attendees had the privilege of learning about the history of dance crazes from Kevin Driscoll, the founding father of Soulja Boy Studies (SBS, pronounced Essbeezy). The slides from his panel, Work it Move it Bang it Bump it, are now up…as is the video of the snaps-on learning the attendees took part in!

To see ROFLCon crank it, click here for the Blip version or here for the crappier Youtube version.

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

(Update: For those of you who remain unconvinced about the importance of Crank Dat Soulja Boy, I present: Mike Gravel, candidate for the American presidency)

Directions are forthcoming, but mark this down now–this is going to be a party not to be missed!

Right now there’s only a few sneak peeks of the ROFLStaff during a meeting, but we hope that by the end of the weekend it’ll be chock full of gorgeous, wonderful pictures that we can all show to our children (that we will not be producing during the conference, thanks to the ROFLCondoms).

Speaking of reproduction, however, we would really appreciate it if you would consider licensing your pictures under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike license. The reasoning behind this is that since ROFLCon is really about internet culture, we want to respect the practices that have enabled the culture to thrive: namely, sharing and remixing. By licensing your pictures under CC-BY-SA, you’re declaring that it is legal for anyone to download your picture and make other cool things with them as long as whatever they make is also available for sharing and remixing. Isn’t that what the internet is all about?

(Nota bene: I, like most other members of the ROFLCon team, am a member of Harvard College Free Culture.)

We’ve been teasing you with vague details about this before, but it’s now totally official:

ROFLCONCERT 2008 @ The Middle East Upstairs

April 25th, 9 PM

featuring

Gröûp X

Lemon Demon

Leslie & the LY’s

Trocadero

Average Homeboy Denny Blaze

& assorted other musical guests.

Because the capacity of the space is limited to about 200, tickets for the show will be available at a first come, first serve basis throughout the conference at no extra cost. A little extra incentive to show up early on Friday!

We’ve put up ROFLSchedule 2.0–still not finalized, but a lot better than what we had before. If you had questions or suggestions, please leave them as comments!

He’s coming. Need I say more? If this doesn’t make you want to register (remember, prices hike on March 1st!), I don’t know what will. No chicken for you!

In the throes of my hardcore procrastination (Harvard has its finals period after break), I was examining everything ROFL and found that a member of our Facebook group had posted a link to his research paper about lulz.

Research paper. Explaining. Lulz. 

This is really exciting to me because I must admit that 4chan’s mentality and culture were always a bit inexplicable to me. My old haunt on the internets was somewhat downstream of Something Awful and 4chan, so while I became familiar with the meme culture as it floated on by, I didn’t quite understand how it was generated and who the “cool kids” were that got to determine what was funny and what wasn’t.

And now, an insider’s detailed explanation! This paper is neither comprehensive nor academically rigorous, but it definitely does go a long way for those of us who understand the world that 4chan influences but not what exactly went on inside the black box. It’s like lurking moar but in a conveniently bite-sized package. I suggest you read it!

In fact, I’m going to summon the power of hyperlink and make this even easier for you.

Go on, do it.

Not only are they huge heroes of mine, but Rooster Teeth has really been very important to several aspects of internet culture. Besides helping to popularize machinima, they also were pioneers in successfully converting a free webseries into a commercially viable media productions company. They were also one of the major success stories of fan-created content: Bungie Studios, the makers of Halo, quickly lauded the series as “kind of brilliant” and supported its growth, and since then Rooster Teeth has been commissioned by Microsoft and other owners of the Halo empire to make videos for special events.

And word on the street is they get drunk a lot. Get ready for a good time!