Geoffrey: You weren’t actively going out promoting your blog.  The popularity just sort of happened.  Would you recommend promotion to other bloggers?  Or would you just say to write it for a few months and if it doesn’t catch on, try something else?

Christian: The most disappointing bit of advice that I have is, “if you want to make it, stop trying.”  It’s the worst thing I can say, because there’s no better advice than that.

It comes up over and over again in all the panels.  Everybody keeps saying, “I wasn’t trying to make this happen, and it just did.”  You’ve got to be true to yourself.  It’s got to be funny to you and if other people share your sense of humor, it’ll take off.  If you find it funny, someone else probably will too.

I really wish I had better advice than that.   It’s so unfair to be like, “Oh, I always dreamed about writing a book.  ‘How’d it happen?’  Well, I wasn’t trying.”  It’s ridiculous luck.

G: Do you wish critics would stop over-analyzing your site?  Or do you like how much time and effort people put into dissecting it?

I went to graduate school, and it is a dream that someone’s going to write a thesis about this, then interview me.  I’m going to ask for a copy of the thesis before the interview and refute every point they make, so they have to start over again.

No, I think it’s fine.  I mean, people analyze The Simpsons, which is fantastic, but they’ll analyze a tree [in the background].  Discourse and analyzation is what people do in academia, and that’s great.  I just don’t want to have to read it.

G: Who are your influences as a writer?

David Sedaris, of course.  The Onion.  Bill Murray.  The Simpsons.  Anything that’s funny, really.  80’s movies.  “Back To School” starring Rodney Dangerfield.  That’s inspired everything I do.  “Revenge of the Nerds,” too.

Geoffrey: You guys have been creating a lot of animations recently.  Are you thinking about taking Cyanide and Happiness to TV or making a shorts DVD?

Rob: It’s definitely one step at a time.  We’re gonna take it slow, do some more shorts, definitely.  Just see what happens.  So far, people like the shorts.  However, I think a short gets about as much traffic in a week as a comic does in two hours, so there’s no real incentive to make a complete switch-over to that format.  But if people like it enough, maybe we’ll go that route.

G: I’m not trying to instigate a rivalry, but I know Randall Monroe (xkcd) is here, and you guys have similar art styles, but are so different personality-wise.  Has their been any back in forth between your camp and theirs?

Kris: We share a lot of the same audience with xkcd, and I’m glad to see that our simply drawn, mostly all-in-the-writing comics have floated to the top, as opposed to all video game references and story-based comics.  It’s kind of an unexpected takeover.

R: Our style is definitely similar, but our writing styles are polar opposites, which is why it surprises me so much that we share so many fans.  I made a direct reference to xkcd in one of my comics and got enormous feedback.  Fans were like “oh my god!”  Like finding out two people are related or something.

Matt:  I love xkcd.  It’s one of my daily reads.

G: Now that these Digg-friendly, minimally drawn “writer” strips are popular, do you see that continuing indefinitely?  Or do you see some other kind of strip coming on the horizon? 

K: We’re thinking of making the big move from being “Digg-friendly” to “boob friendly.”  Absolutely.

R:  I think there can be multiple waves.  So as long as people like what we do, and as long as we keep doing it well, nothing’s gonna take our slot.  We’re not gonna get canceled, you know?

Geoffrey: During the panel, you talked about the “perfect storm” that created the Jib Jab phenomenon. What does that mean? What were the elements of the storm?

Andy: People were really weary of this election — Bush and Kerry. The rhetoric was ridiculous. I don’t think there was a lot of respect on either side of the party lines. They were so ridiculous, and it was something a lot of people were talking about. The mudslinging and the name-calling. Gregg and Evan’s piece encapsulated that dialogue and it got out to America.

Other elements: a lot more people were using email. People like you and me have always been using email, but when it came to 2004, a slightly older demo started using it. People in their 30s and 40s. All of a sudden, it went mass, compared to the 2000 election when it wasn’t. That enabled us to spread it all over, through the people who helped us by sending links to their friends, by posting on their blogs and stuff.

That kind of explosion and mainstreaming of internet culture lead to its popularity, I guess.

G: Jib Jab did a very good job turning its meme into a corporation with major sponsors. How did that happen?

A: The founders were really smart and they knew how to leverage the audience they got into other forms of business. It’s about hitting the pavement. Gregg and Evan are networking constantly — aside from being brilliant, they get their ideas out there. They’re great promoters as well, and they should be promoting it, because it’s awesome stuff.

I think it’s just about seeing the opportunities that you’ve done has afforded you, and finding those areas you can really move into and capitalize. It’s about strategy and the founders know it.

Here’s some more wisdom from memestar Joe Mathlete of Marmaduke Explained, post-panel…

Geoffrey: The panel was about making money on memes/websites. Have you been thinking about other ways to profit from Marmaduke Explained, apart from Google Ads and shirts? Or is it really just a hobby?

Joe: It’s barely even a hobby at this point. I stopped selling the shirts because it kinda weirded me out a little bit, and I’m not very good with the post office. I thought it was funny that the Chuck Norris Guy said he was a poor college student. He’s written a book. I was able to quit my job for a couple months, but I do that all the time anyway.

Yeah, it barely qualifies as a hobby — more like a fun obligation at this point.

G: Chuck Norris Guy was legally threatened by Chuck Norris’ people. Have you heard anything from Marmaduke’s creator or publishers?

J: No, no. Not a single thing. My theory for the longest time was that the guy who writes Marmaduke was too old to have a computer on the internet, and that maybe I generated some interest in the strip, so the publisher doesn’t care too much. I’m pretty sure I’ve never infringed any copyrights with the things I’ve sold. Never used the artwork. Sorta careful about that. I was kinda hoping at one point that I’d get a cease and desist, so I can move onto something else.

G: Have your eye on any other strips you might want to do next? Or what’s your next project, if it’s not comic-blog related?

J: Gonna get drunk for the rest of the day, probably.

I drew a nipple on Ziggy’s nose for about a week, just cause everyone told me I should do more comic strip stuff. They thought I was serious about that. (It was for a week.)

My future plans have not a lot to do with comic strips.

Geoffrey: I’m not going to ask you any more questions about your secret, unfortunate encounter with the CIA, but did you ever have any interactions with Sesame Workshop?

Dino: The closest interaction would be the open letter they sent about the whole thing. They never contacted me directly, but I think they were cool about it. In the open letter, they asked the mirrors of the site to shut down, because they knew my site was down. They were very polite — I received no threat from them at all.

G: Your site was popular very early on. Do you consider yourself a grandfather to the meme movement?

D: If there’s a grandfather, I would say it was Mr. T Ate My Balls. That’s one of my biggest influences. That, and the Spam Cam.

G: Do you feel a “class of ‘96″ camaraderie with those memes?

D: Maybe, because we were all pre-celebrity status. I’m with that group, I guess. Back when a million hits meant something! <Laughs>

G: Can you tell me about what you’re doing for EA?

D: I’m working on Dead Space — it’s a survival, shooter game. I’m doing the user interface for the game. With a small team of people, we’re doing all the holograms and signs.

Some of you may have already noticed this on our schedule, and it’s been long in the making — but I’m happy to announce today that we’ve firmed everything up and Evan White, Internet PR Man, will be hosting a panel discussion on the development and monetization of the YouTube celebrity and the role that the site has played in generating their noteriety.

Guests will include celebrity commentator Michael Buckley (from the blockbuster YouTube series) What the Buck, lifecaster Justine Ezarik, and comedy duo Rhett and Link.

For the bountiful Wikipedia information about these folks, see here, here, and, uh, here.

Sweeeeeet.

Once in awhile, an awesome opportunity comes along that you just have to take.

Over here at the ROFLCon team we’ve been trading e-mails back and forth with Jay Maynard (“The Tron Guy”) who became internet famous after his picture got Slashdotted back in 2004. Three years pretty much makes Jay an elder statesman of modern memehood, and so we were happy enough to get him there at the conference.

So imagine our general awesomeness when he agreed to give an unmoderated talk (following in the footsteps of Jason Scott, Kevin Driscoll, and Anonymous)  about his personal experiences in involuntary celebrity in the throes of the web and on surviving internet fame. Should be a pretty solid talk. Stay tuned…

Kevin Driscoll, team collaborator and grad student with the Comparative Media Studies Department, will be participating as a speaker at ROFLCon!

He’ll be giving an unmoderated talk on the history and development of Soulja Boy, and viral dance crazes more generally. Kevin’s been closely tracking that particular meme through the digital space (along with some other members of the ROFLCon Team), and in fact produced one himself (which, pricelessly, features Richard Stallman performing the dance). Should be pretty badass.

ROFLCon has increasingly put us in touch with a bunch of people who do Cool Things. So, in addition to the central stream of internet celeb/academic discussion panels (see the Preliminary Schedule, soon to be revised after discussions with people way more talented than us and readers like you), we’ve decided that ROFLCon’s going to play host to a series of pretty awesome unmoderated talks/events on a variety of meme related topics.

To that end, I’m happy to announce today that the brilliant Jason Scott, the creator of the highly recommended, incredibly comprehensive cultural record BBS: The Documentary and director of textfiles.com, will be presenting on pre-Web 1.0 cultural phenomenon and celebrities.

The talk to be entitled, simply, “BEFORE THE LOL.” Very cool, considering our oldest meme is circa 1995. Should round this thing out a bit.