So, really, just when you thought that the ROFLCon guest list couldn’t get any larger — we’re decided to bust all previous expectations open by formally announcing a final series of new and alumni guests that will be turning up for the conference! Some of these you’ll know from their quiet appearance on our schedule, but others have been as yet unannounced to this point. Check it out! We’ve got:

* Neil Cicierega, of Lemon Demon, Potter Puppet Pals, and other greatness.

* Ian Spector, owner and operator of the Chuck Norris Facts.

* AJ Mazur, creator of the (by now classic) Lazy Town-Lil Jon remix.

* Larry Oji and David Lloyd, of the behemoth video game music community OCRemix.

* And, brand new this year, is Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett, general Masters of Pop Culture and the amazing minds behind the Found Footage Festival.

Okay, cool, I think that’s it. For now.

Last, but absolutely definitely not least by a long stretch, ROFLCon is happy today to be announcing the last of our of special guest artist announcements by concluding this fine Thursday afternoon to say that the following fine ladies and gentlemen will be representing themselves and their creations at ROFLCon II:

* Joey Comeau and Emily Horne, creators of the beautifully dark and wonderfully brilliant A Softer World (and alums from ROFLCon I and our gallery show Titans of Small Town)

* AND Tak Toyoshima from long-standing favorite Secret Asian Man (who the sharper among you may have already picked up on from our announcement about Super Art Fight yesterday).

Thrilled to have ‘em both — catch them hanging around through the weekend, and otherwise kicking ass.

And, as of today, we’re officially t-minus two weeks before ROFLCon gets under way — mind-blowingly excited to see you all there!

Swinging back into the comix universe, terrifically happy today to be finally announcing that our friends Ananth Panagariya and Yuko Ota, creators of the gorgeously done, semi-biographical Johnny Wander, will be joining the guest list and attending the festivities at ROFLCon II!

You might also remember Ananth from Applegeeks, and may have seen his masterful design skills recently in action on ONI’s limited-edition geek-salivation-inducing Scott Pilgrim shirt. Both are works of high badassery and both Ananth and Yuko are folks of the highest order, so we’re absolutely lucky to have both of them on board.

Unbelievably enough, the guests keep on piling in as we run into the home stretch. We’ve got double announcements today, so check in later for a bonus bit of ROFL!

Amazingly — was able to snag an image this morning that fits beautifully for two of our guests. So happy to give a double-trouble guest announcement this morning confirming that both the creators of Lamebook and folks behind My Mom Is A Fob will be attending and speaking at ROFLCon II!

If you haven’t seen it, absolutely worth checking out the treasure trove of aggregated awkwardness and hilarity on both blogs. Thrilled to have both of them participating: Jonathan and Matthew will be repping up on our “The Good, The Bad, and the Awkward” panel talking about embarrassing stuff on the internet, and Serena and Teresa will be participating in an evolving panel that we’ve got coming together about race on the wubs. We’re excited to have both of ‘em there for the party.

In any case, stay tuned! We’ve got a few more guest announcements and other good stuff coming down the pipe to round out this week.

So — today, we were going to claim that we had successfully confirmed Goatse for ROFLCon II, and then link to it. But we figured that’d be in poor taste (and not in keeping with ROFLCon’s general high standards for “professional” behavior). Besides, anything we could come up with would probably pale in awesomeness to what some of our guests are up to today (and elsewhere).

To that end, we’re extremely happy today to confirm that the University of Illinois’ very own Lisa Nakamura will be attending and moderating at ROFLCon II! Lisa is a professor over at their Communication Research and Media Studies program, and head honcho of their Asian American studies program.

Her work is all over the questions about race (real and fictional) and internet culture, and it’s led to some seriously badass stuff (see, i.e. “Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game: The Racialization of Labor in World of Warcraft“). Worth reading, if you haven’t seen it yet (pdf alert).

We could go on and on, but for now, just wanted to say that we’re thrilled to have her! We’ll have more details and schedule info out tomorrow (yes, it’s true: we’ve finally hammered it all out).

Heyas, readers!

We’re keeping on keeping on here at ROFLCon HQ with all the guest announcements, and I’m happy to confirm all the rumors today that internet elder statesman and awesome dude Aaron Peckham, the creator of the internet knowledge repository that is Urban Dictionary, will be attending (and speaking at) ROFLCon II.

If you’re like me, Urban Dictionary figures prominently in the development of your knowledge of obscure pop culture exclamations, rage-filled commentary, and (probably, mostly, hopefully fictional) prohibitively nasty sex acts. It’d be difficult to estimate how many total hours of fascinated clicking have been lost on the site, internet-wide.

Also, if you lost track, the site has been up for a decade and now contains 4.8 million definitions. Outta control. In any case, Urban Dictionary’s seriously great, and we’re excited to have Aaron there. Welcome!

So, we’ve been sitting on this one for a little bit now (sorry about that), but everyone agrees on the ROFLTeam that it’s time to let this tiger right on out of the cage. So, we’re blogging it up.

Yes, glad to announce officially today that Mister Jeffrey Rowland — of the long-running webcomic institutions over at Wigu and Overcompensating (and some of his wonderful, wonderful crew over at TopatoCo, which stocks this recent geeky t-shirt gem) — will be loading up the wagons and making their way to Boston in April to attend ROFLCon II! We couldn’t be happier.

And what might all these webcomics folks be doing at the conference, you might ask? Good question! ROFLCon HQ is currently hard at work hammering out the schedule of events, tying up some loose ends, and confirming with all our guests before we ask them to do something ridiculous. But, we guarantee it’s going to be epic, and we’ll likely have it out next week. Sit tight.

First off, if you haven’t seen the video yet, you really should. No, really. Do this first.

Good? Great. We’re thrilled to announce today that ROFLCon will be screening the much acclaimed “Winnebago Man” – the documentary about the life and times of Jack Rebney (which Michael Moore has described as “one of the funniest documentaries ever made”). This will be an exclusive screening for ROFLCon II attendees – and a rare chance to see the film before it hits theaters nationwide this summer.

We’re very excited to share the film with you. And we’re even more excited to announce that the titular Angriest Man in the World himself will be calling in to ROFLCon II for a post-screening discussion with Ben Steinbauer (the director) and Alexy Vayner (Impossible Is Nothing). Moderation will be done by the talented and awesome David Weinberger. Which, all in all, indicates that this will be a pretty seriously kickass session of the conference.

Good news lumbering on its way through the ol’ internet today that one Rob Bricken, the editor-in-awesome of the much celebrated, unabashedly geeky blog Topless Robot, will be on his way to participate in ROFLCon II!

We’ve been busy assembling our panels for the event — but at the moment it looks like Rob will be sailing in to moderate an emerging panel on the relationship between mainstream pop culture and its weird emergence in the shady, moisty corners of the web. The blog’s coverage of the wonderful oddities of Fanfiction is profound, and we’re glad to have him there.

More event details, announcements, and guest announcements, all this week. 38 days until ROFLCon!

Sorry for the radio silence since announcing R. Stevens’ amazing conference shirt last week. We were out at SXSW over the weekend (and, happily, got a chance to meet a bunch of ROFLCon guests old and new) and only now getting the wheels a’rolling once again on the ROFLBlog as we head into the home stretch (45 days!). Going to be ridiculous.

In any case, it’s taken awhile, but officially announcing today that we’ve confirmed that Dan Lacey will be attending the conference, who you may remember as the creator of the weird and wonderful Naked Obama on a Unicorn paintings from a little while back.

Also, as you can see above, Dan’s been hard at work on a new surreal masterpiece for the conference that incorporates a TON of our guests. Seriously epic stuff. More announcements this week and into the weekend!

While (some of) the sharper among you may have recognized that we gave this away earlier in the week by announcing that David Malki and Tweet Me Harder would be making a featured appearance in Boston during ROFLCon weekend, we’re glad to officially confirm today that esteemed Monsieur Kris Straub (and Twitter) will be attending in April!

It’s, of course, of little use to try to list all of Straub’s multi-faceted projects of awesomeness here. You may know his genius from such amazing things as chainsawsuit, Starslip, Blamimation, and so on… And if you weren’t previous unaware: shame on you people.

In any case, we’re truly thrilled to be having him. More announcements tomorrow!

Dear friends, this announcement comes a bit late, mostly because we’ve been up mondo-late trying to work out logistics and keeping this ROFLShip smoothly sailing into April. As a result, only getting around to updating the blog: so you people get a two-fer today! Stay tuned for the other special announcement later today.

In continuation of our promised weeklong series of some seriously awesome webcomic guest announcements, I’m thrilled to announce this morning that Jeph Jacques of the absolutely great long-running webcomic juggernaut Questionable Content, will be present and attending at ROFLCon II!

And, of course, let me just say here that if you haven’t checked out the backarchives of the lovely though-on-hold indietits, you really should.

Guest list updated, as per usual! Seriously dudes, there is going to be so much Easthampton out here.

Wow, helluva weekend, huh? The ROFLTeam met up and scheduled out the next two months and were like FUUUUUUUU-.

In any case, sweet news to start off this week in ROFLCon that friend and gentleman-scholar David Malki !, of the fabulously fantastic webcomic Wondermark (and the aptly named Tweet Me Harder podcast, which will be making an appearance at the conference) will be flying out and hanging out at the event in April!

Heads up looking into this week: looks like it’s shaping up to probably be a webcomic folks guest announcement week thanks to the unerringly awesome work of ROFLTeammate George Rohac (with a few oddballs thrown in to spice it on up). Watch this space!

We’re honored and thrilled today to announce that we’ve officially confirmed that one Aleksey Vayner will be attending the conference in April!

You might remember Aleksey from his leaked video in 2006, “Impossible Is Nothing,” which, beyond spiraling into internet fame on its very own, also spawned a seemingly limitless universe of cultural references and remakes, both online and all over the pop culture consciousness.

He’ll be at the conference, discussing what he’s been up to since those fateful months, the issues around privacy online and crisis management, and recounting and reflecting on the experience of being swept up in the middle of the memetic storm.

Welcome Aleksey! Don’t know about you folks, but we’re psyched.

We’re super glad glad glad today to announce that Robert Cockerham, the man behind the long-standing and much revered Cockeyed.com, will be attending ROFLCon II!

You might remember Rob from his series How Much Is Inside?, in which he has been meticulously documenting (for over a decade now), how much stuff is inside various things by actually measuring/pouring/spreading it out. This includes, ridiculously, the amount of gold in Goldschlager, the white-frosty-filling in a package of Oreos, and wrapping a whole car in aluminum foil.

It’s surprisingly engrossing and well worth the read, if you haven’t had the experience yet. More recently, Rob has seriously trolled a seriously shady Cash4Gold scheme, and revealed the hilariously disappointing real-world comparison between McDonalds and Burger King. So in other words, he’s tip-top ROFLCon material, and we’re pumped to have him.

Thanks to the titanic efforts of a few awesome attendees, ROFLCon is glad to finally round out this week by delivering on a long-standing promise: Charlie Schmidt, the former owner of Keyboard Cat and fantastic general all-around-artist-guy, will be attending ROFLCon!

Also, in a moment of internet history — we’re glad to reveal word from Charlie’s representative Ben Lashes, who tells us that the baby blue shirt-jacket of “Fatso,” seen in the video, will actually also be coming along with Charlie for the conference. It’s seriously going to be like original debut of the Shroud of Turin, only, you know — like, internet-y.

More to come next week! Have a good weekend, folks!

In the dark, moisty moisty jungle of internet subculture, few cabals have been more rumored about, speculated upon, or obsessively hated against as the power-users of Digg.

We’ve been hard at work for the past few months here at HQ, and superbly pumped to report today that we’ll be having a selected group of them at ROFLCon. We’re glad to announce today that we’ve assembled a three-person panel at the conference this year to rep these elusive folks. Specifically:

* Andrew Sorcini (MrBabyMan)

* Muhammad Saleem (MSaleem)

* JD Rucker (oboy)

Avoiding the usual lame-o discussions around poweruserhood (anyone who asks how to become a power user will be forcibly ejected from the room), the Diggerati will be taking ROFLCon to switch gears and focus on the history of the backroom culture of power users, politics/machinations with site management, and the future of Digg (and social news) generally. Should be good times.

The internet has long been a space for the surreal mixing and remixing of Garfield strips (we haven’t forgotten you, Lasagna Cat) but, we’re truly happy to announce today that we’re bringing one of the serious all-originals, all the way from Ireland, to be part of ROFLCon II (you’re welcome).

That’s right: we’re stupendously excited to confirm on this here ROFLblog today that Dan Walsh, the creator of the oddly existential Garfield Minus Garfield, will be attending in April! Don’t know about you — but we’re celebrating.

Looks like the wave of invites and other confirmations is rolling down the pipe once more, so keep an eye on this blog, should be a pretty spicy week of posts.

I’m pleased to announce this cloudy cloudy afternoon in Boston that ROFLCon has officially confirmed that the Bureau Chiefs of the eminent standards-establishing committee behind Fake AP Stylebook, Mark Hale and Ken Lowery, will be present and speaking at ROFLCon!

In addition to the creators, it should be noted that in addition to sending their managing editors, AP Stylebook will also be gathering an unruly horde of the Bureau’s contributors (up to 15! No, seriously), who will be attending as well. So, keep an eye out. Guest list updated (closing in on 50 guests!), as per usual.

Good morning! As promised — we’re keeping the blog train a’moving ahead this week: pumped today to announce that we’ve confirmed that Tom Jennings, the creator of FIDONet, will be attending and speaking at ROFLCon II! Kevin Driscoll, who you might remember from 2008’s fantastic talk on online dance crazes, will be presiding.

Of course, as anyone familliar with Tom’s work would attest, it’d be criminal just to shout out FIDONet here on this blog post and just leave it at that. As his personal projects and essays page will attest, Tom’s been involved in a variety of awesomeness for decades — zines, trolling the gullible web, and so on. So, needless to say, we’re excited that he’ll be putting online culture, technology, politics, and everything else together at the conference.

And, if you haven’t yet happened to read his review of the bizzare little RAND Corporation publication “A Million Random Digits” (which is exactly like it sounds), you really should. 

(photo courtesy Jason “Textfiles” Scott)