Sorry for delay, true to form — sucked up by all the festivities of the weekend. But, we’re officially back to work and I’m glad to say that today we’re releasing the complete video of “Heroes of Usenet,” with moderator Jason Scott and a host of luminaries. The description:

Now only browseable through Google’s dirty porthole, Usenet’s early history holds parallels, lessons, anecdotes and memories well worth sharing with the current online world. Moderator Jason Scott brings you a panel of historians, history-makers, internet famous and internet infamous figures to talk about Usenet, the worldwide networked messaging system that showed everyone How It Was Done.

Uploading big honkin’ files have been giving us a bit o’ trouble with Blip, but rather than delay the content coming out, we’re starting to split panel videos into sections. So, Heroes of Usenet is in three, glorious sections (and embedded for your viewing pleasure after the jump)

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

It’s also pretty easy to navigate the sections by going to our main show page. Enjoy! More to come in the next few days. Stay tuned.

Next up out of the ROFLCon II video hopper — complete video from “It Looks Like You Are Giving A Keynote,” our Saturday morning keynote with Kevan Atteberry, the designer behind Clippy. The talk description is as follows:

A short whirlwind tour of animated assistants, starting with Microsoft Bob. How did Clippy end up being the default Character for Microsoft Office? And how has it continued to live on in internet culture? And why did it take hundreds of hours of testing with Social Psychologists from Stanford to build it? (seriously).

And, as before, if you want to glory of the blip.tv player, here it is.

First off, apologies — despite our promises to the contrary, the video from the conference has been taking a bit later than expected to get out. But, glad to announce that as of tonight we’re finally up off our asses and chugging along on getting all the complete panel videos from ROFLCon II out to the internet. Expect to see them popping out on this blog at a fairly steady clip over the next few weeks.

We decided that the first of these, to lead off strong, would be our final keynote panel on “Mainstreaming The Web,” featuring Ben Huh (I Can Has Cheezburger), moot (4chan), Kenyatta Cheese (Know Your Meme), Jamie Wilkinson (Internetfamo.us), and Greg Rutter (You Should Have Seen This). The panel description is:

As web culture increasingly flows into the mainstream, it becomes enmeshed in a crowded world of businesses and commentators. In turn, it becomes more easily digestible and accessible to broad audiences. What are the ethics of being a part of that space? As this process continues, what is gained? What is left behind?

And, if you prefer the glory of the blip.tv player experience, you can also check out the direct link here.

MATTHEW GASTEIER (FU PENGUIN)
JESSICA AMASON (THIS IS WHY YOU’RE FAT)
CHRISTOPH ONO (CORNIFY)
MARK LITTLE (PICNICFACE + POWERTHIRST)
MIKE RUGNETTA (MEMEFACTORY) [MODERATOR]

LET’S FACE IT: CAPSLOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR AWESOME ON THE INTERNET. WHY IS THIS THE CASE? WHY’S “THE MOST EXTREME” NEAR AND DEAR TO THE HEART OF THE WEBS? WHAT ARE THE WEIRD EXPERIENCES THAT COME OUT OF CREATING AND CURATING THAT KIND OF STUFF?

Recorded by: @flourish & @andthengensaid
Edited by: @alexleavitt

NOTE: This is not a full transcription of the panel. If you have any corrections, please contact alex@roflcon.org.

EDITOR’S NOTE: SORRY, I HAVE NO IDEA WHO THE NOTATION OF ‘PIZZA’ IS FOR, SO WAIT FOR THE VIDEO!

GENERAL CHATTER: SO I HAVE NO IDEA WHY THERE IS A MAN IN A UNICORN SUIT HERE. HOW DO YOU KNOW IT’S A MAN? THE TIE.

MIKE: MY NAME IS MIKE RUGNETTA. I AM PART OF MEME FACTORY. WITH ME MARK LITTLE, WHO YOU MIGHT KNOW FROM PICNICFACE, HE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR A LITTLE KNOWN VIDEO IT IS CALLED POWERTHIRST. HE IS ALSO A TOURING STAND UP COMIC HE HAS ALSO PUBLISHING A BOOK CALLED SOMETHING OR OTHER?

MARK: UH IT’S COMING OUT MAYBE SOON IN CANADA AND MAYBE NEVER DOWN HERE. MAYBE.

MIKE: HE HAS ALSO JUST FINISHED PUTTING THE TOUCHES ON POWERTHIRST 3.

MARK: I WAS SAYING ‘YEAH!’ AND SOME PEOPLE WERE REALLY EXCITED AND OTHER PEOPLE WERE LIKE “LET AN OLD MEME DIE!” NO, IT’S CALLED POWERMOST. I HAD LIKE A BRIEF WHAT I WOULD CALL, IT’S A REALLY OFFENSIVE VIDEO AND I’M GLAD I DIDN’T CALL IT WAS I WAS GOING TO CALL IT.

MIKE: JESSICA IS THE FOUNDER AND CREATOR OF THIS IS WHY YOUR FAT. NEXT TO HER WE HAVE MATTHEW WHO IS FROM FU PENGUIN, HE HAS RECENTLY TOLD ME THAT HE DOES NOT ACTUALLY HATE TINY CUTE ANIMALS SO THAT HAS DASHED EVERYTHING I THOUGHT I KNEW ABOUT HIM, I HAVE NO WAY TO RELATE WITH THIS MAN.

MATTHEW: NOW THAT YOU’VE REVEALED THAT, I HAVE NOTHING LEFT TO SAY. THE SURPRIZE HAS BEEN RUINED, I’M SORRY.

MIKE: AND THERE IS CHRISTOPH WHO IS THE MASTER OF PUTTING UNICORNS ON THINGS THAT YOU DIDN’T KNOW NEEDED UNICORNS ON THEM AT CORNIFY. SO WE’RE GONNA WATCH SOME VIDEOS BY THESE PEOPLE…

[VIDEOS SLOWLY SHOW UP TO THE SOUND OF AUDIENCE CHEERING A LOT]

MIKE: SO MARK, WHY DON’T YOU TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT POWERTHIRST WHILE WE OH SAVED BY THE VIDEO.

MIKE: SO I WAS WONDERING WHAT THE GENERAL INSPIRATION WAS, WHAT POWERTHIRST MEANS TO YOU.

MARK: YEAH OK I FIND MEN’S ADS HILARIOUS SO IT KIND OF COMES FROM THAT. I’M A PRETTY NERDY GUY BUT I’M A BIG SPORTS FAN AND ALL THE ADS ON THAT ARE VERY INTERESTING WHERE I’M JUST A WEIRD UNGENDERED BEAST. I’M WHAT YOUR FRIENDS MIGHT CALL A CRAZY FAG I FYOU BELIEVE WHAT THEY CALL OUR OF CAR WINDOWS AND I’M JUST ENTHRALLED BY THE IDEA THAT THEY’LL SELL THINGS BY BEING LIKE HERE’S A RAZOR GUYS AND WHY USE THIS ONE BHALLL HERE’S A JET OH OKAY THAT’S TOTALLY THE RIGHT RAZOR FOR ME.
WHAT ABOUT THIS DEODORANT WELL LOOK AT THIS CHEETAH FUCKING THIS FERRARI!!!! JUST THIS HILARIOUS IDEA OF SELLING OF AGGRESSION AND THEN ENERGY DRINKS MARKETING THIS VAGUE CONCEPT OF ENERGY, LIKE, WHAT ARE YOU GONNA BE ABLE TO DO WITH THIS ENERGY? WELL, UH, WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO? I WANNA HAVE 400 BABIES! AND WHAT’S FUNNY IS THAT THE MOST POPULAR ENERGY DRINK COMPANY DOESN’T USE THESE. WHICH IS REDBULL BUT ISNTEAD THEY JUST USE THE MOST CONFUSING ADS IN THE WORLD AND AT THE END THEY’LL BE LIKE REDBULL GIVES YOU WINGS AND THEN THEY HAVE THESE DESCRIPTIONS AT THE END THAT TELL YOU THAT YOU’RE JUST GOING TO GET ENERGY. BUT IF YOU WATCH LIKE MONSTER ENERGY DRINK ADS OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT, THAT WAS SORT OF THE INSPIRATION.

MIKE: SO NEXT UP WE HAVE ‘THISISWHYYOURFAT.COM’ SO JESS, YOU WANNA TAKE US THROUGH WHAT SOME OF THESE THINGS ARE?

JESSICA: SO THIS IS WHY YOUR’E FAT IS BASICALLY A SITE DEVOTED TO CRAZY OVER THE TOP FATTY FOODS, IT’S LIKE 90 % BACON

MIKE: I HEAR BACON IS VERY HIP THESE DAYS, THAT TRUE?

JESS: IT’S THE THING TO EAT AND DO AND WEAR AND YEAH. THIS WAS A WAY TO PULL TOGETHER ALL THE CRAZY BACON BLOGS, WE SHOULD JUST HAVE A COMMUNITY TO PULL ALL THESE THINGS TOGETHER, AND HAVE THEM IN ONE PLACE. DUDE, THE KFC DOUBLEDOWN HAS BEEN LIKE SUPER – I WANT TO BELIEVE WE INSPIRED IT BUT I HAVE NO PROOF OF THAT. THERE’S LIKE THE QUADRUPLE DOUBLEDOWN, THERE’S THE LUTHER DOUBLEDOWN, A DOUBLEDOWN INSIDE TWO KRISPY KREME DONUTS – IT’S SOME NEXT LEVEL SHIT THERE. IT PLAYS OFF THE FOOD TRENDS, MOST OF THEM ARE LIKE BEAUTIFULLY SHOT PHOTOGRAPHS, AND THEY’RE LIKE OOZING MAYO OUT OF THEM AND YOU DON’T WANT TO EAT IT BUT YOUJUST CAN’T STOP LOOKING AT IT.

MIKE: WAS ONE OF THE IDEAS THAT THERE WAS AN EXPLOSION OF THIS STUFF ELSEWHERE ON THE WEB?

JESS: IT WAS LIKE A TREND THAT WAS LURKING IN DIFFERENT CORNERS OF THE WEB, IT WAS HYPER NICHE STUFF AND IT WAS ALL LIKE OVERSIZED FOOD, AND THERE WERE BACON SPECIFIC BLOGS BUT THERE WASN’T AND PLACE WHERE IT WAS ALL TOGETHER AND YOU COULD FIND IT AN CONTRIBUTE YOUR OWN STUFF WAS IT. I WISH I COULD REMEMBER THE PAGE BUT MY FAVORITE THING ON THERE IS THE MEAT SHIP WHICH IS A GIANT SAILING VESSEL MADE ENTIRELY OF MEAT PRODUCTS.

MIKE: NEXT TO JESS WE HAVE MATTHEW WHO IS FROM FU PENGUIN. IS THERE A VOICE FOR FUCK YOU PENGUIN?

MATTHEW: UH THERE’S DEFINITELY A CHARACTER, BUT I THANKFULLY DO NOT HAVE A VOICE FOR THAT CHARACTER. I DID ACTUALLY DO ONE RADIO INTERVIEW IN CHARACTER AND IT WAS FOR ENGLAND, AND THEN I DECIDED NEVER TO DO ONE AGAIN. IT WAS AN ODDLY CALM VOICE, LIKE MY OWN.

MIKE: CAN YOU GIVE US LIKE ONE LINE, MAYBE ABOUT LIKE THE OLIVE SUN BIRD.

MATTHEW: “THE OLIVE SUN BIRD, HUH? FUCK YOU.”

MIKE: DID YOU JUST SIT DOWN AND BE LIKE “YOU NOW WHAT? FUCK YOU PENGUIN! FUCK YOU!”

MATTHEW: LIKE ALL GOOD THINGS ON THE INTERNET, I WAS AT WORK, AND I WAS ALSO SHOPPING FOR CLOTHES AND I SAW A COAT THAT WAS NICE AND IT WAS A PENGUIN COAT FROM A CLOTHING COMPANY AND I SENT AN EMAIL TO MY GIRLFRIEND AT THE TIME NOW WIFE ABOUT HOW I COULDN’T AFFORD THAT COAT AND IT SAID FU PENGUIN THEN I IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWED IT UP WITH A PICTURE OF A PENGUIN AND IT SAID FUCK YOU PENGUIN. WE ALWAYS HAD KIND OF JOKED ABOUT HOW CUTE ANIMALS KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING TO YOU SO A POLAR BEAR ROLLS OVER ON ITS BACK AND YOU’RE LIKE ‘FUCK YOU, POLAR BEAR, WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME?’

MIKE: DO YOU HAVE ANY HOUSEHOLD PETS?

MATTHEW: I DON’T RIGHT NOW, BUT I’M MOVING NEXT MONTH, AND I’M GETTING A DOG.

MIKE: YOU DON’T PLAN ON HATING IT?

MATTHEW: I PLAN ON RESENTING IT. WE ALL RESENT OUR PETS AT ONE POINT OR ANOTHER. I THINK THE BLOG IS MEANT TO BE FOR ANIMAL LOVERS, WHICH YOU MIGHT NOT BE ABLE TO TELL FROM SOME OF THE COMMENTS.YOU LOVE THESE ANIMALS SO MUCH THAT IT CYCLES BACK DOWN TO HATRED. THEY DRIVE YOU SO CRAZY AND YOU WANT TO DONATE MONEY TO WWF OR VOLUNTEER AT AN ANIMAL SHELTER OR EVEN WALK YOUR DOG AT MIDNIGHT AND YOU DON’T KNOW WHY YOU’RE DOING IT, BUT THEN TEHY ROLL OVER ON THEIR BELLY AND YOU’RE HELPLESS BUT TO SUBCUM TO THEIR TERROR.

MIKE: AND THEN, NEXT TO MATTHEW WE HAVE CHRISTOPH FROM CORNIFY, WHICH IS A WEBSITE THAT ALLOWS YOU TO CORNIFY ANY OTHER WEBSITE. WE’LL CORNIFY CORNIFY JUST SO EVERYBODY GETS AN IDEA OF HOW AMAZING IT IS. CRISTOPH, HOW MANY DIFFERENT IMAGES ARE THERE AND HOW LONG CAN YOU GO TO GET NEW ONES?

CHRIS: THERE ARE ONLY 7 UNICORNS AND 7 RAINBOWS AND THEN IF YOU PRESS 15 TIMES THE GRAND UNICORN APPEARS. [HE DOES AND THE AUDIENCE GOES CRAZY]

MIKE: BUT IT’S ALL OF THE BEST ANIMATED AND UNICORN GRAPHICS.

CHRIS: TEHY’RE HAND PICKED TO BE THE BEST.

MIKE: WHAT WAS YOUR INSPIRATION FOR THE SITE?

CHRIS: I WAS JUST HANGING OUT WITH MY BUDDING UNICORN FRIEND HERE, AL, I WANTED TO TRIBUTE SOMETHING TO HIM AND I WANTED TO BRING IT TO THE WORLD.

AL: ALSO THERE’S A LOT OF MONEY INVOLVED. I LOOKED AT THIS AND I SAW POTENTIONL FOR A LOT OF ADVERTISING, LIKE YOU CLICK A 16TH TIME AND MAYBE A GOOGLE VIDEO COMES UP OR SOMETHING ABOUT CIALIS.

MIKE: I HEAR YOU’RE THE CEO OF CORNIFY INC.

CHRIS: THE CORNIFY DISTRIBUTION PLATFORM FOR UNICORNS AND RAINBOWS, YES. VERY SIMILAR WHAT YOUTUBE DID FOR VIDEOS WE DO THAT FOR UNICORNS AND RAINBOW. JUST LIKE HOW NOBODY USED TWITTER A FEW YEARS AGO? THAT’S HOW WE’RE GOING TO BE. WE’LL HAVE JILLIONS OF USERS.

AL: JILLIONS! THAT’S A LOT!

MOD: THE FIRST SORT OF BIG IDEA OR QUESTION THAT I WANT TO TALK ABOUT IS A WAY TO SEE ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING THAT I WANT TO SEE, THER EIS SORT OF THIS VAST EXPANSE OF STUFF, AND WE DON’T JUST WANT TO SEE ANYTHING, WE WANT TO SEE THE MOST RIDICULOUS THING WE CAN IMAGINE, WE WANT TO SEE AS MANY UNICORNS AS WE CAN CRAM ON ONE PAGE, OR THE FATTIES FOODS YOU CAN IMAGINE. WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS?

MATTHEW: I THINK IT’S THAT THE INTERNET IS UNLIMITED, SO WHEN YOU HAVE EVERYTHING THAT THERE IS, YOU WANT THE BEST OF EVERYTHING. YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE YOUR NEIGHBOR’S DOG, YOU WANT TO SEE THE AWESOMEST DOG OF ALL TIME WHO IS EATING BIRTHDAY CAKE AND LOOKING LIKE A STONED GUY. THERE’S THIS APPEAL – THE BIGGEST EXAMPLE IS PORNOGRAPHY OF COURSE BECAUSE THAT’S THE BIGGEST EXAMPLE OF ANYTHING IN THE INTERNET. YOU DON’T WANT TO GO LOOK AT A NAKED PERSON, YOU WANT TO GO LOOK AT THE CRAZIEST NAKED PERSON EVER. EVERYTHING HAS TO BE ON THIS EXTRA LEVEL, BECAUSE IT’S LIKE, I HAVE THAT LEVEL NOW, LET’S GO FOR IT.

CHRIS: I THINK IT SPEAKS TO YOUR POINT EARLIER THAT A LOT OF THIS STUFF COMES OUT OF THINGS PEOPLE WERE DOING AT WORK ON THEIR COMPUTER, LIKE YOUR WEBSITE, AND YOU JUST HAVE THIS SPLIT SECOND WHERE NO ONE IS WATCHING AND YOU CAN GET INTO THIS SPLIT SECOND OF SATISFACTION AND THE MORE INTENSE IT IS THE MORE IT TAKES US OUT OF OUR WORLD AND INTO THIS PLACE OF HAPPINESS. THE EXTREMENESS TAKES YOU OUT OF IT AND INTO SOMETHING NEW.

MIKE: TO WHAT DEGREE IS YOUR EVERYDAY INTERNET USE A FORM OF ESCAPISM?

CHRIS: ME SPECIFICALLY?

MIKE: YEAH.

CHRIS: MY DAILY INTERNET USE?

MIKE: YEAH.

CHRIS: I’M A WEB DEVELOPER, SO I SPEND 8 HOURS PLUS ON THE INTERNET, I NEED SOMETHING TO ESCAPE FROM THAT, IF SOMETHING JUST MAKES ME HAPPY, THEN I JUST NEED A BREAK FROM THAT.

JESS: SORT OF PLAYING OFF OF – YEAH, I THINK THERE’S A GUILTY PLEASURE COMPONENT TO IT WHICH PLAYS ON THE ESCAPISM THING TO. YOU KIND OF THINK ABOUT MASTURBATION, IT’S SOMETHING EVERYBODY DOES BUT NOBODY TALKS ABOUT. THE WEB CAN BE YOUR RETREAT IN THAT REGARD. THE WEB GIVES YOU A DEGREE OF DISTANCE + ANONYMITY SO THAT YOU CAN LIVE THIS LIFE ON THE INTENRET THAT YOU MIGHT NOT LIVE IN A MORE SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE ENVIRONMENT

SOMEONE: ARE YOU REFERRING TO CHATROULETTE?

MIKE: AREN’T WE ALWAYS REFERRING TO CHATROULETTE?

JESSICA: LY WOULDN’T EAT THIS IS WHY YOUR FAT. YOU WOULDN’T EAT A DOUBLE DOWN EVERY DAY, BUT YOU GO THERE TO SEE THIS CRAZY CREATIONS BECAUSE YOU GET TO LIVE VICARIOUSLY THROUGH THESE EXTREME CORNER OF THE WEB.

MARK: YES, ESCAPISM, BUT WHAT I MOSTLY DO WITH THE INTERNET, I RARELY KEEP THE WEB TO MYSELF, I BRING IT TO MY FRIENDS AND THEN WE HAVE SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT. SO MAYBE ESCAPISM, BUT MAYBE JUST BONDING. MAYBE! CORNIFY THAT SHIT! FRIENDSHIP!

CHRIS: I WILL.

UNICORN: IT’S STUFF TO DO AT WORK OR MASTURBATION BUT IF YOU WERE TO REFER TO CORNIFY.COM, ALL OF THOSE ARE PICS OF MY EXGIRLFRIENDS, SO THE NICE THING ABOUT THAT IS THAT I CAN KILL TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE, I CAN GO TO ANY WEBSITE.

JESS: PORNIFY, YOU MIGHT SAY? JUST PUTTING THAT OUT THERE.

AL THE UNICORN: THANKS.

MIKE: SO I’M ALSO REALLY CURIOUS THERE’S BEEN AN EXPLOSION ON THE INTERNET THE LAST COUPLE YEARS OF CUTE-LOVING. SO CUTE OVERLOAD HAS A HUGE AMOUNT OF THE MIND-SHARE OF PEOPLE LOOKING FOR CUTE ANIMALS, PEOPLE LOOKING FOR THEIR AWWW MOMENT, SPECIFICALLY CORNIFY AND FU PENGUIN, IS IT ALL PEOPLE ARE LOOKING TO ESCAPE LOOKING FOR THAT MOMENT OF AWWW JUST SO THEY CAN FORGET ABOUT THEIR LIVES AND WHAT’S BOTHERING THEM? WHAT HAS BROUGHT US TO THIS POINT WHERE WE ARE OBSESSED WITH CUTE THINGS ON THE INTERNET?

MATTHEW: I THINK IT’S THE AW THING YOU POINTED OUT. WHEN YOU SEE A PICTURE THAT IS A EXTREMELY UNNECESSARILY CUTE ANIMAL YOU HAVE A VISCERAL REACTION AND SOMETHING IN YOU JUST PUSHES THAT ‘FORWARD’ BUTTON TO ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS AND AS YOU GET OLDER IT’S HARDER TO RESIST THAT URGE. FOR SOME REASON PEOPLE, WHETHER IT’S EVOLUTION – I DO WRITE A WEBSITE CALLED FU PENGUIN SO I DON’T WANT TO GET TOO INTELLECTUAL, BUT THERE IS JSUT THIS DESIRE TO TAKE CARE OF THESE ANIMALS AND SOMEHOW THIS TRANSLATE INTO EMAIL FORWARD, BUT CUTE OVER LOAD ITS FUNNY BECAUSE PEOPLE ALWAYS REFER TO MY SITE AS THE ANTICUTECOVERLOAD, BUT I HAD READ CUTEOVERLORD THE FIRST TIME WHEN IT FIRST CAME AROUND, ALTHOUGH I THINK THEIR INSIDER LANGUAGE IS CONFUSING, AND I BRIEFLY HAD A FLAME WAR WITH THEM WHICH WAS HILARIOUS.

MIKE: AN ADORABLE FLAMEWAR? WHAT DOES THAT LOOK LIKE?

MATTHEW: WE WERE BOTH NOMINATED FOR A WEB AWARD AND I WAS IN THE ANIMAL CATEGORY WHICH MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL, AND I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE FUNNY TO START A CAMPAIGN AGAINST THEM, SO I BASICALLY SAID THAT THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CUTE OVERLOAD IS THAT KIDS ARE ENCOURAGED TO LOOK AT CUTEOVERLOAD. SO THEN THEY MENTIONED MY SITE ON THEIR SITE WHICH WAS WEIRD AND I DON’T KNOW WHY THE DID THAT AND PEOPLE STARTED COMING TO MY SITE AND COMPLAINING THAT I WAS BEING MEAN TO THE ANIMALS, AND THEY WOULD SAY THINGS ON THEIR SITE LIKE HOW THEIR SITE IS HOW MUCH BETTER THAN THAT STUPID FU PENGUIN SITE. IT’S JUST KIND OF LIKE ANYTHING ON THE INTERNET THAT PEOPLE JUST GET SO OBSESSED WITH THAT THEY JUST HAVE TO TELL EVERYONE ABOUT. IT’S LIKE THAT SQUIRREL PICTURE FROM A FEW WEEKS AGO WITH THOSE KIDS LOOKING AT THE SQUIRREL AND IT MERGED WITH THAT KANYE MEME AND IT BECAME A MEME IN AND OF ITSELF. IT’S JUST LIKE THIS SQUIRREL THAT POPS UP INTO A SCREEN, IT’S NOT THAT BIG OF A DEAL, PEOPLE. BUT I GOT EMAILED THAT PICTURE PROBABLY HUNDREDS OF TIMES IF NOT THOUSANDS.

MIKE: TO PUT ON THE SITE?

MATTHEW: YEAH, AND EVEN AFTER I PUT IT ON THE SITE.

MIKE: AND ALL RESPECT TO CRASHER SQUIRREL – NOT THAT CUTE!

MATTHEW: IT’S PRETTY CUTE. IT’S NOT LIKE THE KOALA THAT CAME TO TAKE A WATER IN THE BATH WHEN IT WAS TOO HOT, BUT IT’S STILL INTERNET CUTE. MAYBE CNN CUTE AT 11 OCLOCK IN THE MORNING.

MIKE: WHAT IS A CNN, WHAT IS IT, THE TODAY SHOW THAT HAPPENS REALLY EARLY WITH MATT LAUER OR WHATEVER? WHAT IS TODAY SHOW CUTE AND VS FU PENGUIN CUTE?

MATTHEW: THE BIGGEST IS OPRAH CUTE. IF YOU CAN GET ON OPRAH WITH YOUR CUTENESS THEN YOU HAVE PRETTY MUCH MADE IT FOR LIFE THERE IS JUST DIFFERENT LEVELS OF CUTENESS. IT’S LIKE PORNOGRAPHY, YOU KNOW IT WHEN YOU SEE IT.

MIKE: SIMILARLY THERE HAS BEEN AN EXPLOSION IN THE EXTREMITY OF CONSUMPTION. THINGS LIKE THE KFC DOUBLEDOWN, WE ALL PROBABLY RECEIVED AN EMAIL THE DAY THE DOUBLEDOWN WAS AN OFFICIAL THING, AND THEY WERE LIKE, COME ON SOMEONE IS GOING TO SELL THIS AND YOU ARE GOING TO WANT TO EAT IT, IT IS A CHICKEN SANDWICH MADE OUT OF ANOTHER CHICKEN SANDWICH. I WOULD BE REALLY CURIOUS TO HEAR WHAT YOU GUYS HAVE TO SAY ABOUT WHY THE KFC DOUBLE DOWN IS A THING THAT IS POSSIBLE. WHO DID THEY MAKE THAT FOR? IS IT IRONIC? IS IT NOT IRONIC? ITS SIMILAR FOR ENERGY DRINKS. I SEE THESE COMMERCIALS AND I’M LIKE, ARE THESE PEOPLE FOR REAL DID THEY MEAN THIS? WHAT DOES IT MEAN? WHAT IS IT EXPRESSING?

JESS: I DON’T KNOW THE ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION BUT I DO THINK YOU SEE LIKE THE KFC DOUBLEDOWN, ARE YOU JUST TESTING THE WATERS? SEE HOW EXTREME YOU CAN GO? THEY DID DO TEST MARKETING FOR IT AND THAT’S WHEN WE PUT IT ON OUR SITE AND THEN WHEN IT BECAME A REAL THING WE WERE LIKE “WE ALREADY KNEW IT WAS GOING TO BE THE GREATEST THING EVER!” AND PEOPLE ARE JUST GRAVITATING TO THE EXTREMES AND LOOKING AT NOVELTY ITEMS.

MIKE: DO YOU THINK YOUR WEBSITE HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH PLANTING THAT IDEA.

JESS: I’D LIKE TO BELIEVE THAT IT DID. THEY WERE LIKE WE DON’T NEED BREAD, WHATEVER, JUST PUT CHICKEN ON IT.

MIKE: WHEN PEOPLE ORDER A MC NOVELTY, CAN THEY JUST DO THAT?

JESS: LIKE THE MCGANGBANG, THE CHICKEN SANDWICH BETWEEN THE BURGER PATTIES?

PIZZA: AND HALF OF THAT IS PEOPLE WANT TO GO UP TO A DRIVETHROUGH AND BE LIKE YEAH I’M GONNA COME UP AND TELL PEOPLE I WANNA GANGBANG AND THEN SHE’S GONNA BE LIKE WHAT? AND I’LL EXPLAIN IT TO HER BECAUSE, LIKE, I ACTUALLY WANT IT. IT’S LIKE COUCHING THESE REAL DESIRES IN THIS WEIRD LANGUAGE OF AGGRESSION, I REMEMBER THIS VIDEO OF THESE TWO WOMEN ON THIS AFTERNOON SHOW ON CABLE ACCESS AND IT WAS LIKE TWO DONUTS WITH A BURGER ON IT.

JESS: WAS IT PAULA DEEN? AND I LOVE THAT SHE ALLS IT THE “LADIES’ BRUNCH BURGER.’ LIKE IT SOUNDS FANCY AND PLEASANT.

PIZZA: I’M FROM CANADA, AND MAYBE THAT’S WHY IT LOOKS LIKE CABLE ACCESS TV, BUT THE WHOLE ATMOSPHERE OF THAT SHOW WAS SO WEIRD BECAUSE IT WAS THESE TWO LADIES SAYING ‘OH I SHOULDN’T DO THIS’ ‘OH I SHOULDN’T DO THIS’ AND YOU JUST WANT TO SAY, NO! YOU SHOULDN’T FUCKING DO THIS SO STOP!’ BUT THEY’RE ACTING COY, “OH, AMERICA’S CRAZY THAT THEY’RE LETTING US DO THIS ON TELEVESION” BUT THEY’RE ALL LIKE “NOOOM”

JESS: THAT’S PAULA. THAT’S HER MO.

PIZZA: IS IT ALL LIKE, THE WORLD WANTS US TO EAT HEALTHY? LET’S PACK THESE ARTIES LIKE A SWEET RAVE!

MOD: WE WERE TALKING ABOUT THE MONSTER TRUCK RALLYIZATION.

PIZZA: WELL, THAT WAS DEFINITELY THE ROOT OF THOSE CRAZY AGGRESSIVE ADS, YEAH? THAT WAS THE ONLY THING THAT YOU COULD MARKET THAT AWESOMELY. LIKE: DUDE, DO YOU THINK THIS IS A LITTLE TOO AWESOME ADVERTISING? AND THE RESPONSE IS NO IT’S AN AD FOR GOING TO GO SEE TRUCKS ROLL OVER SMALLER TRUCKS. YEAH THAT’S A SWEET MARKETING TACTIC FOR SOME PEOPLE. I MEAN I DON’T THINK IT’LL WORK FOR TWEEZERS. TWEEZERZ TWEEZERS TWEEZERS FUCK YOU MOLE HAIR! I’LL ROLL OVER MY TWEEZERS WITH BIGGER TWEEZERS. JUST EVEN JUST THAT VOCAL EFFECT OF THE REVERB AND THE DOUBLED VOCALS. LIKE YOU’RE GONNA HAVE THAT SET UP LINE “YOU WANNA COME DOWN ON SUNDAY CAUSE YOU’RE GONNA SEE TRUCKS!!!!!!!” ALL YOU CAN HEAR IS TRUCKS AND YEAH.

MIKE: I DIDN’T THINK THAT KIND OF THING EXISTED IN CANADA.

PIZZA: OH, WE HAVE OUR WHITE TRASH. YOU MAY HAVE HEARD OF A SHOW CALLED TRAILER PARK BOYS, THE MOST POPULAR THING TO COME OUT OF CANADA OTHER THAN CELINE DION? WE DO HAVE THAT KINDA MEDIA, BUT IT’S LESSER. YOU HAD THE MONSTER TRUST COMMERCIALS AND BY EXTENSIONS THOSE USED CARS ONE, I’M JIM THE RUG SMITH I’VE GOT THE BEST RUGS IN TOWN OH MY RUGS I’M SO PERSIAN. WHAT’ WEIRD IS THAT THOSE THINGS WERE ON THE FRINGE OF REAL MEDIA AND ADVERSISING. WE WERE LIKE OH, THAT’S AWESOME, LET’S USE THAT STYLE, AND NOW THAT’S FED BACK INTO THE MAINSTREAM ADS, SO NOW YOU HAVE THESE OLD SPICE COMMERCIALS THAT IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE EVER EXISTING WITHOUT INTERNET PARODY ADS FIRST. THAT’S SO RIGHT OUT OF THE INTERNET.

MIKE: THIS IS EXACTLY SOMETHING I ASK, WHERE DOES THIS STOP? NOW THAT THIS JOKING PARODY IS FINDING IT’S WAY INTO THE REAL WORLD, ARE WE JUST ON THE FAST CAR STRAIGHT TO HELL. WHAT COMES AFTER THE KFC DOUBLE DOWN.

AUDIENCE: TRIPLEDOWN!!!!!!

MATTHEW: THE SAD THING IS THE DOUBLE DOWN DIDN’T EVEN CRACK THE TOP 100 FATTIEST FOOD. THE TOP THING IS THE CHOCOLATE MILKSHAKES. THEY’RE ALL LIKE 2500 CALORIES. THE DOUBLEDOWN IS ONLY LIKE 500 CALORIES SO EAT EM WHILE YOU’VE GOT EM.THE DOUBLE DOWN IS ONLY 500 CALORIES

AUDIENCE MEMBER: THERE IS MORE SALT IN THE DOUBLE DOWN THAN YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO COSUME IN AN ENTIRE DAY.

JESSICA: THERE’S ALSO THE WINDOWS 7 BURGER IN JAPAN THAT WAS LEGIMATITELY SOLD, WITH 7 PATTIES.

MIKE: WE MIGHT NEVER HIT THE CEILING FOR RIDICULOUS FOOD BUT AT SOME POINT WE’LL RUN OUT OF CUTE ANIMALS, WON’T WE?

MATTHEW: THAT’S WHAT THEY SAID ABOUT PUNK, RIGHT? THAT IT WAS THE END OF MUSIC? BUT THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT! THEY’LL ALWAYS COME UP WITH THE NEWER COOLER AWESOMER THINGS. CAPS LOCK ISN’T AWESOME ENOUGH, LET’S DO 72 PT CAPS LOCK. THEYLL GET BIGGER SCREENS SO THEY CAN READ IT ALL. THE KIDS WILL FIND A WAY.

MIKE: SO THERE WILL ALWAYS BE THE NEW CUTE THING AFTER THE CUTE THING? LIKE DID YOU SEE THE DIK-DIK, THE MOST ADORABLE LITTLE DEAR YOU’VE EVER SEEN? SO THERE’S ALWAYS GOING TO BE A NEW THING THAT’S THE MOST ADORABLE THING THAT YOU’VE EVER SEEN.

PIZZA; LIKE IF CLONING EVER GETS TO THE POINT OF MAKING AMINALS SMALLER, LIKE SMALL BEAR? HOLY CRAP, GET READY FOR SMALL BEAR.

MATTHEW: THEY HAVE TEACUP PIGS. THEY ARE PIGS ALMOST THE SIZE OF A TEACUP.

PIZZA; WHAT? DOUBLE DOWN!!!

JESS: SO IT’S LIKE AN INVERSE RATIO, AS THE FOOD GETS BIGGER AND BIGGER THE ANIMALS GET SMALLER AND SMALLER. WE CAN CRAM LIKE MORE ANIMALS INTO ONE SANDWICH.

MIKE: THE CUTEST MOST DELICIOUS THING ON THE PLANET.

MATTHEW: I GET A LOT OF EATERS ON MY WEBSITE. IT’S VERY UNCOMFORTABLE.

MIKE: THE COMMUNITIES THAT HAVE SURROUNDED THE WEBSITES, IF THERE IS A COMMUNITY OF PEOPLE COMMENTING OR ANOTHER KIND OF CONGREGATION. WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE AHVE YOU FOUND AND WHAT SORT OF ADVENTURES HAVE YOU HAD WITH THEM?

CHRIS: I HAVEN’T SAID ANYTHING IN A WHILE SO HERE I GO. THE THING WITH CORNIFY THAT’S DIFFERENT IS THAT YOU CAN INSTALL IT ON YOUR OWN WEBSITE, YOU CAN PUT IT ON A BOOKMARKLET, SO MOST OF THE CORNIFY ACTION HAPPENS OFF THE CORNIFY SITE. IT HAS REALLY SPREAD ALL OVER THE PLACE, THEY ARE ALL EXCITED. I DON’T HAVE A DIRECT COMMUNITY ON THE SITE BUT IT JUST SORT OF SPREADS, THAT’S WHAT MAKES IT SO GREAT, PEOPLE CAN JUST RUN WITH IT.

UNICORN AL: ACTUALLY I’M IN CHARGE OF AL THE GOOGLE ANALYTICS STUFF AND A COUPLE THINGS THAT YOU’LL FIND IS: EH, FIREFOX USERS? RIGHT GUYS? FIREFOX AND NERDS. JUST GENERAL NERD POPULATION. SO THAT’S ABOUT IT.

CHRIS: THAT’S A GREAT SUMMARY.

MIKE: HAVE THERE BEEN ANY CORNIFIES THAT YOU’VE SEEN OUT IN THE WILD THAT YOU’VE SEEN LIKE SCREEN GRABS THAT WERE REALLY CHOICE?

CHRIS: UH… THE MOST AMAZING ONE THAT WAS JUST THE BEST EXPERIENCE WAS SOMEBODY UPLOADED A VIDEO ON YOUTUBE SOME DESIGN AGENCY IN NY PLAYED A PRANK ON THEIR COWORKERS AND THEY CORNIFIED THEIR WHOLE DESK. THEY PRINTED OUT UNICORNS, TOOK THINGS APART AND PUT UNICORNS INSIDE OF THEM, GLITTER EVERYWHERE, THERE WAS A SIGN ON THE CHAIR SAYING ‘UNICORNS FART GLITTER’ WHICH EXPLAINED WHY THERE WAS GLITTER EVERYWHERE, AND THEY TAPED THE WHOLE THING AND UPLOADED IT AND IT WAS JUST AN AWESOME THING TO COME ACROSS, JUST SO MUCH CREATIVITY.

MATTHEW: I GET PEOPLE TRYING TO SOUND LIKE ME, I’D SAY THE MAJORITY OF THE COMMENTS ARE THAT, AND SOME OF THEM ARE VERY FUNNY, BUT A LOT OF THEM ARE VERY CREPY. I THINK IT’S EASY TO RESORT TO VIOLENCE OR CARNIVORISM WHEN YOU’RE TRYING TO INSULT AN ANIMAL, AND PEOPLE THINK OF VERY CREATIVE WAYS TO DO THAT KIND OF THING. THE FEEDBACK ON THE SITE HAS BEEN ALMOST UNIVERSALLY POSITIVE. I’VE HAD PEOPLE IN THE PANELS TALK ABOUT HOW THE INTERNET IS SUCH A NEGATIVE PLACE, BUT MAYBE BECAUSE I DON’T POST MY STUFF ON YOUTUBE.

MIKE: AND ALSO HAVING THE MECHANIC OF YOUR VOICE ON THE WEBSITE IS SORT OF WEIRDLY NEGATIVE, AND THEN HAVING PEOPLE COMMENT WEIRDLY NEGATIVE IS SORT OF A TOOL FOR HIDING THE ACTUALLY NEGATIVE COMMENTS, LIKE PEOPLE WHO ARE LIKE ‘THAT PENGUIN IS AN ASSHOLE’ AND THEY HONESTLY BELIEVE IT OR WANT TO INSULT YOU, THEY’RE JUST GOING TO GET LOST IN THE SEA OF PEOPLE WHO ARE TELLING THAT JOKE IRONICALLY.

MATTHEW: YEAH, I DON’T KNOW, IT WOULD SEEM LIKE REALLY A LOT YOU’RE REALLY GOING OUT OF YOUR WAY TO CALL A PENGUIN AN ASSHOLE IF YOU REALLY BELIEVE THAT THE PENGUIN IS AN ASSHOLE AND THE PENGUIN PROBABLY DOESN’T READ THE WEBSITE AND IF IT DOES IT PROBABLY DOESN’T READ THE COMMENTS.

JESS: I THINK ON OUR SITE WE TEND TO GET A LOT OF KNOW IT ALLS, THERE AREN’T REALLY NEGATIVE REVIEWS AS MUC AS SAYING “ACTUALLY, THE REASON WHY YOU’RE FAT IS THIS PERCENTAGE OF SATURATED FAT” AND LIKE… WHATEVER. IT ENDED UP TAKING THAT WHOLE FATTY CRAZY FOOD CREATION AND TOOK IT IRL, THIS ACTUALLY EXISTED BEFORE THE SITE, BUT IT’S SORT OF BLOWN UP NOW, IT’S CALLED BACON CAMP. YOU HAVE TO MAKE A BACON CREATION. IT’S FROM SAN FRAN, BUT NOW IT’S ALL OVER THE PLACE.AND I’VE GOTTEN IN THIS WEIRD ROLE JUDGING EXTREME FOOD COMPETITIONS, SO THERE’S A COMMUNITY IN REAL LIFE.

MIKE: I THINK I SPEAK FOR EVERYONE IN THE ROOM WHEN I SAY WE KINDA WANNA HEAR SOME STORIES.

JESS: THE LAST COUPLE THAT I JUDGED SADLY THEY DIDN’T GET THAT EXTREME, THEY WERE REALLY JUST LIKE, SERIOUSLY, MY GUACAMOLE IS AMAZING, AND I WAS LIKE, PUT A SAUSAGE IN IT! GET EXTREME MAN!”

MARK: PLEASE APPRECIATE THE SUBTLES OF MY GUACAMOLE, THIS IS MY LIFE’S WORK!

JESS: TREAT MY BACON CREATION GENTLY. – BUT HOLY TACO DID THE ORIGINAL SNACKSTADIUM WHICH I DON’T KNOW IF YOU GUYS HAVE SEEN BUT IT IS EXACTLY WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE, A HUGE STADIUM MADE OUT OF SNACK FOODS, LIKE A TWINKIE WALL AND A GUACAMOLE WALL AND THERE ARE ALL KINS OF VARIATIONS AND THERE WAS JUST A HUGE COMPETITION OUT WEST FOR LIKEK THE MOST EPIC SNACK STADIUM YOU COULD COME UP WITH. I DIDN’T GET TO GO TO THAT SADLY, BUT IT’S POSTED ON OUR FACEBOOK AND ON OUR TWITTER.

JESS: IT’S THISISWHYYOU’REFAT ON FACEBOOK. YOU CAN GET TO IT VIA OUR TWITTER TOO WHICH IS @TIWYF. SOMETHING WE GET IS PEOPLE WILL SUBMIT A PICTURE OF A PERSON AND THEY’RE NOT EVEN OVERWEIGHT OR ANYTHING, IT’S JUST LIKE THEIR PROM PICTURE! AND WE’RE LIKE WHAT ARE YOU SAYING WITH THAT? THIS IS NOT THE POINT OF THE SITE!

PIZZA: ARE YOU SURE IT’S NOT BECUASE THE PERSON WAS GOING TO EAT THAT PERSON? JUST A CANNIBAL LOOKING FOR A COMMUNITY! WHERE’S MY BLOG!

MATTHEW: I DO WANT TO SAY ABOUT THE CORRECTIONS, PEOPLE LOVE TO CORRECT YOU ON THE INTERNET, IT’S LIKE THEIR FAVORITE THING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.

AUDIENCE: NO THEY DON’T. [BIG LAUGH]

MATTHEW: BUT FOR MY SITE I’M PURPOSEFULLY BEING AN IDIOT SO SOMETIMES I SAY THINGS THAT ARE NOT TRUE ON PURPOSE, BUT FOR SOMEREASON THEY DO NOT GET THE SARCASM EVEN THOUGH MY SITE IS BASED ON SARCASM. SO FOR INSTANCE I SAID “FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER A BLOG IS BEING TURNED INTO A BOOK?” AND PEOPLE SAID “WHAT ABOUT STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE? YOU’RE A LITTLE LATE.” AND I WAS LIKE… THIS IS THE INTERNET I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY TO THAT.

MARK: SO YOU NOTICED THAT WE SPELLED LIGHTNING LIKE “LIGHTENING.” SO AT FIRST WE GOT A BUNCH OF PEOPLE SAYING “YOU SPELLED IT WRONG.” THEN THESE AMERICANS CAME TO OUR DEFENSE AND SAID “NO, THAT’S JUST THE CANADIAN WAY OF SPELLING IT” AND IT WAS A HILARIOUS AND MISGUIDED WAY TO BE NICE. EVEN THOUGH IT’S MAKING FUN OF THAT WHOLE GENRE, I JUST DIDN’T IMAGINE THAT PEOPLE WHO WOULD WAKE SPIKE TV AND THINK IT’S AWESOME. ALL THEY SEE IS MANLY DUDES AND HORSES ACTING TOUGH (NOT IN THE ORIGINAL, BUT IN THE NEW ONE, THERE’S A HORSE ON A MOTORCYCLE, I WANT TO BRAG) I GOT EMAILS FROM GUYS IN THE NAVY, DUDES IN THE AIR FORCE LIKE, FUCKIN LOVED YOUR VIDEO BRO! CAN’T WAIT TO SEE YOUR OTHERS! AND I WAS LIKE… YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE MY OTHER VIDEOS, DUDE, THEY’RE ME DRESSING UP IN A FAKE MUSTACHE AND SINGING, YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE MY OTHER VIDEOS, THAT’S NOT WHAT YOU WANT! WE MADE ANOTHER VIDEO THAT’S JUST A LAYWER SCREAMING AT THE CAMERA, BUT AT THE END OF THE VIDEO HE INCLUDED HIS REAL PHONE NUMBER, AND PEOPLE WOULD ANSWER IN CHARACTER AND PEOPLE WOULD BE LIKE ‘OH GOD”. SO THEY WERE OBVIOUSLY FANS ENOUGH THAT THEY WOULD CALL HER. MY WHOLE ROLE IN THAT IS TO JUST SCREAM NONSENSE AT THE CAMERA, AND SO HE’D BE LIKE WANNA TALK TO SOMEONE ELSE YOU MIGHT WANT TO TALK TO? AND HE’D PUT ME ON THE PHONE AND THEY’D BE LIKE “WTF IS THIS?” AND THEN I’D BE LIKE “SHOCK JOHNSON FROM THE VIDEO? UH… I’LL GIVE YOU BACK TO LARRY.”

CHRIS: A LOT OF ANGER. MAYBE YOU NEED TO COME TO MY SITE, AND CORNIFY A LITTLE BIT.

MIKE: I’D LIKE THAT VERY MUCH. SO – WE HAVE A QUESTION: DO YOU FEEL LIKE OLD SPICE CO-OPTED POWERTHIRST?

MARK: NO, NO, BUT I THINK, I DON’T KNOW MAYBE A LOT OF PEOPLE GOT INTRODUCED TO THAT KIND OF VIDEO THROUGH POWERTHIRST, AND MAYBE THERE WAS A LONG ENOUGH CHAIN THAT LEAD TO OLD SPICE THAT THEY WEREN’T REALLY INSPIRIED FOR ME. SO I GOT THIS EMAIL WHERE SOMEONE WAS LIKE ‘YOU GOT CITED AS THE INSPIRATION FOR OLD SPICE!’ I GOOGLED IT, AND THEN I WAS SEARCHING AND SEARCHING, AND THEN I REALIZED IT WAS SO EGO CENTRIC “COME ONNNN GIVE ME THE CREEEDIIIIITT”

AUDIENCE MEMBER: WHAT’S THE SIMILARITY BETWEEN UNICORNS AND VAMPIRES? BECAUSE THEY BOTH SPARKLE.

UNICORN AL: SO WHAT’S THE WHAT? HUH? SO THE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN VAMPIRES AND UNICORNS… UH. WE BOTH LOVE TWILIGHT. THAT IS FOR SURE. I’M ACTUALLY WRITING A BOOK RIGHT NOW THAT’S BASED ON TWILIGHT BUT WITH UNICORNS BUT YOU’RE RIGHT, IT’S SHOCKINGLY EASY TO RIP THAT BOOK OFF. JUST PUT A UNCORN IN HIGH SCHOOL AND HAVE HIM FALL FOR SOMEONE. WRITING IS HARD, GUYS. OH AND UNICORNS AND VAMPIRES ARE BOTH MADE FROM SPARKLES. THAT’S IT. DID I ANSWER YOUR QUESTION.

MIKE: DO YOU THINK ANYONE COULD HAVE STARTED YOUR SITES, WAS IT JUST TIMING, LUCK?

MATTHEW: DO YOU THINK ANYONE COULD HAVE ASKED THAT QUESTION? YEAH. IT’S THE INTERNET. ANYONE CAN START A SITE. YOU HAVE AN IDEA, YOU DO IT. I HAD AN IDEA, AND I PUT IT ON THE WEB. FOR SOME WEIRD REASON IT BECAME POPULAR. I MEAN ALL FOUR OF THESE ARE DIFFERENT, BUT.

JESS: I THINK TIMING FOR TIWYF WAS PRETTY SERENDIPITIOUS BECAUSE THERE WAS SO MUCH TALKING ABOUT ORGANIC AND OBSESSED WITH LITE THIS AND ORGANIC THAT AND THERE WERE ALL THESE OTHER FOOD SITS POPPING UP, IT WAS DEFINITELY TIMING ON OUR SIDE, BUT IT’S A SIMPLE SITE! IT’S ON TUMBLR, ANYONE CAN MAKE A THEMED TUMBLR SITE.

AL: NOBODY ELSE COULD HAVE CREATED CORNIFY.COM, BECAUSE I AM THE ORGINATOR OF THOSE NAKED PICS OF MY EX-GIRLFRIEND.

PIZZA: YEAH, ANYBODY COULD HAVE MADE THAT, THERE ARE LOTS OF ENERGY DRINK PARODYS OUT THERE. JUST MOST OF THEM WERE MADE BY PEOPLE WHO DIDN’T HAVE… PH, THE YELLING GUY HAS SOMETHING ELSE TO SAY! YEAH, BUT IT WAS TIMING MOSTLY.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: HELLO. I HAVE A QUESTION. OKAY, SO, NOW THE THINGS THAT YOU TALK ABOUT, FOR INSTANCE, REALLY FATTY FOODS AND ADVERSITING THAT YELLS A LOT AND THE COMEDY OF LOUD THINGS IN GENERAL LIKE GILBERT GODFREY OR DEEP FRIED OREOS. DO YOU THINK THAT THE HYPERBOLE IN OUR CULTURE IS ACTUALLY EXPANDING, OR DO YOU THINK THAT IT IS JUST THAT THE INTERNET IS BRING IT TO US?

AL: I’LL ANSWER SERIOUSLY RIGHT NOW; IT’S JUST OUR ACCESS. THE INTERNET BROUGHT THAT FRIED OREO THAT WAS MAYBE ONLY DOWN ON THE JERSEY SHORE RIGHT IN YOUR FACE. THERE’S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HAVING TO HOP ON A PEGASUS AND STROLL DOWN TO THE BOARDWALK AND GETTING A BUZZ FROM YOUR FRIEND – YOU GUYS USE BUZZ, RIGHT? [AUDIENCE LOLS]

JESS: I THINK IT’S A COMBINATION OF THE PLATFORM NEEDING THE CONTENT WE HAVE ACCES, BUT AT THE SAME TIME I THINK THAT ACCESS TENDS TO BREED MORE EXTREME CONTENT, SO I THINK THEY WORK IN TANDEM.

MARK: I THINK THE INTERNET IS INCREASING THE AMOUNT OF HYPERBOLE WE’RE EXPOSED TO. YOU’RE NOT GOING TO WRITE A LETTER IN ALL CAPS. INTERNET COMMUNICATION IS JUST “I’M GOING TO BE FUCKING BIGGER ABOUT ALL THIS” I DIDN’T DO IT A LOT BEFORE I STARTED GOING ONLINE.

MATTHEW: WELL THERE’S ALSO – AND THIS HAS ALREADY BEEN SAID 1000 TIMES – THE ANONYMITY. YOU CAN SAY WHATEVER YOU WANT AND THERE’S NO CONSEQUENCES. IT’S ACTUALLY FUNNY THAT I’M ON THIS PANEL, BECAUSE I HATE WHEN PEOPLE WRITE IN ALL CAPS LOCK, IT’S SO GRATING ON ME. I JUST THINK THAT INTERNET LANGUAGE IS HILARIOUS. IT’S A LITTLE INFANTILE, BUT AT THE SAME TIME IT’S HYPER AGGRESSIVE. THERE IS A GREAT BLOG CALLED MY NEW FIGHTING STYLE IS UNSTOPABLE. IF YOU WANT TO SEE INTERNET LANGUAGE TAKEN TO EXTREME, THEN CHECK OUT HIS BLOG. I NEVER WOULD HAVE WRITTEN A BLOG IN ALL CAPS UNTIL I READ HIS BLOG, BUT THINKING ABOUT IT IN THAT CONTEXT. IF YOU CAN USE IT IN A WAY THAT IS FUNNY TO PEOPLE INSTEAD OF OBNOXIOUS, THEN YOU KIND OF TAKE IT’S POWER AWAY A LITTLE BIT.

CHRIS: IT GOES MANY WAYS THOUGH. WE HAVE MORE ACCESS TO ALL THIS GOOFY STUFF BUT I CAN GO ON WIKIPEDIA AND LOOK UP ANYTHING I WANT, GO ON FACEBOOK AND LOOK UP PICTURES OF PEOPLE WHO I HAVEN’T SEEN IN 5 YEARS.

MARK: I LIKE WHAT YOU SAID ABOUT YOU’RE SHOUTING AT PEOPLE WHEN YOU’RE USING CAPS LOCK. I GUESS I’M LIKE AN INTERNET LUDDITE, I STILL TYPE THINGS LIKE “HAHAHA” OR “I AM LAUGHING AT THE STATEMENT” IT WAS FUN TO SEE THAT DEVELOP INTO SOMETHING BIGGER, LIKE LOL BECAME SO POPULAR, THAT IT BECAME SOMETHING TO “I AM NOT ONLY LAUGHING OUT LOUD, I AM ALSO ROLLING ON THE FLOOR LAUGHING ABOUT IT AND MY ASS IS ELSEWHERE” AND SOMEONE WOULD SAY ROFL AND I WOULD BE LIKE “YOU’RE A LIAR”

MATTHEW: IT’S FUNNY IN YOUR PROFESSIONAL LIFE TO SEE PEOPLE ESPECIALLY OLD PEOPLE WHO ARE TRYING TO USE COMPUTERS USING THE LETTER U INSTEAD OF YOU IN PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION. LIKE THAT IS WEIRDING ME OUT, STOP DOING THAT PLEAS

MARK: I THINK THE FIRST TIME I READ ROSIE O’DONNELS TEXT LOGS. THIS IS SOMEWHOW WORSE FOR ME THAT THAT MOVIE WHERE YOU PLAYED THAT GIRL WITH DOWN’S SYNDROME. LIKE, THIS IS THE STRAW.

MIKE: IT SOUNDS LIKE THE OPINION IS THAT NO ONLY DOES THIS GIVE US THE HYPERBOLE. I THINK ABOUT MY FATHER WHO PROBABLY DOESN’T KNOW ABOUT THE EXTREMEITY OF THINGS THAT GO ON AND I WONDER IF THAT MAKES YOU MORE OR LESS OF AN INTERNET USER TO KNOW IF THOSE THINGS DO OR DO NOT EXIST.

MATTHEW: YOU JUST BLEW MY MIND. UH, I’LL TALK. THE INTERNET, WOW. I THINK I MEAN THEY SAY PEOPLE ONLY GO TO LIKE THREE SITES. IT’S YOUR OWN NARROW CORNER OF THE UNIVERSE. IT’S WEIRD TO ME BECAUSE I STARTED A BLOG AND WROTE A BOOK AND ALL THESE PEOPLE WERE LIKE CONTACTING ME ABOUT IF THEY LIKED THE BLOG OR DIDN’T LIKE THE BLOG AND ALL THESE PEOPLE SAYING “THE BLOG IS OVER, THAT’S NOT FUNNY ANYMORE” – BUT I SITLL GET LIKE 1000S OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE NEVER HEARD OF IT GETTING TO THE SITE EACH DAY. I BET THERE ARE EVEN PEOPLE IN THIS ROOM WHO ARE LIKE “OH FU PENGUIN, I DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT THAT.” I MEAN PEOPLE JUST HAVE A CORNER OF THEIR WORLD, EVEN DIGG POWER USERS ARE ONLYSEEING THEIR ONE LITTLE CORNER.

JESS: IT’S WEIRD, BECAUSE YOUR SITE WASN’T LEGITIMIZED UNTIL YOU WERE BROUGHT INTO THIS OLD MEDIA. YOU’RE LIKE “OH GOD, PLEASE LET ME GET A BOOK DEAL.”

MATTHEW: IF YOU WANT TO HAVE A STRANGE CONVERSATION WITH YOUR GRANDPARENTS, TELL THEM YOU WRITE A BOOK CALLED FU PENGUIN. AND THEN THEY’LL START TELLING THEIR FRIENDS: “HE WROTE A BOOK CALLED FU PENGUIN.” “WHUUUUUUT??” “EFF! YOU! PENGUIN!”

AUDIENCE: IS THIS IRONIC HYPERBOLE SOMETHING THAT’S ENDEMIC TO 30 SOMETHING’S WHITE PEOPLE.

MATTHEW: I’M 28 SO FUCK YOU.

MARK: 27! OHHHH!

MATTHEW: I DON’T KNOW, SARCASM IS OUR GENERATION I GUESS, IT’S OUR SECURITY BLANKET. WE GREW UP WATCHING THE SIMPSONS, PROBALBY MORE INFLUENTIAL THAN ANY OTHER THING IN OUR GENERATION IN TERMS OF COMEDY, THEY DO A LOT OF SARCASM, SO THAT’S THE DEAL.

AUDIENCE: IT’S EVERYONE WHO DIDN’T GO TO WOODSTOCK.

MARK: DID YOU GO TO WOODSTOCK? GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE.

MATTHEW: I LIED, I’M 65 AND I DID GO TO WOODSTOCK, SO FUCK YOU.

MARK: THERE’S NO WAY. I DON’T HAVE ANY CLEAR IDEA.

JESS: LARRY DAVID’S NOT 30SOMETHING. HE’S PRETTY MANIC.

MARK: WE’RE HAVING THIS GREAT CONVERSATION TO AVOID RACE THINGS. OH, THIS AGE THING IS VERY LIMITING!

MATTHEW: YES, I AM WHITE, THE RUMOURS ARE TRUE. BUT YA KNOW I CAN’T REALLY CHANGE THAT.

AUDIENCE: WHAT RACE IS THE UNICORN?

AL: WELL, MY MOM IS WHITE – ALABASTER, WE CALL IT -

MATTHEW: YEAH, HE WRITES FOR THE ONION.

AUDIENCE: SO DO WE! AND NEITHER OF US ARE WHITE!

PIZZA: I CAN SEE THESE GUYS FROM WHERE WE’RE SITTING, AND THEY’RE TELLING THE TRUTH.

AUDIENCE: DO YOU ALL HAVE DAY JOBS, AND DO YOU CHECK AND EDIT YOUR OWN SITE WHILE YOU’RE DOING THEM.

MATTHEW: MY SITE GOT BLOCKED AT MY JOB. IT GOT BLOCKED FOR SEX. WITH A PERIOD.

AL: YES. BUT AGAIN, WHEN I’M DOING IT, I’M MASTURBATING. [CHRIS RUBS HIM ON THE NOSE]

JESS: YES.

MARK: NO. NO DAY JOB, BUT MAKING THAT IS NOT MY INCOME. OTHER FORMS THAT BROADLY RELATE TO THAT, BUT IT WOULD BE AMAZING IF I COULD JUST MAKE INTERNET VIDEOS AND MAKE MONEY FROM THAT.

MIKE: ASIDE FROM THE QUESTION OF WHETHER OR NOT YOU HAVE DAYJOBS OR WHETHER OR NOT YOU CHECK THEM DURING DAY JOBS. HAVE THE BLOGS IMPACTED YOUR DAY JOBS.

MATTHEW: WELL IT WAS A GREAT CONVERSATION I HAD WITH MY BOSSES WHEN I TOLD THEM ABOUT THE BLOG, BECAUSE IT’S NOT QUITE AS AMAZING AS TELLING YOUR GRANDPARENTS THAT YOU WRITE A BLOG CALLED FUCK YOU PENGUIN, BUT YOUR BOSSES ARE ALSO PRETTY SPECIAL FOR THAT MOMENT. – THERE WAS A SITUATION IN WHICH ONE OF THE CLIENTS, I WORK IN MARKET RESEARCH, WAS A FAN OF THE SITE, SO MY BOSS WAS TRYING TO GET ME TO MEET THEM TO GET MORE BUSINESS. IT WAS REALLY WEIRD. THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN SO I WAS HAPPY ABOUT THAT.

JESS: I WORK FOR A SITE CALLED BUZZ FEED, SO I’M LUCKY ENOUGHT O BELIEVEING IN THE CRAZY WEIRD MEME CRAZHER SQUIRREL WORLD, SO THEY FEATURE A LOT OF THIS IS WHY YOU’RE FAT KIND OF STUFF. AND I CHECK MY SITE WHILE I’M AT WORK. HOPEFULLY MY BOSS ISN’T HERE.

CHRIS: I WORK FOR AN INTERACTIVE FIRM AND WE MAKE VERY SERIOUS SITES FOR BIG COMPANIES, AND THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE INVOLVED AND THEY ALL THINK EVERYTHING IS VERY IMPORTANT. FOR A SILLY LITTLE SITE LIKE CORNIFY TO COME ALONG AND GET MORE PEOPLE TO LOOK AT THAN SOMETHING THEY SPENT TONS ON – THAT GIVES ME PROPS AS A ‘VIRAL MEDIA EXPERT’ AND ‘SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERT’ SO I GUESS I HAVE THOSE TITLES NOW. I’LL MAKE UP MORE TONIGHT.

MIKE: SO AFTER YOU’RE DONE MAKING A WEBSITE AT WORK, DO YOU JUST GO HOME AND CORNIFY IT.

CHRIS: OH YEAH. I EVEN CORNIFY IT AT WORK.

MIKE: DO YOU GUYS HAVE ANY FAVOURITE SITES?

MATTHEW: I STILL DO WANT TO SHOUT OUT MY FIGHTING TECHNIQUE IS UNSTOPPABLE CAUSE IT’S AWESOME.

MARK: [WE COULDN'T HEAR]

AUDIENCE MEMBER: DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RECENT SUCCESS OF THE UNICORN ATTACK?

CHRIS: UNICORNS AHVE BECOME REALLY POPULAR FOR MARKETING. THERE WAS WINDOWS 7 AMAZING ADVERTISING WHERE THIS LITTLE GIRL CREATES AWESOME SLIDESHOWS, LIKE, LITTLE GIRLS CREATE SLIDESHOWS IN POWERPOINT? AND ONE SLIDE WAS JUST SPARKLES AND UNICORNS AND ‘WINDOWS 7 IS MAGICAL.” IT WOULD BE AMAZING IF CORNIFY WAS THE INSPIRATION FOR THAT. NEXT TIME IM’ IN A BRAINSTORMING MEETING I’M GOING TO PULL OUT UNICORNS.

AUDIENCE: DO YOU FEEL LIKE THE VIDEOS WHERE YOU’RE DOING THESE EXTREME PERSONALITIES, DO YOU USE THAT IN YOUR STAND UP, OR DOES THE INTERNET LET YOU BE MORE EXTREME, OR DO YOU KEEP THOSE SEPARATE?

MARK: THE QUESTION WAS DID THE INTERNET LET ME BE MORE EXTREME IN MY COMEDY AND DO I KEEP IT SEPARATE. NOT BY CHOICE, I’D LOVE TO DO THAT STUFF LIVE ON STAGE, BUT THERE’S A SET OF EXPECTATIONS WHEN PEOPLE CAN SEE WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE. IF I TRY TO ACT EXTREME PEOPLE ARE LIKE “WHAT IS THIS GUY TALKING ABOUT? CALM DOWN, DEXTER.” FOR AWHILE I TRIED TO PUSH IT IN THAT DIRECTION BUT IT’S DIFFICULT. IT’S ALSO DIFFERENT HERE IN THE US BECAUSE THERE’S A LOT OF INDEPENDENT CLUBS AND IT’S AWESOME, AND IN CANADA YOU’RE PERFORMING IN CHAINS AND FOR MIDDLE AGED PEOPLE OUT ON DATE NIGHT. SO IT’S MANAGING EXPECTATIONS, THEY EXPECT ME TO HAVE A CERTAIN KIND OF COMEDY.

AUDIENCE: SO YOU GUYS ARE KIND OF AT THE MORE CLEAN END OF THE EXTREME SPECTRUM. WHAT ABOUT THINGS LIKE 2 GIRLS 1 CUP ENTERING THE CULTURE? RULE 34S?

MARK: DOUBLE DOWN!!!

CHRIS: I GUESS THAT DEPENDS ON WHO YOU ASK, FOR ME UNICORNS ARE VERY PURE. BUT FOR AL, IT’S VERY DIFFERENT…

AL: YEAH 2 GIRLS 1 CUP IS A BOOK MARK OF MINE. VERY GOOD, UH, ARTICLE.

MARK: I’VE ACTUALLY NEVER SEEN – UH – SHOULD I NOT WATCH IT?

MATTHEW: THIS IS A PERFECT SITUATION FOR 2 GIRLS 1 CUP, BECAUSE YOU CAN ALL BE WATCHING IT AND I CAN BE WATCHING YOU.

MARK: I UNDERSTAND THAT THIS IS A PARABLE FOR THE RECENT RECESSION? 2 GIRLS AND THAT HAVE TO SELL ONE CUP?

MIKE: NO, IT’S ACTUALLY ABOUT POOP.

PIZZA: NO? IT’S LIKE A 2 BIRDS ONE STONE KIND OF THING?

JESS: I DO THINK IT’S COOL, IF YOU WATCH THE VIDEO YOU CAN’T GET IT OUT OF YOUR MIND EVER, BUT WHAT LIVES ON NOW IS THE REACTION VIDEOS AND THE SECOND STUFF IN THAT IS WHAT MADE THE PHENOMENON. IT WASN’T THE VIDEO THE PEOPLE WERE PUMPED ABOUT, IT’S THE REACTION TO IT.

MIKE: SO DOES IT END UP BEING NEITHER POSITIVE NOR NEGATIVE.

MARK: I DID SEE ONE VIDEO THAT WAS LIKE “TRICKING MY GRANDMA INTO WATCHING 2 GIRLS 1 CUP” AND YOU’RE LIKE “THIS IS THE WORST PRANK IN THE WORLD, I SHOULD GO TRY TO STOP THIS” AND YOU SEE GRANDMA SEE WHAT’S HAPPENING AND THEN SHE DOESN’T LEAVE THE ROOM, SHE WATCHES IT.

MIKE: THERE’S AN INTERVIEW! BASICALLY THEY JUST SAY THAT SOME PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET THINK THAT WE DIDN’T ACTUALLY SHOW IT TO YOU, DID WE ACTUALLY SHOW IT TO YOU, ANSWER TRUTHFULLY! AND SHE JUST SAYS, YES.

MATTHEW: THERE’S SOME AMOUNT OF SHOCK VALUE TO ALL THESE THINGS. IT’S OBVIOUSLY MILES AWAY FROM 2 GIRLS 1 CUP, BUT – SEEING FUCK AND PENGUINE TOGETHER IS ONE THING FOR SOME PEOPLE, IT’S NOT A NORMAL CLICK ON THE INTERNET, I THINK THERE IS A LITTLE BIT OF SHOCK VALUE IN CUTENESS AND THINGS. WHENYOU OPEN UP A PICTURE AND IT’S THE COOKIE BUNNY IT’S JUST AMAZING, IT’S A BUNNY AND IT’S STEALING A COOKIE.

MIKE: ARE YOU COMPARING COOKIE BUNNY TO 2 GIRLS 1 CUP?

MATTHEW: UH, NO?

MARK: TWO COOKIES. ONE BUNNY. THAT’S A LUCKY BUNNY.

MIKE: THAT’S DEFINITELY A VIDEO I WOULD WATCH. WITH MY GRANDMA.

UNICORN: I’M NOT WEARING ANY PANTS.

CHRIS: I’D JUST LIKE TO APPEAL TO EVERYONE TO SAY WITH BARACK OBAMA “YES WE CORN.”

MIKE: THANK YOU EVERYONE! THIS HAS BEEN CAPSLOCK!

Mahir Cagri (I Kiss You)
David Devore (Father, David After Dentist)
David A. Devore (Son, David After Dentist)C
Charlie Schmidt (Keyboard Cat)
Christian Sandvig (The Berkman Center for Internet and Society) [Moderator]

It was a tale as old as the internet. Boy meets internet. Boy posts personal thing online. Thing becomes massively famous. Here we have three cases of unintentional internet fame, ten years apart. A lot changed. What was similar? What was different?

Recorded by: @wphillips49 & @devanjedi
Edited by: @alexleavitt

NOTE: This is not a full transcription of the panel. If you have any corrections, please contact alex@roflcon.org.

Christian: I’m not internet-famous. Basic introductions:

Charlie: I am Charlie Schmidt and I have the keyboard cat.

[major applause!]

David Sr: I’m the disembodied voice from “David after Dentist.”

David: I’m David from “David after Dentist.”

[big applause]

Mahir: My name is Mahir.

Christian: Could you also just introduce yourself?

Mel: I am Mahir’s manager.

Christian: What we’ll do is, I have some questions, have run them past the panelists already so no surprises. Then we’ll open up to your questions. First, can you tell us some sort of amazing that’s happened to you as a result of your internet celebrity? Let’s start with the good.

David Sr: I would have to say, the whole experience, maybe not what was public, but what we’ve been able to experience as a family…we’ve been able to meet people, go places we never would have been able to do otherwise.

Christian: Aren’t you a YouTube partner now?

David Sr: Yeah, we share in the revenue: that happened a few weeks in, I pushed that button and everything’s been good since then.

Christian: What kind of money? Ballpark? Too crass?

David Sr: Yeah, but, with licensing, I just signed a deal in the UK, we’re probably at about $125,000.

[applause]

David Sr: Thank you for clapping.

Christian: Someone else? What good things?

Mahir: I must say many things. I first Internet celebrity. When I decided to do my web site. First day 800,000 people visited my site. Very simple web site. Only my pictures, my words. Then I am happy. I did many interesting things. I have many fans all over the world, US, Europe, Scandinavia. I am happy because I can use my face for good things. I have many famous fans like Julia Roberts, David Bowie. I continue living many nice, interesting things. If I live I can see many nice things.

Charlie: It reaffirms that in life if you do what you want to do full blast, something good will happen. I didn’t have a job, I just had a cat, a camera and a keyboard and just do the best with what you have. That’s what everyone should do. IF nothing happens, at least you did something you wanted to do.

Christian: So you’re saying, you’re passionate about putting your cats in a onesie.

Charlie: We try to humanize the cat.

Christian: Does your child also play the keyboard?

Christian: So the bad thing?

Charlie: The original keyboard cat died and went to heaven. There are no bad things that happened, but the reincarnated keyboard cat Bento pees on the rug.

Christian: I understand that Bento also plays the keyboard in a onesie?

Charlie: Bento also plays the keyboard. Right now, just for ROFLcon, Bento playing the Bongos is on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyctD6D1YAA

Christian: We just lost the whole audience…also, Bento was supposed to join us tonight but he’s fallen ill. So I would like to dedicate the panel to Bento’s health.

Charlie: He got sicker than a dog. They gave him a CATscan. $1400, blood transfusion, the whole bit.

Christian: Would the rest of the panel like to address, something BAD that came out of your internet celebrity?

Mahir: Sacha Baron Cohen stole my character and did the movie. All newspapers, TV say this. Borat stole Mahir. Guardian, NY Times, USA Today said that Borat stole Mahir your clothes, your words. I leave all good things. People love me.

Christian: The follow up, did you correspond with Sacha Baron Cohen?

Mahir: Why I must connect with me. He should connect to him. I never want to contact him before he did his movie.

Christian: So there was no communication, no participation in Borat?

Mahir: He must.

Christian: One of the Davids?

David Sr: Obviously the mischaracterization of what I’d done… people saying I was a bad parent, that the car was moving, which it wasn’t. Hearing that stuff made me cringe, and I got defensive at times. The worst example was… a columnist, Mary something, I guess her daughter came home excited and showed Mary the video and she was upset, why was this so funny, so instead of reaching out, doing some research maybe, she decided to give her own opinion, which she’s entitled to, but she wanted child protective services to be called… I don’t know what I did was wrong, I don’t see how taking your kid to the dentist, putting him in a seatbelt, and filming it… was child abuse. That I filmed it, I guess it was supposed to be child abuse?

Christian: We have a way of addressing the child abuse question, so David, do you feel exploited?

David: [emphatically] No I do not.

Christian: Would you like to elaborate?

David: The people ask my parents but they never ask me. If it’s embarrassing me or not. It’s not!

David Sr: David came up with that all on his own, he was wondering why people would ask me but not him.

Christian: So what kinds of fame does David Jr. experience because of this? Is her recognized?

David: Yeah.

Christian: A lot?

David: Sort of.

David Sr. It’s the best of both worlds, we used to test it sometimes, about half the time people knew who he was. And were really happy to meet David. We’ve also walked around, maybe not here, but mostly no one knows who we are.

Christian: I want to extend the same question to the other panelists…how often are you recognized? Charlie, was Fatso recognized?

Charlie: Not in her lifetime. But she knows about it. And that’s why she’s back as Bento. It’s all a big circle.

Christian: What about you Mahir, are you often recognized? Your hat has your name on it.

Mahir: You must ask my cheeks because of the many kisses.

Christian: We’ve come to the end of my planted questions, what about you guys. I’d like to ask Charlie in particular, how did the video get discovered?

Charlie: I had it on my website for a long time, 1 hit a year. I put it on YouTube. That was only 2 years ago. This guy named Brad juxtaposed it to the word FAIL, he emailed me to ask for permission to use it. When someone says maybe you can be famous, you just do it. He is not a normal person, and neither am I. He had the vision that putting a cat on a wheelchair and putting it down the stairs is something people would want to see. So many emails I can’t read them. I’d love to teach a cat how to read.

Christian: I’d love to expand this question, are there any sides of popularity, some detail that isn’t well known? How did your videos break out?

David Sr: In that first week it was radio. Our video is unique because it’s a sound bite, I don’t know if it was timing or what, but some morning show people, they played the clip and then went straight to YouTube before going on with their day. The only real proof is that that first week we did a lot of radio interviews. I thought that was interesting, helped it go viral.

Christian: Mahir, how did your website become the sensation we know?

Mahir: My home telephone non-stop calling November 1999. I opened and somebody talk about English, somebody France, somebody Espanol. Shocked.

Christian: Did your page have your phone number on it?

Mahir: Yes. I wrote everything about my life correct. My home telephone. How can I know whole world suddenly call me. Then 5 November, when I wake up I can’t answer all telephone, I told my friends come help me talk telephone. First shock, surprise, I understand- I ask somebody why you call me, how you know me, she said I visited your website. Then I understood people visit the website.

Christian: I believe you said you’d wanted more friends.

Mahir: Then thousands. I am only one person, all the world at me. Hollywood offered movie, Universal wanted. Then step-by-step, 800,000 people visited and crashed my web site. Very interesting world, you don’t need visa. Only kiss, and I wrote about my life. I play music instrument. I love travel. I wrote about normal things. But suddenly famous.

Christian: I understand there was controversy, if your fame was partly due to your website being hacked, and people adding words that you didn’t write.

Mahir: First my site some Turkish guy hacked other places. But kept original site. No changes. Then I couldn’t find my site. Where is my site?

Christian: So the words on the website were all yours, or some were written by the hacker?

Mahir: No one changed anything. He wanted only hits.

Christian: Who doesn’t? Now we have questions for a variety of panelists. We have a question for little David, do your friends know about the video?

David: They do, but they never really say anything anymore. They used to. They mention it sometimes, like before I came here I told them.

Christian: You remind them.

David: I tell them, like when I’m on any shows. Like the Superbowl.

Christian: A lot of shows?

David: Mainly interviews.

Christian: How many?

David: I don’t know.

Christian: Does big David know?

David Sr: More than 50, less than 100. Last week we had Inside Edition at the house, a morning show in Australia, in Germany… [references parody video person in audience]

Christian: Some people say the parodies are funnier than the original video…

David: No it isn’t!

Christian: This is a leading question from the Backchannel. Where’s the money going? To David’s college?

David Sr: No, well. This has allowed us to continue the lifestyle we had before, I was in real estate in FL; that should tell you something. That was the short term vision. In the last 6 months we’ve realized we could do more long-term, I think we’re gonna somehow incorporate this into our next video. In our video we might sign up for some pre-paid college… we’ll see. That’s one of our goals.

Christian: I haven’t heard any of the other internet celebrities talk about charity…

[audience laughs]

Christian: What about you, Charlie? Any favorite videos?

Charlie: Wow. There is so many. It’s different for me every day. I kind of like the one where the very overweight African American women is dancing on a coffee table. And the table goes down but she’s hurting really bad. It’s her looking at herself, and being surprised. [applause] and then having the courage to upload it.

Christian: I’m gonna look that one up. So it’s actually gone off the Backchannel, because it seems like a hard question, but I’ll ask it anyway… there’s a distinction between laughing with and laughing at. Particularly Mahir, do you feel your fans are mocking you in their responses?

Mahir: If people visit my site, if they smile, this is good every time. Because people need smile to be happy. This is a good thing. I am happy.

Christian: Another question is, what do you guys do for a living? And Mahir, what have you been up to for the last ten years?

Mahir: I did many things. I did TV shows in US, Europe. I can’t control my life because this time 3 camera followed me everywhere my documentary. To be famous is too hard, people follow you. You can’t secret life, no, finish it. All people want to see you, follow you. This time maybe I will go Hollywood, do my movie.

Christian: Could you tell us about your movie?

Mahir: There are many offers. Somebody want to see Mahir, Peter Sellers. I don’t know my acting capacity. I try to do nice things to because I am famous. I love music, sport, sex. I go to Africa help kids, try do do good things because I am famous. Other problems, Animal rights, orphans, homeless people.

Christian: Could you give me an example of the good things?

Mahir: I went to many countries in Africa, I see kids without arms. [I like sex]. I try to do good things.

Christian: There’s a lot of tittering in the audience. He is saying what you think he’s saying. So — Charlie, what have you been up to?

Charlie: I do create things on the internet, paint draw, creative endeavors. If you add it all together, this is what you get.

David Sr: I’m not doing the real estate stuff any more, I’ve been doing this full time. Managing our small empire. It’s allowed me to have a lifestyle that I also enjoy doing. But it’s fun doing this as well.

Charlie: I started the Keyboard Cat Church, and it has helped a lot of people.

Christian: You’re ordained?

Charlie: Yeah. keyboardcatchurch.com, I am not making this up, it helps people

[audience laughs]

Charlie: People have adored and deified things a lot stranger than my cat. If you need help, check out my web site. If you don’t, that’s OK.

Christian: I’ll be looking at it. So there’s a question people have been dying to ask. David, is this real life?

David: Yes.

Christian: I’m a little surprised at the Backchannel… people want to know if you read theoretical works about this… I’m guessing no, but…

David Sr: There are books about internet fame?

Christian: The academic’s lament.

[audience laughs]

Charlie: Because you can’t explain stuff. It’s just baloney. Everyone can tell you what just happened. You just take your chances.

Christian: In defense of academics… the most famous media scholars work or have worked here… it’s a living…

Charlie: You’ve got a point. Cat food isn’t cheap. I’ve got 3 cats.

Christian: Have you read academic works about your life?

Mahir: My life, I can’t read anything but everybody reads me. There are masters and doctoral thesis taking Mahir as an Internet meme. And researching why he is famous.

Christian: yeah I don’t know. Sorry Backchannel. Anyone have any questions to shout out?

David Sr: Copyright stuff?

Christian: Right, so remix, fair use…

David Sr: I don’t charge anyone to see our video… on YouTube, people use it to create something, that’s fine, but if I see something that’s just to drive traffic, to rip us off, I use content management software to take care of it. Which drives traffic to us to… but licensing, some people outright steal it. Like Ebaumsworld, they don’t care about the copyright…

Christian: Are there people making money off you?

David Sr: The news organizations, the clip shows, yeah, but then it becomes a matter of economics. Lawsuits aren’t cheap. It’s just more — it’s nice to be asked.

Christian: Charlie, was there a transaction between you and Brad?

Charlie: No, he asked permission. He said he would monetize it. He might make money off it.

Christian: Are there knockoff keyboard cat t-shirts?

Charlie: Oh yeah. Right now there are. There’s counterfeit money out there, still the real thing is worth more. Who can beat keyboard cat? No one can.

Christian: Apparently Bento.

Charlie: Yeah, Bento can. If it weren’t for people taking stuff and sharing it, none of us would be here. I mean we would be on earth, but we’d be eating a cheeseburger alone somewhere. That’s fine too. I’m hungry.

Christian: That’s right, we’d be on earth but not at ROFLcon. Now, I can’t speak for the organizers of ROFLcon, but if we COULD get Sacha Baron Coen to talk to you, what kinds of things would you say to him about Borat?

Mahir: I can’t say anything. What I can say?

Christian: What’s that?

Mahir: He did a movie. He never connect with me.

Christian: So you hadn’t tried to contact him…

Mahir:

Christian: So you made a lawsuit…

[manager pulls Mahir back]
Manager: We are in to it for a lawsuit, it is confidential and can’t talk about it. If Sacha Baron Cohen and Mahir meet, Mahir won’t talk at all. He is very upset. Two points: Sacha copied his web site. And Borat gives Mahir a bad impression, because Mahir is a positive person does not do all the bad things Borat does.

Christian: But you DO share that swimsuit.

[Manager asks audience if they should sue Borat.]

[Audience mostly no.]

[Manager asks audience to compare Borat trailer and Mahir's webpage -- audience does.]

Audience man: Do you find yourself compulsively filming everything your children do?

David Sr: No, it’s never to try to recapture that same thing. I think I’ve had my one… don’t want to push my luck.

Christian: What about the dentist?

David Sr: There were two, a regular dentist and an oral surgeon. The family dentist thinks it’s hilarious, the oral surgeon wants nothing to do with it. We talk about it when we go to the dentist.

Christian: Now we’re all for love and happiness and cats, but if I could return to a theme from earlier, did you have any uncomfortable personal experiences because of your fame? Difficult conversation, inappropriate appropriation of your work…

David Sr: Our neighbor, where we lived at the time, did NOT like the video. And our relationship changed after that, and she had a really hard time with it because it showed a kid on drugs, medication, still a drug, because her brother passed away from drug abuse…and the family contends it was due to him being given novocaine as a child. I don’t agree, and the kids still played, but… the grownup relationships totally changed. Or, when people ask you what you do for a living.

Christian: Do you have a concise answer? What you do for a living?

David Sr: It changes every time, I have to come up with something better, something consistent…

Christian: David Jr’s could be “dental patient,” it’s been very lucrative for you. What about you Charlie?

Charlie: Really, no. I know things have a positive and negative side. But not keyboard cat. Just a problem with a carpet in that one corner.

[Charlie almost falls out of chair]

Christian: Mahir, you wanna answer? Is there an uncomfortable situation? Besides Sacha Baron Cohen?

Mahir: My grandmother angry me why all these girls want to kisses you. She says Mahir choose one girl. I say only kisses, I don’t say other things.
Christian: We appreciate that. So… the scary side, that’s what the Backchannel questions are about. Anything scary? Charlie, I know there’s that one spot of carpet…

Charlie: If the internet went away, it would be bad.

David Sr: We’re only planning 6 months out at a time. We’re still getting 150,000 hits of the video every day…

Christian: But scary? What about the scary things?

David Sr: Sometimes people call and tell us our address, to show us how dangerous it is to be so visible…

Christian: The Backchannel already found your dentist.

[points to screen]

Christian: Is it [name of dentist]

David Sr: No.

Christian: Can we get 4chan to check on that?

Audience: what is your advice to someone on the beginning of internet fame?

Charlie: if there are keywords that define it, then go buy the URL. Somebody else will, if you don’t. Before it happens, make sure you own everything in it. If you don’t the song or something in it, you’ll be famous but not rich.

David Sr: Get a good screen printer. I wish I’d jumped on that earlier, I had to reinvent the wheel, be all cute about it…would have liked to get “is this real life” on a shirt, but…

Charlie: Zazzle.com/yourname

Mahir: CafePress made my shirts when I was famous without permission. The head of Cafepress flew to Turkey and apologized to me.

Christian: What other pieces of advice do you have?

Mahir: Be open about your life, no lies, no secret anything. If you give positive energy, people will accept it. If you do bad things, people will be bad. If you can be honest, people will like it.

Christian: The guy in the hat, open your heart. Also… big David wants in on this.

David Sr: You have to be careful when you submit a video to America’s Funniest Home videos, they own it. Don’t give anything up. Read the contracts.

Christian: We’re going to end it here… please join me in thanking all our presenters.

Mike Bender (Awkward Family Photos)
Jonathan Standefer (Lamebook)
Helen Killer (Regretsy)
Douglas Chemack (Awkard Family Photos)
Brad O’Farrel (Play ‘em off Keyboard Cat)
Johannes Grenzfurthner (monochrom)[Moderator]

While we didn’t bring Goatse (sorry/you’re welcome about that), ROFLCon would be remiss to not spend a moment talking about the awkward on the web. Bringing together some of the folks that have done the most to commentate and celebrate that unique kind of fail on the web in the recent year, this panel examines the role that awkward things play on the web culture.

Recorded by: @flourish & @dandthengensaid
Edited by: @alexleavitt

NOTE: This is not a full transcription of the panel. If you have any corrections, please contact alex@roflcon.org.

Johannes: Who wants to start? … Why is your specific product – I mean – you make people laugh about other people. Why don’t you feel bad about it? And why does your culture still exist?

Helen: It’s a lot of fun to laugh at other people’s misery.

Johannes: So please, Mrs. Killer, tell me about your special service and why you think people like so much?

Helen: I think we have become a nation of pussies and liars and cowards and I think that not everything is good nor is it as good as everything else and when you force people to be relentlessly positive you create a rising bubble of discord and letting people puncture that is very satisfying. At least I’m satisfied.

Johannes: I cannot get any satisfaction from this answer. Your special product. Tell about it. There is something really funny cat playing, and you combine it with something really horrible?

Brad: It was a video of a person in a wheel chair falling down the stairs but it was kinda their own fault, and they were trying to ride down by grabbing on to it. I mean it was appropriate because even though they were handicapped they were still stupid. It wasn’t cruelty that wasn’t asked for by being stupid.

Johannes: I expect that. Profiting from cruelty, I expect it. How did it emerge? So you put it on YouTube or something and one guy said ha and two guys said Ha and two million guys said Ha and….?

Brad: I just started seeing video responses that were parodying it, and I submitted it to the editors at YouTube, and that’s what set it off to get more parodies. I don’t think there’s much more to it than that.

Johannes: Who of you does the Lamebook? You do the Lamebook. The thing that you do, the Lamebook, can you associate with your fellow companions here?

Jonathan: Yeah, I don’t think I can put it as well as she did. I run it with my friend Matt and we started it mostly as a way to vent because we were like man there are lot of lame people on Facebook. We gotta vent. We gotta find a place to put all this stuff to vent.

Johannes: How many people know Lamebook? [claps from audience] …enjoy Lamebook? [claps from audience] Think it’s disgusting crap? [a few hands]

Jonathan: Like people who were doing lame stuff.

Johannes: Like masturbation or… ? I don’t know… ?

Jonathan: Actually we’re going to change the name to masturbation book and only post that stuff. Well, speaking sexually, someone sneezed on her, and she thought now she had diabetes, and they said no it’s not contagious, but she also has hepatitis, which I can only assume is a combination of hepatitis and herpes. There is a lot of comedic gold on Facebook.

Johannes: So it’s all user submitted or?

Jonathan: It’s all user submitted, we probably get about 1000 a day of user submissions.

Johannes: When was your first post?

Jonathan: We bought the domain about a year and a half ago, but we started posting about a year ago. We’re just a baby.

Johannes: Awkward family photos. That’s a technology we understand, we can relate to that. So you have this site, people posts picture of other people who look stupid… ?

Mike: On our site, 99% of the photos are submitted by people in the photos.

Johannes: Oh really?

Mike: Yes.

Johannes: Say I’m a classical Midwestern boy born 1975, I look stupid when I’m 10 in 1985, I rediscover the picture and put it online and let the world laugh about me… ?

Mike: Yes.

Johannes: That’s a pretty simple concept. Why?

Mike: I think well, in general, most of us have been humiliated when taking a family photo at some point in our lives, so I think it’s something that most people can relate to, even in the Soviet Republic. I think it’s just a very relatable subject.

Johannes: Yeah! That’s why I guess it was the only panel they gave me to talk about humiliation and stuff. Uh… yeah. So. Are there any stories you could take about one specific image that’s — I got print-out, I mean I always get print-out because our bandwidth is so slow — there is this picture of an old lady, young lady, giant white hair. And that was kind of viral, people reblogged, reTumbled it. So what are your favorite images and the favorite images of the world?

Mike: We have a photo called iContact, it looked seeming like it was normal family photo, but they were sitting, but there was only one eye visible, so it was just a strange photo and it took people a while to catch on to it. We got a photo called The Dribbler, and he’s just gone to the bathroom and he’d peed on himself just a little bit, and now he actually signs his emails The Dribbler.

Johannes: It happens often that people get famous because they’re stupid and then they have to get adjusted to it. Like — if five million people know you as the Dribbler, then you are the Dribbler.

Mike: He’s not The Dribbler.

Johannes: Favorite photo?

Doug: We have an Easter photo of an Easter bunny that appears to have jaundice, and it was really freaking out the girl sitting on it’s lap, and it really opened up an area no one knew existed about people sitting on the laps of freaky bunnies.

Johannes: So it creates a memetic long tail of similar pictures?

Doug: It started a long line of people remembering that they had similar photos and then they’d find them and post them for us.

Johannes: It almost sounds like a self-help group.

Doug: It’s a celebration of all our awkwardness, which was sort of our goal.

Johannes: I like this. I like this. If I could be able to access Facebook I would like it I guess. Okay. Going back to you Mr. Cat, in lack of other terms, why — tell the story of how you actually found — the video of the nice cat playing keyboard was not yours, so you violated copyright, yes?

Brad: Yes. The video was filmed before I was born by Charlie Smith (he was born in 1986), he filmed the cat, I basically used it for making fun of people. I didn’t have his permission at the time, but once it started taking off, I wanted his permission, but I also didn’t want him to take everyone else down, so everyone could violate his copyright. It ended up working out well for both of us, because he’s been able to franchise keyboard cat way more than I have.

Johannes: I think it’s always good to violate copyright and then make money! The Chinese actually make a very good deal with this I guess. We don’t really like this. I think they are like a dog giving milk to the wrong puppies, but — let’s leave it like this. You are born in 1986 the year of the disaster at Chernobyl. So what do you think will be the future of people laughing at other people on the internet? It seems like a very interesting medium for such a thing. First there was porn, now there is never ending laughter! A utopia of humiliation. So what do you like best to humiliate people on the internet?

Brad: I guess like on the internet all anyone had is their ego, and you can only really see people get embarrassed on the internet, but you can’t really kill someone on YouTube. But people really like to see people get their ego hurt, it’s the most fun thing to do on the internet.

Johannes: But what is the difference between something like a jackass and the stuff that you do except that they’re making more money than you?

Brad: They are making fun of themselves and I’m making fun of other people. I guess everyone is making fun of other peoples.

Johannes: OK, they say it’s a service for them and for all of us and you say I just laugh at people. You’re almost like Steve Jobs and they’re like Bill Gates… maybe it’s wrong.

Brad: Well, sort of. I guess everyone is making fun of other people.

Brad: Yes? Kind of?

Johannes: What do you think — that’s why we’re all here making fun, that’s the point.

Helen: Yeah, that’s why I came here from CA is to do this.

Johannes: And burning lots of kerosene, I guess. Basically the same question: What’s your favorite project on the internet about other people making fun of other people?

Helen: I really don’t know what that question was. Is there something I’ve done that I like? Or?

Johannes: I mean — what is the thing that you like about making fun of other people on the internet?

Helen: What do I like about making fun of other people on the internet. Well it’s fast. People complain about the anon on this site. The thing you like is that you let people hide behind this veil of anonymity. Some people don’t have a problem putting their name on it. But that’s how it’s structured. If you go to anywhere, YouTube, people post comments from behind a screen name. The anonymity has never really been a problem for me.

Johannes: How many people use your site? How many people please here? [hands and claps] Not so many!

Helen: How many is yours?

Johannes: We don’t even have one so…

Helen: So it’s not.

Audience Member: What site do you like?

Helen: I like Brad O’Ferrell who blogs LOLcats. I look at that every day and I steal things from it. You don’t really make fun of people as much as you might think I do. That picture of I could kill you with my bear hands. They’re hand puppets! Bear hands.

Helen: They were doing a story on the WSJ asking about the blog, but I don’t have any anymore, I just read aggregators, you have to get everything so fast, I mean you only get 140 characters on Twitter, and you have to be done. If you like something, you can go to read more about it, but it’s so fast.

Johannes: I think most people don’t even read the YouTube comments!

Helen: Just the hidden ones.

Johannes: There has to be some incentive to read them, that’s right. Now: you. Same question. What do you recommend? All these people are sitting there with their handheld phones and they want to instantly laugh at other people’s misfortune. Where should they go?

Jonathan: Are you guys familiar with dontevenreply.com?

Johannes: Don’t Even Reply?

Jonathan: It’s one of our favorites. It’s this guy, I don’t know who it is, he pretty much trolls Craigslist and messes with people. A guy is looking for a car for his 16 year old, and he lists all these things wrong with the car and just keeps listing things for $2k, and the guy replies and says “Are you serious? and he replies with more things wrong with it… Or one with people looking for a caterer for their wedding. And he listed his menu which is like crackers and cheese whiz on it and PB&J sandwiches.

Johannes: OK. Yeah that’s the thing there are so many possibilities out there to laugh about other people’s misfortune. How could we actually find all that?

Jonathan: I don’t know.

Johannes: In the meantime the generations of such sites, it’s like two weeks, a site is updated, then another. I remember a site named ‘fuck my life.’ Can you relate to ‘fuck my life’?

Mike: Yeah, we know the site. Yeah, definitely, I mean who hasn’t felt like fuck my life at some point, or had something really awkward or bad happen to them, yeah, it’s totally relatable.

Johannes: OK. Do you think that in the future, because your site works that old family photos will be put up online. If we fast forward the next ten years, there’s all this discussion of privacy and all the young kids they put all their stuff on Facebook — but isn’t the whole generation putting their stuff on Facebook and the people who don’t won’t get hired because they’re suspicious? You don’t put your stuff up: who are you? Why is there no puking picture of you on the internet?

Mike: Hm. I’ll tell you this much. Occasionally on our site we will people on Facebook like kids in high school will put up pictures of them on Facebook, and we’ll find out from the other person that they were putting it up there to make fun of them at school.

Johannes: Are there stories about that? That’s very interesting. You click there and you have such power in your grasp – how can you actually be fair or do you have to be fair? Equidistance?

Doug: Basically the policy of the site to make it feel as family and celebratory, when people find out that there is a photo sent in of them, we’ll take it down, because that’s not the purpose of the site.

Johannes: So part of the site is only people who are in the picture can submit the picture.

Doug: That’s the idea of the site.

Johannes: That narrows down the possibility of abuse, but you know, there is 4chan, and — wasn’t there something like Denial of Service attack on your site, like, if a million people start putting up their pictures, how much time do you take to verify the identity?

Doug: There is no way to verify the ID when dealing online, so we have an honor system. Once we’re notified that it’s been put up by someone else, then we’ll take it down.

Doug: Very often people are letting their family know that they’re going to put the picture off. It reconnects families. We have entire threads of photos that are people posting pictures of their family. Like The Dribbler they’re like “Oh my god, I remember that…”

Johannes: So you, you, you helped the Dribbles, in a certain way.

Doug: We helped the Dribbles.

Johannes: That’s very nice of you. So. Do you have your own site, Mr. Cat? Where do you put your stuff on? Are you maintaining a site?

Brad: Not really, I have like a YouTube and Tumbler and a Twitter, I don’t have like a Keyboard Cat homepage or anything. That was the end of my answer. I wanted to ask you something. You guys were talking about you guys were talking about how most of your pictures have implied consent, do you have trouble with your stuff with people getting angry and dealing with copyright stuff.

Helen: Well, yeah, they do, but it’s comment and criticism, and so it’s not a copyright infringement, and stuff gets sold! I mostly get comments that it’s not nice, and I don’t really care, honestly. I’ll take it down if you ask me to but if you comment and you’re calling people a fucktard and things — no. That happens a lot, people get in a flame war and they go ‘oh I want to take this down’ and I’m like, oh, no, you’re playing now. But occasionally you get people, every once in a while, maybe 1 of every 6 people have really been kind of unhinged. I put one down the other day that was a black guy who was naked and wearing a map of Africa map as a necklace on his ass and he was calling it a butt shield and he wrote to me and said I was a racist and making sexually harassing comments and I was like dude your ass is in your listing! He turned me over to the police, and then he turned me into Facebook for hate speech which got me taken down for all of an hour, then he started sending me photos for lynching. I took it down pretty early, but then it kept going on. He wrote a letter to Random House to try to get my book deal taken away. A lot of people get bent out of shape and they say “If you don’t like my stuff then just don’t look it! and I’m going to get your site taken down!

Brad: Not everyone fully realizes that when you put something on the internet you’re opening yourself up to people.

Regret: People think it’s like a family album and only their friend will see it.

Brad: It’s not like it’s deviant art. They’re trying to sell this crap.

Regret: Yeah and it’s not like I’m going into their living room. They’re selling it.

[from the audience]: How does Etsy feel about Regretsy?

Helen: You know, they’re amazing. The first email I got from them I was still undercover, and they found me, and I was like SHIT. And I was already to go commentary and wide birth and blah blah. And they said “Could you just not use our colors?” And I was like “Okay, thanks, bye!”. They’ve been quoted in articles as saying it’s driving traffic to our site and helping people sell stuff and it’s been great.

Johannes: So the Etsy people are human beings!

Helen: Yes, which is more than you can say for some of the sellers! as business people they understand that it’s driving sales and they’ve been great about it.

Brad: It’s like three wolf moon, the joke’s gonna sell the product.

Helen: Like I say, if you make wall art with masturbating dinosaurs they’re not going to find you via a key word search.

Johannes: Isn’t it more and more important nowadays to talk legalese? Maybe it would make more sense to put your work up elsewhere? In India or somewhere? So it can’t be taken down?

Helen: I don’t know. I don’t think it’s governed. There are no internet police, if you were talking about out sourcing.

Johannes: Not outsourcing! If the server is somewhere else, then the local laws are there –

Brad: Well, for like child porn and killing people, maybe. If you’re just making fun of people the FBI doesn’t really care.

Helen: So far we’re safe.

Johannes: What are you trying to do in the future? Is there any more growth in your site, or – is it just going to be? Lamebook – you will not be able to sell it to Google or something.

Jonathan: Yeah I don’t think we could sell it to Google. We got a book deal, which will come out in the fall. We plan on keeping it around for a while, it is unbelievable how much content we get and how much people submit.

Johannes: So you’re digging through all the stuff and finding ‘best-of.’

Helen: What’s the permissions for that?

Jonathan: As far as that goes, for profile picture, they can send their photos in and you can use them as a book. By doing this you might be admitting that you have an STD in our book.

Helen: So you don’t need to get approval of people who make the content?

Jonathan: We’re not IDing them, Facebook is all public content, so we don’t have to worry about it.

Johannes: How long will it last?

Jonathan: I don’t know how long it’s going to last.

Johannes: Will there be a coffee table book of awkward family photos coming ou?

Mike: We have a book coming out May 4! Next week!

Johannes: Pitch it! Pitch it! They’re sitting here!

Mike: The book is a collection of ones we really like from the site, 1/4 of it are pictures people have never seen, we had to go out and get permissions from all these families. We have photos we have stories we have people telling stories about the pictures. We have people writing to us, and sometimes the things they’re writing is even funnier than what we write about it.

Johannes: So we can look forward to stuff that was never ever seen by the public.

Mike: The majority of the book is stuff people have never seen. We’ve been getting stuff we wanted to post but we put it aside because the publisher wanted us to.

Johannes: How long did it take you to get all the waivers signed for the book?

Mike: Doug did a lot of that work and it took six months. And there’s one family that was in the book that was in Latvia so they could get to the fax machine like once a week and there was a lot of chasing them down and.

Johannes: You seem to be the one that cannot publish a book. How do you make money?

Brad: I was actually thinking if anyone wanted to publish this it’d be like a flip book with a greeting card song built in, but I don’t know if that’ll happen.

Johannes: Any investors here? Raise your hand if you’re an investor!

Brad: There was a hot topic shirt for a while, but for some reason hot topic made it like a really feminine girly shirt, but I imagine it’s more of a male audience for keyboard cat, so it didn’t sell too well.

Johannes: Is it from a gendered perspective – many women like it!

Brad: That’s true but they probably wouldn’t… well, I just imagine it’s all young men on the internet who find it funny, I don’t think it’s really girls who shop at hot topic. Clearly not, since it didn’t sell too well.

Jonathan: [to Brad] Can you play the keyboard song?

Brad: I probably can, because it’s been in my head all day. It might not be very good.

Johannes: FAIL! [audience cheers]

Brad: You can kinda remember what it sounds like!

Johannes: You unlearned it?

Brad: Well, I wasn’t the cat, so.

Johannes: Sorry, I mixed it up. – Audience, is there any question from you? OH, they’re up there! Oh. Oh, my non-existent god! Okay, less moderation, okay, okay, ah okay. Panelists! What’s the most amount of IRL harm you’ve managed to inflict making fun of someone?

Brad: I don’t think I’ve inflicted any IRL harm, I’ve been afraid of getting IRL harmed myself. I changed all my passwords and stuff. I didn’t want Anonymous to get me, but they probably will now that I said that.

Mike: What is IRL harm?

audience: IN REAL LIFE!

Johannes: It’s not URL, it’s IRL.

Mike: Still haven’t heard it.

Audience: IN REAL LIFE!!!!

Johannes: But they are the good guys! So I think they wouldn’t tell you even if they did know.

Doug: A family submitted a photo that has a photographers watermark in it, and everyone went to his site and crashed it, and he got pissed at us. I don’t know if this is answering IRL. I think that’s the best IRL sorry I have to tell.

Johannes: It’s actually a legal story?

Doug: With the watermark?

Johannes: I’m so stupid! I didn’t actually understand the story. Now I understand the story.

Helen: I don’t think I’ve harmed anybody to be honest with you, I’m selling a lot of shit. The most harm I’ve done is hurt people’s feelings, people who don’t want criticism of their crochet or toilet paper cozies or thinks their jewelry is really beautiful. I don’t think I’m hurting them. Well I did get an email recently that said YKNOW WE GOT 4,000 HITS TODAY they were really pissed THAT’S LIKE 4 TIMES WHAT WE USUALLY GET and I was like well, congrats, that’s wonderful! And they said it doesn’t do me any good if they don’t buy anything! If you look at your views on Etsy, if you look at the number of times people look at your work. Those are all people who looked at your work and didn’t like it enough to buy it! That’s how it works, lots of people need to see it in order to get it. People get annoyed that I’m sending them traffic, but that’s a really bad lawsuit.

Brad: In general, you’re putting something on the internet, you want people to see it!

Helen: That’s kinda the point, I agree.

Brad: So making fun of people – I mean – that’s what makes people put it up in the first place?

Helen: What about you?

Jonathan: Well, IRL – we haven’t done much, there was one, called Jason’s monster fail. There’s this girl driving into town – she’s like ‘Hey everybody I’ll be there in 2 hours’ to like 10 people, and this guy responds to all, ‘Hey sorry I can’t make it, please don’t tell I slept with Sylvie or whatever. But the girls are in the post. Somehow he finds out about it, and he gets arguing, we’re like don’t do it, just leave it alone. Someone posts his full name, so it turns out he’s an aspiring actor, and it turns out he had some really bad video on YouTube, some short films. He was all right about it at first, but he got really upset about it.

Helen: So is that harm you did or is it harm that he did himself?

Jonathan: Good question! We’ll put it back up tomorrow!

Johannes: OK, another one: At the beginning did you rely solely on your own searching of the internet? Re: what is posted on your sites, has your job become easier or harder as you’ve become more popular?

Mike: Yeah, it started with a photo that was actually in my family’s house. We had some family and friends give us awkward family photos, we took a few from the internet. What ended up happening was as we started to get more traffic, people started recognizing themselves and we were like “Oh shit, we’re going to get killed” and instead they were like “Well, if you think that’s awkward, check out this one!” and it’s sort of continued from there. But has it gotten easier? Yeah, for sure. Now they come in and we’re amazed every time we come in and we open them and we can’t believe that somebody sent in a picture of a water birth, so yes, it’s gotten easier.

Johannes: Your stuff is at YouTube so you just have to look at the replies and –

Brad: I don’t have to do anything, I just got to take credit for people remixing my thing.

[audience cheers]

Johannes: That’s how you do it! Maximal impact, minimal input! Except that you have a really nice costume, that’s max input too. – Regretsy?

Helen: It’s actually gotten harder because in the beginning everything was amusing and new, but you can only see so many needle felted vaginas before you just don’t care anymore. It’s sort of like a drug, you need more and more to get high. So you’re going through and you’re like, Oh yeah, Jesus on a tampon, big fucking deal. People who like the site are having the same experience, their level of torture is getting higher too. You never know what you’re going to hit with people, so I just put up stuff that I think is funny, and I hope people like it. But I do get, um, I get thousands of submissions and I only post three times a day. And a lot of stuff has already been posted and they haven’t gone back far enough to see. Like RearGear – the girl who makes stickers for dog asses so you don’t have to see them in a park? And she’s posing next to a dog’s ass with a daisy on it and I didn’t put it up because I don’t like her, and I don’t want to put it up. But I get that submission like 6 times a day so I finally put it up. It just gets harder and harder to post things that are still funny.

Jonathan: Pretty much the same thing, yeah, we get RearGear all the time – we don’t have any recurring ones. We’ve gotten a few. I went back and looked at the old ones and they weren’t really that funny. At the time I guess they were but the bar just keeps getting higher and higher.

Audience Member: Do people fake content for you guys?

Jonathan: Yeah, we think so, but it’s pretty obvious, but if you’re on the Facebook you have the option to delete stuff. We’ve had people try to post some bad Photoshop jobs.

Helen: I get that too, the people on the site call it Regretsy-bait. People trying a little too hard, they’re a little too self-aware. But it gets by me sometimes, and I feel like if you’ve created this persona and I don’t catch it then I guess you deserve your 4 minutes of infamy.

Johannes: Okay, there is a really good one hurl the moderator into the sun. Like capital letters and them imo, but if you shout I guess you don’t need the imo. But it is a panel about awkwardness so you don’t make fun of it! Helen Killer is a sudden burst of cogency, can we let Helen moderate this… no. Lamebook: did you start out just posting your friends’ idiotic comments?

Jonathan: Yeah, mostly friends unfortunately, but I think we only did about 10-12 of our friends and started putting it up before they started getting submissions, and I had been talking about some Harry Potter someone took a screen shot and submitted it. And I was like “Yeah, I deserved that” Most of our friends who are on it know about it.

Johannes: OKAY! Can we… Helen, complaining about me, we’re used to it, it’s fine, there aren’t any new ones? So I have to think of a new question. How much time do we have left? Could you find out? That would be really nice. So. Your first comment, by your predecessor, the Keyboard Cat guy, how was it to meet someone who made you famous before born?

Brad: I just met him like right over there about an hour ago. I mean, I’ve been emailing with him for some times, and I’ve been emailing him.

Helen: The original shirt under glass? So cute. He’s so cute.

Johannes: And he will be on a panel tomorrow, no?

Brad: I’ve barely looked at the schedule, but I think so.

Johannes: Has anybody ever found themselves on Lamebook?

Jonathan: I hope not. You guys know what I look like now! Huh? Mm, no. That’s kind of… tits tits? Something with tits. Teddy bear on the screen has a camel toe. Huh. [audience goes wild] Oh yeah yeah yeah! That’s kind of true. Ah. This panel proves that there’s good awkward and bad awkward. Eh, not bad, not bad? What can we say? There are no good questions on here. Then I would ask you for a last tweet – 140 characters of each of you that makes all the people here go out there and feel happy about humiliation.

Jonathan: Thanks for reading Lamebook, lol, omg.

Brad: Pass

Helen: You can pass though. I’m just going to pass right back to you though. You can think about it.

Brad: Pass again?

Mike: I guess next time you take a digital photo, and you’re thinking of erasing one because something is really bad about it, keep it, and send it to us. That’s a little long, but…

Johannes: There are so many pictures. You can find them at the flea market because they are on the CDROM and no one can read them in 10 years. A big hand for the panelists. It was a pleasure trying to moderate this whole thing. I know you hate me, but I know that it’s good. It comes from my soul, it goes straight to your brain, and I will go home and say I succeeded.

Keep a heads up on this blog for postings of the liveblogs for each panel in the coming days.

In the meantime, enjoy the fact that the third-highest search term that redirected to our site over the weekend was “rolfcon.”

Baratunde Thurston- The Onion
Teresa Wu (My Mom is a FOB)
Serena Wu (My Mom is a FOB)
Christian Lander (Stuff White People Like)
Lisa Nakamura (University of Illinois – Champaign) [Moderator]

The internet is often painted as white and nerdy, but that’s just not the case. This panel will discuss the history, current status, and future of race on the internet. How is race signified online? Is the internet segregated? How are we doing on that digital divide? Why do black people take over Twitter at night? What DO white people like? Can non-Asians laugh at “My Mom is a Fob”? Will it ever be possible to have a rational discussion about race online??

Recorded by: @wphillips49 & @devanjedi
Edited by: @alexleavitt

NOTE: This is not a full transcription of the panel. If you have any corrections, please contact alex@roflcon.org.

Lisa: An amazing panel who have managed to make race funny. Race is really difficult for Americans to talk about. With the end of multicultural education. Race has become a really contested, hot button issue especially with new Arizona law. Now the Internet causes a digital divide; people of color don’t have the same access. People used to think that the Internet would make things more civil; but when people are anonymous things does not remain civil. The internet is a place where internet memes are becoming political. When something claims to be apolitical “just for the lulz” have the potential to be racially transformative. Couple of questions: the way that internet memes have become platforms for real conversations about race (not just for the lulz). High school students just cannot talk about race. Often begin sentences with “I’m not racist, but….” MySpace suffered white flight, fragmentation by race on the Internet. The panelists should talk about real conversations of race that have come up through Internet.

Baratunde: It’s a pleasure to be surrounded by Asians. Give it up for the Asians. Give it up for Lisa. I gave a talk at SXSW called How To Be Black Online. My name is Baratune, web editor for The Onion, co-editor of a black political blog and science show. How to be Black, also name of my book. Why are black people important? Assertion. Proof: we look good. History proves black people are the future. Rock N Roll. Hip hop. Ass/lip injections. Black people spend $. My qualifications: 32 years experience being Black. Lifetime experience. Some of my friends are black. I’ve watched The Wire.

Baratunde: Imagine there was a white racial profiling cookie that followed you around the internet and asked you if you belong there.

[Shows a chart of home broadband by type of folk, by race. Mobile internet use in another chart.]

Baratunde: When tethered and wireless access are considered together, the gaps in online engagement disappears. Black people on Twitter, the tweets come out at night. At night, you will see black people! They’re everywhere. The dozens is a tradition where people diss each other. [quotes Wikipedia on the dozens] The dozens: ribald banter, gives examples of the dozens on Twitter…”how black are you” Twitter mini-war. Back and forth about who is blacker. A couple thousand Tweets, a fun game between two dudes trash-talking in public.

Baratunde: On Twitter, at night you can find a bunch of Twitter #hashtags like #IfSantaWasBlack. Because of the nature of the Internet, everyone can see what you’re doing. Like “I don’t think this is a very good neighborhood.”

Baratunde: According to Edison Research, of the monthly Twitter users, 24% are African American. 3% Asian, apparently you guys are right here (pointing at fellow panel members). Twitter users are very frequent SMS Users. Most popular TV shows in US, #9 is BET Awards.

Baratunde: Maybe black people are not building, just using technology. I was in NYC in SoHo. She was looking for 80 Van Dam St. The address she had was wrong. She said “They don’t want us to use this stuff. How do I figure it out?” At the same time, in the barbershop all the people had smart phones, arguing about Androids, iPhones.

[Baratunde plugs @BWBconference and Jack & Jill politics]

[Baratunde makes a joke about how the Asian girls have a notebook/pen and him, a black man, has a laptop.]

Theresa and Serena Wu: We are not sisters. We have two blogs, My Mom Is A Fob and My Dad Is A Fob. DOT COM. But what’s a FOB? Fob is more of a concept, if you take 24 napkins from Chipolte, if your mom wipes your dog’s feet before it walks into the house… then your mom/dad is a fob, that’s fobby. Stands for “fresh off the boat,” we’ve taken it and repossessed it, from derogatory to something endearing. Cute. No longer a slur, is about pride in bridging cultures. We both grew up in the Bay Area, all parents from Taiwan, we are second-gen Asian Americans. On the blog we talk about communication/language barriers. Even though we’re technically minorities, we NEVER felt like minorities (85% Asian high school). We didn’t have a football team… even PTA newsletter was bilingual. People say it’s easier for us to embrace culture, since we were the rule, not the exception when we grew up. Blog is a collection of stories, photos, whatever, because they want to share these experiences, not mock. We are NOT just making fun of our parents — it’s about sharing these experiences. The question is, are we furthering stereotypes? We don’t think so, we show how parents are fun, we’re dispelling the notion of a “typical” Asian American household. These stories are unedited, content from all backgrounds, unbiased, first-hand-accounts. The website makes people appreciate their parents, and as long and you’re not laughing maliciously we’re ok with it.

Christian: Writes Stuff White People Like. It’s 150 things that white people like, so you can infiltrate and exploit white people. MySpace is digital Detroit. A place where only minorities and indie bands remain. My background, this panel reminds me a lot of my high school. Two year on my high school football team. With Sri Lankans and Chinese, I was one of the fatter guys. We practiced when the transvestite prostitutes “shift” ended. They were Canadian, so they had a good sense of humor. As a 15 year old boy, you realize you have options! I went to Jarvis Collegiate– for the richest neighborhood, public housing, new immigrants. Kids from all those neighborhoods went to the same school. It was an interesting experience. We had a cricket team. And an awesome badminton team. An interesting mix of race, class, immigrant. Rich white kids, poor white kids all in one school. Stuff White People Like was from this experience you were called a banana or a coconut or a twinkie or an oreo, based on your skin color and the white inside. That’s where it came from. The concept that things you like could be branded as white came from my experience in high school. I’m really familiar with derogatory terms for white people in Chinese and I can order dim sum. That is the extent of my language knowledge. That portal was closed.

Christian: Has a white person ever had TMobile Sidekick?

Baratunde: danah boyd did.

Audience man: Paris Hilton!

Lisa: When you do that, what is the response and most shocking thing that has been said to you? RaceFail is a genuine aspect of this. What is the impact from public?

Serena: When people first respond to the site, they aren’t sure how to use the word. “Do we say f-o-b, or fob.” Once we were interviewed by a guy in Seattle, every question was asked really carefully… whenever you put something racial out there, people get nervous. So non-Asians aren’t sure if they are “allowed” to laugh at the stuff on our website.

Theresa: We have gotten really positive feedback from the Asian American community, in the 2 years since we’ve had the blog we’ve mainly gotten positive feedback. Maybe 5 negative emails, but otherwise it’s been really positive.

Baratunde: I’ve gotten a wide range of feedback. YouTube has been the best, most “intelligent.” They called me a dumbass, liberal, welfare sucker. Most interesting are through email — they feel safer. Europeans ask over email, where they see me as an American commentator — how is it different? There is often a knee-jerk reaction of “Why are you talking about that?” People are very annoyed that these things keep coming up. People would rather avoid it, do we have to do this again.

Christian: I got hate mail 20 minutes ago. Title: Please Shut the Fuck Up.
[reads the entire, hate-filled email.]

Baratunde: He called you “chief.”

Christian: Yeah, it’s derogatory like calling me “big guy.” I get more anonymous comments that are really angry that want all these diseases to befall me because I said white people like yoga and expensive sandwiches.

[Talks about another email he got that he got]

Lisa: What does anonymity do?

Christian: Didn’t the clan wear hoods?

Baratunde: How do you deal with race on Twitter? All the ugly boils out to the surface. Even a debate about healthcare ends in the N word or you’re gay or something because there is no accountability. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have anonymity, but it’s the price you pay.

Lisa: Can you talk about why Stuff White People Like crossed over?

Christian: It’s hard to figure out why it crossed over, and I got lucky I think… it’s hard, it’s an update on what people consider white humor. People knew all the old ones, mayonnaise, golf, and dancing badly, I mean I know white people like these things, and then when I made the list, put it online, and the white people actually get there, they saw more than the standard jokes and got really weirded out by what they saw… they also go click, yep yep, I know this asshole. Also on the race aspect, I put my own picture up there, wanted people to know I was also making fun of myself. Until then people assumed I was black and they were SO disappointed to finding out I was white, it would be so much more subversive if I were black. We even pitched a show to FOX; they passed though.

Lisa: How has your life been since then?

Christian: My life since then has been awesome, I get to travel around, it’s been amazing. Fantastic.

Lisa: How has the segmentation been on the internet?

Baratunde: We are making a false separation between races. “Why do black people use Twitter disproportionately?” It’s possible that it’s 1/4 black. I don’t think the question is different because of the technology. Twitter is ready made for things like ‘the dozens’ to have a high velocity dissing circle, like a chat room or a school yard where we live out who we are. It doesn’t surprise me. Certain video games or certain movies have the same kind of correlations.

Serena: I don’t know why more Asian people like using Xanga. I think it just spread virally, friends share stuff with their friends.

Christian: The white people like The Huffington Post.

Lisa: Why is race an issue on the internet? Isn’t everyone on equal footing? Because of anonymity?

Christian: I know what we get OFF the internet. The internet, even though it’s a huge part of our lives, we still meet in person… like this conference. Then when you put in the anonymity things change. So there’s a ton of horrible racist stuff in the comment section on my site. If I were to delete it, I’d be deleting the person who posted it. I figured that you needed to put it out there and confront it. It’s all there, all the time — no matter what video you put online, almost immediately all this racist stuff comes out, and I think it’s important to show that. Confront it.

Theresa: In your book (to Christian), you mention cyber types. You say the internet is privileged, a white space, and so most people assume authors online are white. A lot of online blogs that deal with race, especially Asians who blog, actually want that voice, they actually want to be visible, not be anonymous.

Lisa: When you publicly put out a discourse about race, you are now a forum for where that will happen. There is a lot of shocking stuff, Christian has a 100 this minute. Have you had the opposite where someone had an epiphany.

Baratunde: A year ago New York Post published police shooting a gorilla and saying someone else will have to write the stimulus. I went on MSNBC to talk about if it was racist. And to talk about the psychological effects and why it was important. We were on air in 4 minutes which is long for TV, then we did 2 rounds each on YouTube 7 minutes, then 5 minutes, creating a debate in the infinite YouTube. He blogged it on all of our sites in our own communities, at least if there are people who are decent you can have a dialogue.

[Baratunde and Christian go in to a mock fight about bicycles -- fixed gear vs. free gear]

Serena: While we didn’t set out to teach people about our culture, it does make people more aware of the dynamics within our families, and the complex nature of Asian American households.

Theresa: And some Asians may have been stereotyped, may have tried to assimilate completely. So we’ve gotten emails what say “Oh thank you for showing me this, my mom does that too, and it makes me feel less alone.”

Serena: I’ve also gotten an email from this white guy that used to hate Asians, and when he stumbled across your blog it reminded me of that transition period.

Christian: I’ve had a lot of professors and TAs write and say… the book talks a lot about white privilege, and white people HATE talking about this, it’s really hard, and the profs and grad students send their students to the site, which forces the students to confront the class issues. Like, REI is white, you’re pricing kayaks, come on. And at least then the conversation is easier, and humor is the entry point. Not jammed down their throats with critical theory.

Lisa: We all know that the lulz is a really affective tool, attention is the scarce commodity. Ethan talked about memes from other countries. We may end up with many local internets. I’m wondering about who the audience is, is it a broad audience, is a racialized audience. Is that a good or bad thing?

Theresa: Our audience is a little more racialized, though we never intended to target a specific demographic. But we do talk almost exclusively about Asian American experiences…

Serena: We don’t say “only Asians invited,” it just ends up that way. We get submissions from other groups, about Russian moms…

Baratunde: For J’n'J politics, which is a black political middle class blog. Jack and Jill was an organization for upper middle class blacks. J’n'J politics is not affiliated with that; it is 40-50% black. I’m honestly trying to talk to everybody. The black people are more like a sigh of relief, confirming their existence. For others, it is more accessible. When it works. When it doesn’t, the “Asians don’t get it”.

Christian: I cast the widest net possible, since everyone on the internet is either white or annoyed with white people…
[crowd laughs]

Lisa: Is there a difference between how racism and homophobia is dealt with on the internet?

Christian: The racism stuff’s for the internet, the homophobia is for the X-box live…

Serena: On My Mom’s a FOB, you see that a lot of Asian American parents are afraid of gay people, which is a stereotype that sometimes gets undermined by the site itself. One of our highest-rated post was about some kid’s mom, who was finally starting to understand her kid was a homosexual…

Baratunde: J’n'J politics was started because there weren’t a lot of black political blogs, but there were gay black blogs. It has come up some on our blogs, but not a lot. More on our comments.

Lisa: Do you moderate comments?

Baratunde: We try. In the beginning, we were happy to get comments. 2008 was our big swing year because we were saying things about race. And things got out of control. I shouldn’t have to tell you what not to say. Grownups are worse than kids, because they know they shouldn’t do it and still do.

Serena: We used to moderate comments more. But now the community self-moderates. Actually I’m surprised by the lack of hate.

Theresa: Plus we have loyal readers, they back us up whenever someone posts mean stuff anonymously.

Lisa: Is there going to be a 2nd generation my mom is a FOB? Like drives a Camry and watches ice skating.

Serena: Maybe at some point… but I don’t know.

Lisa: Can a fixed gear helicopter be a meme?

[Christian laughs about that]

Lisa: What about avatars and race, people changing their appearance in avatars of other races? What does your Mii look like?

Chriatian: Exactly like me, I go for accuracy. It also depends on who you play in a video game, as a white male I don’t need an avatar, everyone looks like me already. They’re trying to change that, but the protagonist is almost always white anyway.

Baratunde: I will tag on to Christian. Resident Evil featured slaughtered black people by a white protagonist. Wouldn’t it be a more educational game if you had fighting colonialism? I don’t have an idea about the people who use avatars.

Serena: I’m just here to talk about my website, I don’t know about avatars. I just use my face…

Baratunde: I was once the_swine_flu on Twitter, which was a picture of a pig who did not like people.

Audience question: What do you think about someone acting a different race online?

Christian: At least they won’t end up on Dateline…

Baratunde: We should do that. We should show up at their house and say “You are not really Indonesian”.

Christian: You’re the racist one now.

Baratunde: It does bother me. Hip Hop group said “Blackness isn’t a race, it’s a state of mind.” No, bitch, it’s a race. Socially, economically, it is a race. There are more productive methods of understanding people of other races like talking to them.

Audience: What does your family think because the previous generation had this minefield that you are now frolicking in.

Christian: My dad tries to take credit for everything. Well — I’m Canadian, and we’ve been making fun of white people for a long time. But my dad says I steal all his jokes. The thing was, growing up, his neighborhood was so diverse… race was something people talked about.

Serena: My mom laughs even though I don’t think she knows what any of it meant. My dad just says he doesn’t get it, looks once and then never looks again. But my mom doesn’t really understand why it’s funny, I have to explain it to her.

Baratunde: My mother, when she was alive, was great. Was born in the 1940s, was in the streets marching, made me memorize all the countries in Africa before you can have fun outside. When I was doing public things, she was very supportive. Her big concern was remember why you are doing it because it’s easy to get sucked in to the machine. I try to keep it in mind but it’s not all in my hands.

Christian: I just have to say, Question 6 is brilliant, “Let’s talk about Jersey Shore; does it propagate stereotypes about orange people?”

Lisa: You all chose to write about race, how racist do you think things are these days and the Internet is helping?

Serena: For Asian Americans, I think it’s improving. Not because of our website, that’s what people do at work, but like other Asian American blogs, they discuss identity in an open honest way…

Baratunde: It’s hard to know. Writing about race chose me. With the Obama thing, it’s uncovered a lot of ugliness. Pew Study that I read, because I’m a nerd: white people get really angry with Democrat president. But with Obama this is the angriest they have ever been.

Christian: The wrong kind of white people… that’s what we call them.

Baratunde: It’s been worrying to see ugliness. When you normalize and mainstream ugly ideas it’s a bad thing, like Glen Beck. In some ways the Internet makes things better in some ways worse. It’s more about change.

Christian: What I see is, the changes that happened in the ’60s, the institutionalized racism, has been “fixed.” But at the tea parties… what people don’t understand is that what they’re doing is also horribly racist, but they don’t see it that way. Because it’s not institutional in those ways it used to be. As far as the internet goes… it brings out the best and the worst… my site got linked to a white supremacist site, they added things like “ethically pure babies,” “Mein Kampf,” etc.

Baratunde: The beautiful thing about the Internet is that it gives everybody a voice. The problem is that it gives everybody a voice.

Audience: I wrote the original hate speech policy for YouTube. How do you balance the freedom of expression and preserve that dialogue. Where do you draw a line between hate speech and offensive speech. It never felt right to completely sweep it under the carpet.

Serena: Some companies are overly sensitive… we tried to submit our website to Apple but they rejected the request for an app because of “objectionable content…” and there was no objectionable content.

Baratunde: You say Apple Hates Asian People!

Baratunde: The policy in YouTube, how was it implemented.

Audience guy: The scale is very hard.

Baratunde: I’m very loathe to promote restrictions on speech. Personal attacks, threatening comments, lives or safety. Our own blog policy is being refined.

Christian: I have to say, hatred towards white people has actually worked out pretty well for us.

Baratunde: I don’t know. I’ve drawn a few lines about personal threats, but I don’t know. I think there is value in seeing beauty and horror. Free speech is a part of what we need.

Christian: And a failure to recognize these people, you get the (false) sense that they don’t exist…

Audience: How does this translate from race to religion? Muslims face the same issue. On ChatRoulette either I see dicks, or I get called a terrorist because I’m brown.

Baratunde: Show them your dick.

Christian: It’s tough. It’s hard to say how that plays out.

Baratunde: Part of my frustration with raise is that we’ve done shit. Now it’s white people’s turn. Similarly, we need to stand up for people you are being confused with.

Lisa: Serena and Teresa said that it’s just something for people to look at at work. The things that people choose to look at is what these people have accomplished so let’s give them a hand.

Muhammad Saleem (msaleem)
Andrew Sorcini (MrBabyMan)
JD Rucker (OBoy)
Amy Vernon (AmyVernon) [Moderator]

Few subgroups online have been as rumored about, hated on, or wrangled with as the elite power users of Digg. But what’s this world actually like? Join the leading users of Digg as they discuss the often hidden culture of poweruserhood, their relationship with the site, the various intrigues that go on, the experiences in rising to the top, and the broader questions about the future of these platforms.

Recorded by: @flourish & @devanjedi
Edited by: @alexleavitt

NOTE: This is not a full transcription of the panel. If you have any corrections, please contact alex@roflcon.org.

Amy: I’m known on Digg as amyvernon. I’m the top female Digger of all time, which means I’m in the top 20. Just need a shirt that says “top vagina.” To my left is Andrew 4300+ front pages, Muhammad Saleem 2000+, JD has about 500.

Mo: Hi, I’m msaleem on Digg, Twitter, other social media sites. I work at the Chicago Tribune helping them form some sort of digital media strategy.

Andy: I’m Andy Sorcini, a film editor by trade, and when I’m not doing that I spend my time finding cool things and trying to get as many people to see them as possible.

JD: JD Rucker, I work for a company does social media promotion on Twitter, Digg, so on.

Amy: The three also host a show called The Drill Down and have a long and sordid history together. We’ll start off talking about how we got in to Digg.

Andy: Why don’t we share the video first? This is a video I made for – Digg had a party to celebrate their millionth user. So they called for submissions for people to make their own video describing what Digg means to them, so this is a video I made for that competition, the life of a Digger.

(showing video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhLoghrZ9vE)

Amy: Basically a lot of people are wondering ROFLcon is about the meme, so why are we here? Every meme that is on the internet will be here, and us. Every meme that exists comes to Digg. Some birth on Digg, some catch on, brought to life, and we pound them into submission to death. Kanye West fiasco had thousands on Digg, and many hit the front page, by a day later was declared dead when the rest of the world started hearing about it. What brought us to Digg?

JD: I started the goal was to drive traffic to my own site. It’s a challenge. Got to have quality, must hit the pulse. You can still enhance your chances by getting the right submitters, certain techniques. But overall must be high quality content. Recently I’ve only submitted other stuff, not my own.

Amy: So you don’t submit your own stuff?

JD: You can’t just submit your own stuff. You have to have diversity in domains, quality of content. But I don’t submit my own stuff any more. Other people do.

Amy: Andy has had so many front pages, every 4-6 months; someone says he must be banned.

Andy: Somehow I control the front page even though my ratio is about 30% of what I submit gets to the front page. And that is less than 1% on a weekly basis of all the stories that are on the front page of Digg. But somehow I “control the front page” according to these people, and uh, the way that I came across Digg was through DiggNation – I came across the podcast first. And we should probably talk about how Digg – the ingenious way they publicize themselves. You tell that story a little better.

Mo: Kevin Rose, the creator, created the site in opposition to mainstream media where some editor decides “these are the stories we think are important” and we consume it like drones. He decided to flip that around – it’s a democratically created news front page. When he was first creating the site the social media site of the day was Slashdot and delicious to an extent. And these guys at that time were on G4 TechTV and they had their own tech shows and a very geeky audience. And he decided to go onto this show and pretend that he didn’t know what Digg was about, and that was Digg’s coming-out party.

Andy: Digg’s subversive self-promotion coming out party. But we uh -

Andy: I think what kept me there was that I felt like I had this venue where I could find all this cool stuff on the internet. And when something of mine got to the front page – I mean more people look at my submissions on a daily basis than the NY Times. That was a couple years ago, I don’t know if that’s the case anymore, NY Times has kind of shaped up there. But that was fairly impressive to all of a sudden have this audience where I could guide the eyeballs to all of this great stuff on the internet.

Amy: How about you Mo?

Mo: The ability to communicate something you’re passionate about to hundreds of thousands of other people – something that everybody wants to do. Let’s say you’re an Apple fanboy, they’re announcing a product, you submit – everyone sees it. The real reason to stick around on Digg though is the reason we’re here and on this panel. We’re trying to figure out how memes are formed and how they spread. We can’t find where they’re formed, but the role that Digg and other social news sites play is actually getting those memes to a mass audience. You do a search on any meme, and you can see not only are those stories are getting thousands of Diggs/millions of plays, they get remixed and those go through the same system and get similar exposure.

[show screen with a simple search for 'keyboard cat' on Digg]

Andy: If memes are viral then we’re like the sneezers.

Amy: The top one here is a mashup of 3 Wolf Moon and Keyboard Cat. The 3 Keyboard Cat Moon.

Amy: How people get really pissy with each other on Digg. Sites getting angry at each other. For burying them. Or sniping, Diggers camping out to submit the first picture of the day.

Mo: For being a site that’s all about giving power back to small publishers, Digg is a little confused when it comes to implementation. And you’ll see sites that are more mainstream (NY Times, Cracked.com) have an easier time getting more exposure on Digg. As a result of that community members within Digg, when they’re starting out, they want to submit the stories they think have an easier chance of getting to the front page. Rather than trying to submit stuff that they think /should/ get noticed, they submit stuff that would already get noticed. You see Digg users competing with each other to submit from these sources, so they can become the “secret masters of Digg.”

Andy: Digg has kind of put a stop to that recently because they’ve basically locked it down so you can only submit one URL to the site at a time, you can’t duplicate the URL.

Amy: But we were talking about car sites that would accuse the other of sniping the others submission and threatening to call out lawyers.

Mo: So in addition to this you have Digg users fighting and mystery created around people who are able to get to the front page, because a lot of people believe that there’s a handful of people who control the front page of Digg.

Amy: The auto space is brutal on Digg.

Mo: So in the auto space you have only a certain number of stories in certain topics be on the front page. When you’re competing for that one space on the front page you have publishers and they’re fighting with each other. The incident I was talking about this one company thought the other company was maliciously attacking their content, and they actually got lawyers involved.

JD: It’s competitive because like Mo said there is a limited number of slots on the front page. It’s about getting the links, credibility. Google uses the front page as credibility. Very few stories make it to the front page out of thousands. Among automotive stories only 2-3 will make it in a day, it does get ugly. When we’re at these panels we try to convey these things and lawyers get involved friends and enemies get formed. I’m talking in code now.

Andy: It gets fierce! Y’know there’s kind of a secret subculture too – when enough users reach a certain level where they become popular and they’ve submitted so many things that they’re frequent popular submitters on Digg, they tend to find each other and clump together, and we form cliques naturally, organically. We don’t actually go out trying to form cliques, but it happens as a matter of course as you become successful doing it [Digging] on a daily basis. A lot of it used to be through IM but we discovered IM got really spammy and we got inundated by people who just wanted us to put their stuff on Digg. So we had to come up with secret backchannel ways to talk to each other. You guys want to talk about some of the ways we communicate within, at the risk of – ?

Amy: Mental telepathy? Don’t tell anyone.

JD: There are sites like xkcd that allow you to get to the front page easily. If you can get to the front page, it’s a flag that you will Digg other people’s stuff.

Mo: The description of the panel specifically said there would be no sharing of secrets! But – you guys have seen how there’s hesitation on certain topics… Digg has a love/hate relationship with publishers/readers and there’s a tension there. If you seem to be manipulating things, boom, you’re banned. So people tend to be very guarded about it. You get thrown out of the community and you’re out forever.

Amy: I have heard of people changing their IP address, but I don’t know them personally. From the questions “I saw this panel on Reddit yesterday.”

Mo: So… social news and social bookmarking, it’s the biggest. They’re talking about Digg. Digg’s not the only game in town – Reddit’s really good, Stumbleupon’s really good, and then you get into some niche sites. Redditors will regularly say “Digg users – all they do is see what’s popular on Reddit, submit it to Digg and it becomes famous a day late,” which is why there’s a comment up there saying “I saw this panel on Reddit yesterday.”

Amy: Some of the funniest comments on Digg are “I saw this on Digg yesterday”

Andy: There’s a reason for that! There’s a difference in the lag time between when something is submitted and front pages on Digg and Reddit, because of their user bases and size.

Amy: On Digg I rarely hit the front page until 15-20 hours of submission. Some people take just 5 hours, it seems like an accident to me. Some interesting questions: Are we cultural anthropologists or asshole bouncers (throwback to Ethan Z’s keynote). An interesting question. By submitting the things we do, we are those bouncers.

JD: When you get to the level where you can get to the front page, you have great responsibility like Peter Parker. You can take a white rabbit in a snow storm and get it to the front page. If top Digger submits it to Digg, you can get it to the front page of Digg. You have to make sure you’re not submitting shit.

Andy: Exactly. With the status that we’ve accumulated there’s a responsibility we have as well to our followers to – not! We have to make sure not to submit crap, basically.

Mo: There’s a question about Digg and the NY Times, that sometimes Digg is fun and funny but NY Times is probably more valuable – but you have to remember that Digg is a product of its community. Maybe the stuff on the front page isn’t “quality” to your definition of it but it is what the community wants. There’s another site called NewsTrust that rates news – you’re not voting it up or down – is this story a good story, or is it biased? Is it timely?

Andy: But do they do breaking news?

Mo: That’s not really the point – I mean, they’re a community judged news site, not community curated.

Amy: I would like to address Nick Douglas. ROFLCon was not an inside job.

Amy: A whole bunch of people are really happy that we are not online, and submitting to Digg. There is Missbabyman, mrbabylean, oldboy. People copy names. If the avatar looks the same as one of them, someone. No one ever Diggs without reading a story, ever .

Amy: Why do you spend so much time working for a website that profits off your labor? Does Digg profit?

Mo: That alone is a very interesting question. The thing you need to know about Digg is that when it was first launched it was a very innovative idea – nobody was doing social news, there was delicious but it was about bookmarks, not creating a social news front page. So Digg took that to its logical end and it was really hot for the first three years and it was the darling of Silicon Valley – maybe Google was gonna buy them for millions. You gotta remember they didn’t capitalize on that. Digg just broke even 5 months ago – it took 5 years and 35 million dollars in venture capital for them to break even.

Amy: So that’s all you need. 5 years and 35 million dollars and a really good idea.

Amy: How many of you are interested in the future of Digg?

Mo: How many of you are interested in the future of Digg?

Amy: Also, I do feel our heads are beautifully shaped (reading from backchannel)

Andy: some of us have had the privilege of getting a sneak peek into the future of Digg and I actually can’t talk about that.

Amy: if you talk about that, they will take your children away.

Mo: It was like that white bunny in a snowstorm.

Andy: But what’s interesting is that in the context of what Facebook is doing.

Mo: Well yeah. Digg’s main innovation was the ‘Digg’ button and the algorithm. A couple years ago they announced “We’re gonna make a Digg button for the web.” They were going to put the Digg button across the web, and we have yet to see it.

Andy: And that’s basically what Facebook announced with their ‘like’ button.

Amy: If you’re unfamiliar with Facebook, you have to leave now.

Mo: Yeah, problem is their new set of social plug-ins makes Facebook the fabric of the social web. Like buttons, etc – the next step of the Facebook Connect. So the hopes and dreams that Digg had of becoming that social platform for the entire web have been crushed by Facebook.

Amy: Is there really an Austrian general in the back left of the room. There is a request for you to march back and forth in the room.

Amy: Another question about groupthink. How do the structures of Digg and Reddit lead to different ways of thinking and differences in the community?

Andy: The main difference between Digg and Reddit is the size.

Mo: Digg is 5-6 million. And Reddit is what, 5-600?

Andy: And what Reddit doesn’t realize is that as their community gets bigger they’re going to look more like Digg.

Mo: I think the easiest way to explain what’s working and what’s not working on Digg is to compare it to our current political system. It’s a bit commercialized, it’s big.

JD: It’s a slow process. Reddit is much more nimble. You can get thousands of visits in minutes. Digg takes longer. Reddit is self-moderated, Digg is not. That might be changing. Self-moderation will change in Digg. Reddit uses moderation who are users who have the ability to get rid of spam. Digg does not, they use their staff and rely on bury.

Amy: Why do you spend so much of your free time on Digg. It’s really addictive. I post what I find amusing on Facebook. I have friends who tell me “You find the funniest stuff.” It’s good to have people tell me “You’re awesome.” I’ve made really good friends, and I see way more stuff than I could.

Andy: Isn’t that what we’re all looking for, a little validation?

JD: Why do people watch TV or WoW? They enjoy it. Digg is a recreational thing. They want to get that rush, that a story they selected has so many people reading it. It’s a power trip.

Amy: You have 4300 Diggs, do you still get that tingle when you get that email from Digg?

Andy: Absolutely. Absolutely. Every – it’s definitely a bipolar reaction for me. When I get the SMS alert there’s that thrill, then I go to the site and check out the comments, and if I’ve gone for a day without a story on the front page I get depressed. “Why doesn’t anybody love me and my stories?!”

Amy: My husband is like “Go submit something because you’re really bitchy” I haven’t had a front page for TWO DAYS!!

JD: Nobody else in the world gets an SMS when they front page.

Amy: How do you like the new format for ads that look like submissions?

Mo: Let’s talk about the ads a little bit. Digg has an inherent problem: Their community started off tech-savvy and web-savvy and they are built on a CPM advertising model. Problem is a majority of their users have adblock and they don’t see those ads, so Digg doesn’t make money off their heaviest users. So recently they created a new ad unit where the ad looks like a story and goes through like it was a sponsored story.

Amy: And you can vote it up or bury it.

Mo: You can’t comment on it because the brand wouldn’t like that if you started bashing them in a comment thread on Digg.

Amy: When they first did it, when they tested it they made sure that it worked with AdBlock Plus. So you would not see the ad, if you had AdBlock.

Andy: I have a couple Reddit accounts and the real mrbabyman is me on Reddit, I also have another one which I started a couple years ago just to test the waters to see if the magic was still there, if I could still find and spread good content irrespective of my status on Digg. And the answer is ‘yes,’ that other account is doing quite well and nobody is able to connect that with me.

Amy: What’s the name of that account?

Andy: I’m not going to tell you.

Amy: Do the people on the panel make a living off Digg? It’s complicated. I personally am making a living because I made a name on Digg. I help some sites with their social media strategy, as a journalist for news sites. I am not paid for submitting things to Digg.

Andy: Yeah, I make my money as a film editor. That’s how I – I don’t get any monetization from Digg at all.

Mo: I wish I did, God knows I’ve spent a lot of time on that site. In a sense, I work for the Chicago Tribune and they make money off of Digg via page views, but again, it’s an insubstantial amount. Short answer’s no but I wish I did.

Amy: It’s an indirect thing. Did you get the job because of the profile you built on Digg? Part of your entire in to social media.

JD: You can help sites get on to the front page. They don’t want you to accept money for Diggs, etc. People have offered to send us t-shirts, or pay us $1000. I’ve always said no, let’s face it. I make money through social media, but not directly through Digg.

Andy: There’s a difference – there’s things that are absolutely not allowed because of the Terms of Use, like you can’t accept money to submit anything to Digg. However, you can work with publishers in helping to create content that they themselves can submit to Digg, in other words, as a consultant help them get on Digg or other social news sites by optimizing their content to what you feel would work best.

Mo: And that’s not something that’s a standard ToS violation across all sites – for example, Netscape: AOL’s attempt to bury Digg – they hired 30 top Digg users to get that site up and running. Digg users were upset and so were the founders of Digg, because they thought “Huh, we don’t compensate our users… what if it’s successful?” Fortunately for them it wasn’t successful, but some sites feel like it’s appropriate for people to pay to submit.

JD: Digg encourages and is going to encourage site owners. If you’re sitting there from a decent sized publication, you can get yourself on the front page of Digg. If the people who come here have a vested interest in getting on the front page, Digg is a great venue.

Mo: And their ToU is more or less “We’re going to try to monetize your participation, and the publishers will make money off the traffic, but you’re not allowed to make money for being the go-between.”

Amy: If you started a new Digg account today, could you get the same submissions front-paged easily?

Andy: The Digg algorithm has changed quite a bit. I can only theoretically broach that question because you can only have one username on Digg, and that’s why I did the thing with Reddit. But – the way the Digg promotion algorithm works the more successful you are the harder it is to get stuff to the front page and the more sensational the submissions have to be to get to the front page.

Mo: Wait. it’s not just that. The more successful you are the bigger following you have so the moment you submit anything to the community you’ll get a certain number of votes almost automatically.

Amy: after they read the article, of course. And those votes tend to be from the same people over and over again. So to try to level the playing field they make it harder for you, so that you aren’t seeing the same thing again and again.

JD: The short answer is yes. It will take a certain period of time to get known. It would take Andy about 2 weeks to get back to the front page. His newer account could get to the front page more often for the first month than his real mrbabyman account.

Amy: Do you disagree about anything? JD disagrees with anything anyone says. Mo smokes menthol, and I hate that.

Andy: Mo likes the RIAA.

Mo: That’s entirely inaccurate. I agree, go EFF and all that stuff, I just don’t like piracy, that’s it, and one would think that this guy being a film editor doesn’t want people stealing his films.

Andy: But I’d say the metrics that say piracy is bad for the film industry are fallacious.

Mo: That’s an argument for a separate panel.

Amy: With the introduction of Tumblr or Stumbleupon, does the elitist culture of Digg have a face new challenges?

Andy: Do you feel like that’s an accurate characterization?

JD: Digg is an elitist community. The front page is controlled by 1% of the community.

Andy: But that percentage of the community is active.

JD: 1% of the active community.

Andy: But I think if you’re active at all on the site that you begin to build the kind of cache that you can actually get stuff popular.

JD: You can go on Reddit right now, if you have a solid piece of content you can get it to the front page without a problem. If you have Obama kissing Marilyn Monroe, you will not hit the front page of Digg. The chance is infinitesimal.

Andy: The question is about super personalized curation platforms.

Mo: One, nobody’s really figured out personalizing news to that level; it’s not really super-personalized. Two, these sites have needed recommender engines for a very long time. It’s just a matter of somebody figuring out how to look at your activity on a site and give you the most relevant stories for you and nobody’s really figured it out. I don’t think the social news sites compete with Tumblr on any level.

Amy: How much do you know about the algorithm, and what does you know change how you submit on Digg? Every time you figure it out it changes.

Andy: They don’t change it they tweak it but you know what we have figured out how it works, we don’t know the specifics, but we know what aspects are responsible for what is successful or not on Digg. But unfortunately that doesn’t change how we are able to submit anything.

Amy: There was one period of time when the algorithm would allow multiple front pagers for a single user.

Andy: They’re just tweaking certain values. We can’t control whether a story gets on the front page or not, all we can do is best-fit what we submit.

Mo: I think at the end of the day you can even manipulate the Google algorithm. There are certain things you know.

Amy: mrbabyman is a liar, he does not have a wife. He has a girlfriend.

Andy: How big is the core group of power users?

Mo: Define core.

Andy: JD, you’d know better than anybody else.

JD: There are approx 70 or so Digg users who are consistently on Digg. There are 130 or so who are front pagers for a while. Some are part-timers. These are the people who provide the passion of the Digg. They haven’t played the game so they don’t get to the front page.

Amy: Vast majority are reading. A smaller group are submitting. An even smaller is actively submitting.

Amy: Thoughts on the gender imbalance on Digg. I think that it’s changed a lot. There are a lot more women on Digg who are regularly hitting the front page. The site started out as a tech news site, which has a gender imbalance. That’s where it’s root is from.

Mo: Facebook and Twitter tend to skew in women’s favor.

Amy: Yeah, more female users on those sites. There are more and more women who are on the top 100 Diggers of all time and on the site. Sometimes I put a troll’ing comment on Digg being a whiny women, just because I want them to tell me to go make a sandwich.

Amy: How do you find interesting content?

Andy: We specifically said that this panel wouldn’t be a ‘how to’ but I feel like we should give the last couple minutes for tips. The question is “How do you find interesting content?” You have to be a member of the space, there on a daily basis, because Digg is very much about the zeitgeist.

Mo: Give them the short answer: Go to Reddit.com.

Andy: But you have to feel what’s going on a regular basis, you build RSS feeds of sites you like that are popular, we joke about the Reddit thing but because Reddit is so quick to brew – surface content it’s almost like a canary in a coal mine, and Digg is just a bigger audience for that. There are tools that we use – DI66.net -

Amy: There’s a site di66.net where you can see top words and descriptions. e.g. “Obama and Megan Fox eat bacon”. Talks about top 1000 sites over last few days, months.

Andy: Any of those sites are a great starter kid of RSS feeds to start following if you want to get to the front page.

Amy: It has to be something that you like, it becomes obvious if you submit something that you don’t care about. Or if you are paid to submit it.

Andy: Be passionate about what you want to spread out there.

Amy: It’s a lot easier to work it if you like it and are interested in it.

Amy: @amyvernon everywhere.

Andy: thedrilldown.com, and if you Google mrbabyman you’ll find me. The Drilldown podcast’s live Sunday afternoons on ustream.tv.

Mo: I’m msaleem on Digg, Twitter, etc.

Amy: I have no podcast. I would like to say that.

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!)

Brian Govern (Posted first review of Three Wolf Moon Shirt)
Michael McGloin (The Mountain)
Antonia Neshev (Three Wolf Moon Artist)
Patrick Davison (MemeFactory) [Moderator]

How does a simple, quiet shirt with a little bit of stardust, three wolves, and a moon end up kicking the Amazon bestsellers lists ass for more than four weeks running? What’s it like being a part of that process? What do you do after it’s all said and done? Does the shirt actually grant you mystical powers?

Recorded by: @andthengensaid & @wphillips49
Edited by: @alexleavitt

NOTE: This is not a full transcription of the panel. If you have any corrections, please contact alex@roflcon.org.

Patrick: Introduction, welcome, big up to the magical moon. Perfunctory introductions. Brian Govern, law student in New Jersey. The original Three Wolf commenter. Michael McGloin, businessman/artist, art director at the Mountain. Antonia Neshev, artist, moved to US in 96, paints lots of wolves, and is Three Wolf Moon artist. Throws to Brian.

Brian: Well, I have to be honest, my review for the Three Wolf Moon shirt is the first and only funny thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. I’m going to be an attorney, not very funny. I’ve only purchased 2 things on Amazon, both law books. Also not funny. I’m from Detroit. I don’t have much experience with being clever or ever making people laugh on purpose. I tapped into some vein of Americana when I wrote the review for it. It was a complete whim and then we ended up here today.

Patrick: Michael, describe responsibilities.

Mike: All things art. Designing shirts, web, talking with artists, doing sketches, trying to get shirts done, marketing, catalogues, the whole thing.

Patrick: How many artists do you work with?

Mike: I have a core of about 15, Antonia is one of 100’s of other artists all over the world.

Patrick: How often do you come up with new designs?

Mike: We do about 100 designs a year.

Patrick: Antonia, how did you come to paint wildlife?

Antonia: It’s a long story. I did a bit of writing but I will summarize the most important events in my life. I had been creative sculptural pieces until I got tired of lugging them around. Moving the computer was easier than moving paintings. My husband left for only his computer when he was hired by a printing company in CO. The company was hiring anyone willing to transport to the isolated community. Since I was already there, I spent 2 years working there in house and learning about how to design nature t-shirts.

Patrick: So now let’s talk about Three Wolf Moon itself. This is what I’d call a flashbulb moment — you always remember where you were. For each of you, when did you know something was different about Three Wolf Moon?

Brian: When I was sitting down and I opened my email, and it was in the middle of finals and I hadn’t had much of a life in a long time. It was an email from Amazon about public relations saying the NYTs wants to talk to me, and can I pass over their into. I Google myself, and my review of TWM is all over the internet. I made the review 6 months ago, and I had forgotten that I had even written it, so it just came out of the blue for me.

Mike: A guy I worked for forwarded the review from Amazon to me, so I went and checked it out, then I realized that there were like 100 reviews. I sent it out to our entire company. Do you see what going on here? This is insane! We have about 300 dozen of each shirt in stock, but TWM was out of stock, and they were all going to 1 customer, the one that was selling on Amazon. They didn’t even tell us they were out of stock. Then we decided PRINT IT NOW.

Patrick: Antonia do you remember?

Antonia: Yes, I do, I always check my t-shirts, and Googling them, and looking for ratings and how popular is the image. I was aware of the review under TWF, I thought it was written by someone who has nothing more meaningful to do. It was sitting there quietly for a while until one day I received a historic email from Michael. You have to read this, it is out of control. I went there and saw 1000s and 1000s of comments.

Mike: While TWM was happening, she was on vacation for like three weeks. No one could find her.

Antonia: I had emails, from Mike, looking for me. Where are you? Are you kidnapped?

Brian: I can confirm it was from someone who has nothing better to do. Ask my wife, I’m on the internet from 5 minutes after I wake up. The fact that I missed the whole TWM thing is ridiculous.

Patrick: So TWM happened, how have your lives been, post-moon?

Brian: Even locally it was kind of cut off. The day that the TWM was on world news tonight, the local news broke in on this story about this girl who had kidnapped herself broke it, so I hadn’t seen it. A lot of people I hadn’t talked to in 15 years friended me on Facebook.

Patrick: Trying to get a cut…

Brian: Most of the time, people don’t put 2 and 2 together. When I tell people they’ll say “Oh, you’re the guy who wrote that?” and then move on with their lives. I’ve been trying to figure out how to spin this into some kind of marketing thing, but I haven’t been able to figure out how.

Patrick: And that raises the question, have you thought about reviewing anything else?

Brian: I’ll be honest, I haven’t. I’ve thought about it. I’ve attempted to. I’m faced with trying to follow up with something that was important enough to be the subject of a panel at this conference. I don’t want to be that guy. I’m already paralyzed by the success of the whole thing. I’ve had bands try to ask me to review them. Some products, like an irrigation system. There’s no comedic gold in irrigation systems.

Patrick: Well, so offers from bands, or companies with money. What would it take?

Brian: The right product, and the right inspiration on it would get me back into the review. The review was something I’d written to someone. I kinda put myself into their shoes and wrote the review from their view point. Most people who ask are friends who are going to be Patent Lawyers. I’m pretty sure they’re not going to compensate me.

Patrick: Michael, what we’ve seen is the way in which corporations respond to internet memes… one of the things that was great was how quickly The Mountain came out in support of TWM. How has TWM changed your approach to marketing?

Mike: It made our brand completely stand out, in itself, it put us on the map. We’re not a small company, but what it allowed us to do is get over the hump of selling just to middle America. We’ve done collaboration with Element skateboards, Ronnie — in New York, mainstreamed us;

Patrick: Do you have any pre-wolf competitors?

Mike: We have some rivals…

Patrick: Are they super pissed now?

Mike: They started selling the shirt. Antonia, has the popularity of TWM effected your work?

Antonia: It opened up our business, it made our brand completely stand out. It has allowed us to get into a lot of markets we weren’t in before. It put us on the map. We’re not small company, we have about 150 employees, but what it allowed us to do was to get over the hump of just selling to middle America and get into some larger chains and doing some collaboration. I’m doing some collaborations out of New York. Just our look in general, it mainstreamed us.

Mike: We have some rivals, but not really. Liquid is a rival of ours. They started selling the shirt, so they banked.

Antonia: In a very positive way, I have a great exposure and Michael initiated a licensing representation by The Mountain, so I have no worries about how the business will go, that’s Michael’s area of action, and I have a pretty good life.

Patrick: Have you been receiving any requests for wolf-themed art?

Antonia: Most of the people are interested in using TWM image since it is the phenomenon, and I’d like to believe that there is a time when people will be interested in seeing beyond that, to the rest of the work that I have, that has quality, but not the popularity. TWM will open the door to the rest of that.

Mike: And it already has…

Patrick: Speaking of requests, obviously English is not her first language. I asked if she felt comfortable talking in English, asked if maybe she wanted, she could do some art on the chalkboard.

A: What do you want to see? Wolves? More wolves?

Patrick: Cats? I think we want cats. Why don’t you guys start backchanneling… You guys throw up your suggestions. So, we talked about your experiences with TWM… let’s get a little theoretical: Why do you think TWM became popular?

Brian: Well, first and foremost, I think the story kinda created a frame work, a mythology, that other people could add to. If it was just a funny review, it’d be a funny review, and that’d be it. “Not putting this shirt on your torso, you put it on your soul”. It almost created a progressive story where people could add to it and sort of tell their own story, it created this mythos that resonated with people and let them add their own. On top of it it converged with this trucker chic with the net hat and PRB beer and it kind of merged with that undercurrent and it gave it more of a body than a single funny review would have.

Patrick: Any other thoughts?

Mike: I believe it because it was a product that people could buy. The majority of the reviews before were about milk? Just random things that people wouldn’t buy on Amazon. Since we were a big company and could fill orders for something quickly, it allowed it to gain a momentum. It wasn’t just a meme that had to build over time, it connected to the real world and connected to the real world.

Patrick: Connects to the real world… speaking of that, is there, are there any standout moments? Most you printed in a single run?

Mike: We do about 400 dozen per press per day and we ran it three months straight.

Patrick: That’s a lot of shirts.

Mike: we printed and dyed so many shirts and our waste water company called and said please stop dying because we are not that big.

Patrick: So TWM is an environmental hazard.

Mike: We printed 100’s of 1000s of shirts. Walmart picked it up 60k shirts. It keeps going. Amazon is like our #1 customer right now. You can look at people at work that you pass on the street, and maybe 50% have seen the same funny cat. But if you have the TWM shirt on, you can ID each other by being part of that meme. It’s like you’re part of this secret brotherhood.

Mike: There are people who buy our shirts beforehand and you’re like “yeaaah” and they’re like “I’ll kick your ass!”

Patrick: This raises a good question, do either of you own the shirt?

Mike: Yes.

Brian: Absolutely.

Mike: We actually print a glow in the dark one now, because in his “cons” he listed “shit does not glow.”

Mike: Yeah. It glows.

Patrick: How many are out there?

Mike: You can buy it on our website. But not many people know about that. www.themountain.me

Patrick: Obviously there is a TWM variation, in the ROFLcon shirt? But are you saying there are other secret variations?

Patrick: The Internet might have just found out.

Patrick: How often do you guys wear it?

Brian: Well, I’m married, so I can’t wear it too often. I have my mint shirt that I keep for prosperity and show it to my grandkids, where my 15 minutes came from. Mike sent me a crate to give away at Christmas, so we have family photos of everyone wearing them.

Patrick: Would either of you consider using a t-shirt cannon in any contest?

Mike: Definitely.

Brian: Absolutely.

Patrick: You mentioned

[Antonia draws Pedobear.]

Patrick: You were talking about the 2 usergroups, one ironic and one not. I think we might be taking a turn down negative lane…

[Continues to draw.]

Patrick: Now there is definitely a subtext… to the popularity of the TWM reviews that play on the white trash stereotype. In the wake of that, how have you guys reacted… Brian, how do you feel now about the original tone of your review?

Brian: I think that the internet community as a whole is probably less politically correct than the average bear, considering that the #7 image out there is a ASCII goatse, and the last panel was a ASCII wiener, I think people are a little less politically correct. I had someone specific in mind…

Patrick: You know a person?

Brian: I think that class of society is the last bastion you can legally make fun of. I didn’t mean any harm by it, I had a specific person in mine. In the vein of internet memes, I think there is less problem there than if I was openly making fun of someone on TV.

Patrick: So the context of it being… in a comment field, as opposed to on television.

Mike: Would you have changed it if you knew it was going to be so huge.

Brian: No, not really. The person it was inspired by, who I will never confess because I’ll get a mail bomb, they really liked wolf shirts. I was thinking about how that individual would have grown as a person and what they would have said to the shirt. Because of the good humor, I would have done it the same exact way.

Patrick: Have you had any experiences managing 2 different user bases? Genuine buyers and ironic buyers?

Mike: Not so much, it’s really funny, because I don’t know how many of you actually know our shirts at all, but it’s America, a lot of animals, when TWM took off, our customer base, 95% of it could not sell the shirt, because our customer weren’t you guys. The rest of them were selling huge #s of it. We are a whole sale company, so it was kind of a difference for us. There were maybe 50 customers who were selling the heck of it, and the rest of the customers get it.

Patrick: Have you seen any boost of sales from the previous community, or just the new community?

Mike: Well, everyone knows that the recession kinda sucked for just about everybody. We were down about 25%. We lost about 25% of our customers, they just got wiped out. TWM happened after we brought our workforce down about 30%. The t-shirt guy shined on us, and TWM made it all better. We have hired almost all our people back and now we’re pretty much on fire right now. We’re printing 7 days a week like all our shirts.

Patrick: That’s great. That hits on something I’ve noticed, there ’s some aggression, some reviews go a bit further with that stereotype. But there seems to be a general positive air about the whole thing.

Mike: In general, yeah. Probably like 100 or so maybe 120 reviews on Amazon. It started for me to get a little racy, another wolf shirt, it was a long sleeved shirt. “It cured my AIDS,” it got really racist, this other meme. I responded to them, and let them know that our company wasn’t cool with that. I thought it was this one on one with this guy, and all of a sudden they were like The Mountain hates us! But we were like no we like the money thank you. I didn’t really think about it as a bad thing.

[Antonia draws a dinosaur mounting a robot]

Brian: A couple got racy, but I think it will still not as bad as anything written on YouTube.

[a standing ovation for dinobot]

Patrick: Tomorrow, that will be on Cafe Press.

Patrick: If something bubbles back up from this, we’ll slip that back to her. Speaking of, what do you think about Tuscan Whole Milk? Also, do you look more closely at reviewing threads now, and do you spend more time on the internet?

Mike: I think that they are missing a huge opportunity. I haven’t talked to Tuscan, but don’t you think they’re missing a huge opportunity.

Patrick: What do you think they could do? To, ya know, sell some milk. It’s like $70/gallon.

Brian: They actually carry it at grocery store, so of course I had to buy it. I almost troll around the internet now, but it’s impossible for me to do more so than I did in the past, but something like Tuscan Whole Milk, you gravitate towards it because there are 100s of funny reviews. A lot of times people try to do their own funny reviews, but they’re not really very funny. Amazon has tried to embrace this, and tried to make a video. Snow tires aren’t going to lend themselves to funny reviews as well as other products. It has to be the right product.

Patrick: Antonia, now that you’ve finished gracing us with your drawings. Do you spend a lot of time online?

Antonia: Every day, Facebook, I spend 3 – 4 hours on there.

Patrick: Really?

Antonia: To keep connected with friends. Everyday, I go through different websites, I have a huge list of bookmarks of different art websites, and that’s my main interest. Another one is looking for tribal jewelry and ethnic jewelry, which also interest me. National Geographic. I can easily spend days and days and days on the internet.

Patrick: Do you look to other art online as inspiration?

Mike: No, she hasn’t sent me any?

Patrick: Are you just living off the success of TWM?

Antonia: No, I’m working secretly.

Patrick: So there’s something awesome that’s about to drop?

Antonia: A tsunami.

Patrick: I asked the gentlemen here if they owned or wore the shirt, do you? Do you wear it?

Antonia: Sure, yes. Isn’t it a macho shirt? Should I wear it?

Patrick: Absolutely.

Mike: Does your husband wear it?

A: Yes. Actually, my brother in law wears it, and he got divorced.

Patrick: So it seems like the power of the moon didn’t shine so brightly…

Mike: No, because everyone was attracted to him

Patrick: How did you find the shirt on Amazon, Brian? Were you looking for wolf shirts?

Brian: Believe it or not, no. I remember the day, it was 11:30 at night, I was laying in bed with my laptop, I was looking for “Professional responsibility, patent law, etc.”, and the Amazon suggestion popped up that I would probably like the TWM shirt. So if those are your interests, then you should probably buy the shirt. I have no idea why that combination brought out the shirt.

Mike: Well you were looking for great things.

Patrick: On the last panel, one of the speakers admitted to possibly being a bit intoxicated when they made their videos… were you on some substance or other?

Brian: Other than pure boredom from having spent the last 3 years reading 12 hours/day. Usually I get wittier when I get drunk, but I think that’s just my opinion not anybody else. It was off the cuff, without any assistance.

Patrick: Antonia, were there any substances involved?

Antonia: There are always substances involved.

Patrick: Anything you’d care to describe?

Antonia: Like alcohol.

Patrick: Antonia, how does it feel to be an American icon, responsible for Americana, as an immigrant?

A: Oh, thank you for this question. That is the most ridiculous thing. As an immigrant, I saw on the website of my home country, which is a notable capital in Europe, there is so much going on there right now, and I saw at the bottom of the page a list of Celebrities of Bulgaria, National Heroes. There are the most recognized writers, singers, musician, composers, huge names, and on the bottom of this list is “Antonia, creator of TWM.”

Mike: That’s awesome.

Patrick: There’s another question… would 5 wolves be better than 3? No, obviously. But, if TWM could have any other number, how many would it have?

Mike: One. The loners. Instead of the wolf pack. But three is the best, it’s the trinity.

Brian: Sixty nine.

Patrick: That’s the second funniest thing you’ve ever said. Antonia?

Brian: I was going to go with 42, but 69 is better.

Antonia: I’m sorry, I have no suggestions. You cannot break TWM.

Patrick: Michael, I have a question that might not be super appropriate [How many women are you with per week?]

Mike: One.

Patrick: Ok, what percent of sales for the Mountain come from Amazon vs. other sources for Three Wolf?

Mike: Yeah, I don’t know. We have like 10,000 customers wholesale customers so it’s really all over the place. It was probably maybe around 5%, maybe 5-10% Amazon. It’s probably around 3% now, maybe. It’s still in the Top 10.

Patrick: I mean you’re the art director. Now, what celebrity would like most of all to wear a TWM shirt? Living and dead. Who would you most like to get the shirt on?

Mike: Maybe Tesla? That’s a tough one, because the internet says EVERYONE’S worn it. Obama.

Patrick: That because of Photoshop?

Mike: No, I’m the Photoshop master.

Patrick: Between you and Antonia, who’s better at Photoshop?

Mike: I’ve been using Photoshop for 20 years, but she did TWM so she wins. Brian, who’d you want to wear TWM?

Brian: I thought Teddy Roosevelt is a pretty tough guy, I wanna see it. I would love to see Quagmire see him wearing it.

Patrick: Antonia?

Antonia: Frank Zappa for sure.

Patrick: We’ve got about 5 minutes left, any other questions or closing remarks?

Brian: I’d like to thank everyone for coming. I am so amazed to be here, that just some brain fart, ended up making so many people laugh and so many people rally behind it that people would want to hear about it, that some random dude from South Jersey could land here. I guess that just shows the power of the internet.

Antonia: Thank you all for participation and supporting us in such a touching way.

Mike: Yeah, I mean you guys did it, you guys spread it, you are the powers that be and let everyone know everything that’s going on. Me and my company thanks you from the bottom of our hearts.

Patrick: I talked to Antonia about drawing before the panel, but how would you feel, at the conclusion of this, if Antonia could draw us a moon on the board, to pose in front of the board, for a photo-op… for a Three Three Wolf Moon Panelist Moon Panel photo?

Robert Cockerham (Cockeyed.com)
Joel Veitch (Rathergood)
Neil Cicierega (Lemon Demon)
Ethan Zuckerman (The Berkman Center for Internet for Internet and Society) [Moderator]
danah boyd (Microsoft NERD) [Moderator]

This panel collects awesome people who have been doing things on the internet for some time now. From the ground floor, what have been the long-term changes in internet culture and celebrity that have happened over the last decade? Any thoughts on where internet culture will shift into the future?

Recorded by: @andthengensaid & @devanjedi
Edited by: @alexleavitt

NOTE: This is not a full transcription of the panel. If you have any corrections, please contact alex@roflcon.org.

Ethan: Welcome back everyone. This is the old guys panel. We are the old guys (and gals) in the sense that the people here are not just Internet flash in the pans. With entire schools of memes. I am not even going to attempt to introduce them.

Rob: I’m Rob Cockerham, and I run cockeyed.com. It’s probably best known for the “how much inside” adventures, light sharpener, ridiculous costumes.

Ethan: How long have you been doing this?

Rob: Since 1998: GEOCITIES. I’m pretty sure I was deleted from tripod.com at some point.

Ethan: Can we get the audio and video up?

(Plays a video from Cockeyed.com: Meet Rob. Self-taught scientist. Unlicensed Detective. Rob Exposed Scams, like Cash4Gold. Herbalife. LIGHT SHARPENER! How many feet of silly string can be found in a can? Welcome to Rob’s world!)

danah: Hello. So I am delighted with your adventuring. Maybe your childhood was much too entertaining? What was the first time you created something that got you in to trouble?

Rob: Uuhh, trouble. Trouble. I don’t know, the tree house, I guess?

danah: Tell us about the tree house.

Rob: I took some wood that looked like it would be good for a tree house and slapped it together about 15 feet up, then found out what the wood was for. Sorry, that wasn’t very entertaining.

Ethan: How much of my gold do I have to send to Cash4Gold for a Goldschlagger?

Rob: The Goldschlagger had so little gold in it, that it wasn’t good enough to weigh the amount of gold in there. But MIT has a scale that is good enough.

Ethan: We’re going to ask questions about the nature of internet celebrity. Now on to Neil.

Neil: Hi, what do you want?

Neil: In 2001, at the tender age of 14, I created Hyakugojyuuichi!!, THE ULTIMATE SHOWDOWN OF ULTIMATE DESTINY in 2005, and in 2007, The Mysterious Ticking Noise (Potter Puppet Pals). So those are my three things, and I think we’re going to watch the first one.

http://www.eviltrailmix.com/animutation/hyakugo.swf

Neil: I’m sorry I made you watch all of that. You have to understand that’s what passed for a meme back then.

Ethan: Let me take back my earlier question about a global question about crisis of weirdness. What’s the difference between animutation and animation?

Neil: There is really no difference. Animutation is just a word I came up with to describe the only thing I can manage to do in flash. Then people started enjoying them and making their own videos like it. There was one that was inspiration (eg., Hatten R Din). Salon.com did an interview with me. There was a small little fanbase of people who were doing it, and I called them Fanimutations, cause that’s like three words combined. It’s weird to watch now, but at the time it was really weird and people though it came from Japan.

Ethan: I love this idea that Japan is the well of weirdness.

danah: in the 1910s and 1920s there was a Russian filmmaker who ran out of film to film on so he would slice up film he had and juxtapose in weird ways. He had constraints but you have the opposite problem, how do you pull stuff together?

Neil: I literally had a folder of funny images that I’d saved. And then while making this video at like 2AM. Oh here’s some stuff, it’s from this Japanese Pokemon CD from a mall kiosk. This was before I knew what Japan was, but I just thought it was funny. There is this whole genre of meme driven compilation videos, where people take other videos or source material and try to make mutation remixes of them. Every once in a while someone says, “You inspired YouTube Poop, which is pretty cool.” And I’m like “Yeah.”

Ethan: Has YouTube cut you a check?

Neil: Not yet.

Ethan: While I still have that remarkable song in my mind, I will move on to our next guest Joel Veitch.

Joel: Hi! I’m Joel Veitch. (rathergood.com)

(WE LIKE THE MOON! Also inspired a Quizno’s commercial.)

Are those hamsters? It is possible. That’s all I can say. Is this an actual song in some other language? I think they created this song.

Ethan: What does it mean for your career that this is the work you are best remembered for?

Joel: It’s lovely, it’s wonderful, I’ve done quite a lot of songs like this, and that one is particularly painful.

Ethan: You’re the lead vocalist there?

Joel: I’m the lead vocalist. And everyone always wants me to do this.

danah: You do live performances?

Joel: I do! This particular one, I’d just been in the pub with my brother, and we came back and pulled out a guitar and it was improvised from stuff that was in the room. I had the animations lying around from previous things, and it was literally about 2 minutes of work.

Ethan: You’ve been known for bringing animated animals to the web. Is there some magic to this?

Joel: I mean, when I did something on the telly with those, I learned that not everyone likes that. Cute animals are an easy win, especially kittens, everyone loves kittens. The reason I started doing stuff with little furry animals is… You can love them, but only in the way you’ve love a terrible diseased child.

Ethan: So let’s get to the question: How has fame changed your life? And, Rob, you are flooded at all time in Sacramento… How has microfame changed things for you?

Rob: Not that much. The real impact is that you make something and you put it online, and people give you positive feedback, and they want the same thing over and over again. So you keep producing content and hoping to achievement and maybe more. Maybe I can get on Slate.com, or Good Morning America, or maybe people will make companion video. And I’ve had success with that! I know a lot of people have trouble finishing problems, and I don’t have that problem anymore. When I start projects, I finish them.

Ethan: Are you known in your neighborhood, in your city? At conferences, people don’t know who to flock to. For most people here, we don’t know who you are. Have you crossed over beyond that? You are the main character.

Rob: I’ve got my face plastered over everything I do, so I’m likely to get recognized. Sometimes I’m in a crowd where lots of people know me, and sometimes I’m in a place with tons of people, like a basketball game, and no one will know who I am. I go into hiding, which is a big problem for celebrities, being able to go into hiding, but I don’t always have that problem.

Ethan: Many people leave ROFLcon and never want to meet people again. Neil, how about you?

Neil: It’s the internet. Mostly in the past few years, I was in some of my videos on YouTube, and it’s totally contextual whether or not people recognize you. Sometimes I get noticed, and they’ll be like “Are you Neil?” I got a comment on my livejournal from someone asking if I was at South Station on Friday, and sure enough I was.

Rob: They’re always apologetic, like “I’m sorry to interrupt your day.” I’m like “It’s not a real problem.”

Neil: It’s not pervasive in anyway. I get recognized when I enter geekdom. For a stretch, my family home kept getting calls from little girls, about once a week, from sleepovers, being like “Oh my god, are you Neil?!” and my Dad would be like “No, I’ll go get him”, and they’ll start screaming in my ear. Now I’ve moved out, so I don’t know how they’re dealing with it, but I hope they’re being complete assholes.

Ethan: Did you ever respond by doing a live version of your song?

Neil: I’ve had to do that before, I’ve met a fan in person, and they’ve asked me to call a friend and do a puppet voice. What is a problem is when they scream in my ear and then hang up. I don’t really know what to do with that.

Ethan: It’s always been hard to know what to do with screaming fans. Joel, how do you deal with people coming up to you?

Joel: Well, if there was an A list and a B list of celebrities. I think that most people thought for a long time that I was a … They found it hard to believe that there was a person behind it. “Are you the Quizno’s guy? Do the voice do the voice!”

danah: Has any of the attention been negative?

Joel: To a certain extent. YouTube is the worst for comments. For a long long time I didn’t really have any negativity. The subject matter isn’t very controversial. YouTube had made things very different, in the old days people had to email me or join the forums to troll me, but now they can just comment on YouTube. It doesn’t matter what you do or how good you are, someone is going to say YOUR GAY ROAR.

danah: Do you all read the YouTube comments?

Rob: There are some that you read and some that you take to heart. It’s the worst place for comments ever.

Joel: It doesn’t really matter that much. The problem is my mum, who looks very carefully at everything I do. She’ll have a couple glasses of wine at 11 o’clock and start commenting “I think this is wonderfully harmonized!”

ethan: Does she have Joel’s Mum as her YouTube handle.

Joel: It’s not clear that she’s my mum.

Neil: I get joy out of responding to terrible YouTube comments. They’re not trolls, they’re stupid children, and someone needs to tell them they’re stupid at some point. Occasionally someone will give me an insensitive critique, but sometimes if you ask and actually engage them, they’ll be like “Oh my gosh, I didn’t think you’re reply, it’s okay, I guess.” A lot of people don’t post expecting them to respond. It’s a wire from their brain to the keyboard. You can get into arguments with them, but it’s a waste of your time. Oh, this is really poorly typed, Mister.

danah: Are there any critiques that are fun to engage with?

Neil: No.

Joel: When people are negative. I’m struggling to think of examples, but sometimes people can be negative in quite an entertaining way.

Neil: I did a video that was this Super Mario video cover, and it would just zoom in and pan on it, and lots of people responded with “That video sucks ass.”

Ethan: Rob, does this change for you because they know they are talking to you? As opposed to the disembodied heads of Harry Potter.

Rob: The further removed it is from me, the nicer it is. If they’re emailing me, they know I’m going to read it and maybe reply.

Ethan: What happens when the stuff goes mainstream? And when people start opening their wallet? Joel has sold out in some interesting ways. Rob, how does this work out financially for you?

Rob: I’m a SUPER MILLIONAIRE. A lot of people don’t know what that means, but I’ve got an example over there: (8+14=22). I used to not have any ads, then I added ads, and I started making money, so then I put ads on everything, because it makes lots of money. If I did a site about cutting up credit card applications, then I’d get credit card ads on my sight. So no matter how ridiculous the text I said was, no matter what I said about credit cards, the ads were still for credit cards. Which is a good kind of ad to have, that’s where the money is. It doesn’t drive what I do, but it’s certainly in the back of my mind.

Ethan: Will we ever see — how many jelly beans can you fit in a Lexus?

Rob: vitaminwater asked me…. No, I don’t think it’ll ever be that overt. I don’t mean to say overt, I mean to say that’ll never happen.

Ethan: you can see him thinking right now. Neil, this has lead to interesting things in television:

Neil: When Mysterious Ticking Noise won the YouTube award, they invited me and a bunch of other YouTube award winners, like Tay Zonday was on Good Morning America, and those guys were dicks. They reshot the interview halves. I also went on Fox News with Shepard Smith, who you might know from an anchor blooper video, and he accidentally says blow job instead of block party. Then after the break, he’s got his best apology face. And I’m on Fox News who I recognize from that video and I’m like … They show a video of the “Leave Brittney Alone” guy, and whoever edited it left in one “shit” or something. And everyone goes silent. Then later in the video he gives the exact same apology.

Ethan: You think it’s like a macro?

Neil: I think the guy is a robot, and we kicked him into his apology program.

Neil: It was just really interesting to be on TV. When I got home from New York, a few local affiliates did some stuff on the puppets thing. I have them all on DVR, and it’s exciting to see yourself on TV. It’s just an extra way to get extra eyes on yourself. I guess it’s different for you, because you were in commercials (to Rob).

Ethan: (to Rob) So you would never sell out?

Rob: When I first got asked for commercials, I thought I would get something about fans. I was amazed by how many fans thought it was brilliant, almost no one was nasty about it. Being able to make money from this means you don’t have to make something else.

Ethan: Was it a surprise that Quiznos was interested in being as weird as what you were putting up for a web audience?

Rob: Bearing in mind that I’m English and Quiznos isn’t a big chain there, it was sort of out of nowhere form me. They just did one with someone sucking form a horse teeth. They did it quite cleverly, they got a bunch of people. I did the ad and people went a bit mental.

danah: Did you have to modify anything? Did they change the words?

Joel: Rob, well you have to change the words to it being about a sub. They’re 30 seconds ad, so you’ve got time for them to sing some stuff then do some things about sandwiches. There are a lot of people who watch the TV who are aware of this. On the internet, you elect to clink on a link, and if you’re freaked out by it, well you did it to yourself.

Neil: At that point it’s not consensual any more.

Joel: But if people are watching the Superbowl, it’s not consensual anymore.

danah: You mentioned you change what you do based on ad. How do audiences affect what you choose to do or not do? Are there ideas that you can because there isn’t audience potential?

Rob: Sorry to say that I don’t put that much thought into the audience. I mean I really want them to like what I do, but like, if I get a suggestion. Part of it is that I like having my idea, and I can be “that’s my idea!” I like to have an idea, and then bring it. If it’s someone else’s idea, then I’m like “here’s someone else’s idea”. Which isn’t as awesome for me.

danah: Neil, how does it affect you? How much are you thinking about the people who will watch?
Neil: about 25% is about what people like. I keep making things that amuse me. Even if it doesn’t go viral, at least it amuses me. I’ve never lost followers from a video. I am aware that people are waiting for the next… I don’t want to make them wait 2 years, but maybe I’ll make them wait one year.

danah: How about you Joel? How much do you think about this?

Joel: This is a good point. You have to make something that you enjoy, if you’re thinking too carefully about what other people want to see, then it doesn’t have your soul, which means it will be pretty bland. If you do something you love, then you’ll love it, and it will have some kind of soul and some sense of originality. It might not get massive hits, but it’ll be worth doing.

Ethan: 15 minutes to go, question for Neil: Wanted to address the cranky old web coot syndrome.

Neil: Cranky Old Web Coot syndrome. If you grew up in the days before YouTube and 4chan and whatever, to see those get popular and see these jokes get done over and over again, and if you don’t really find it this funny, you get mad at these kids and you’re like “What are you doing to my internet!”

Rob: I love everything on the internet! I’m cold.

Neil: Like mudkips. I stopped playing Pokemon before mudkips existed.

danah: Can memes survive if there is no boredom or loneliness?

Joel: Memes will survive as long as people have to work for a living. They’re there to waste time. I met with someone one time who does market research and she says “What you DO is enable people to waste their time.” The majority of people who watch this stuff are people who are in front of computers to do something constructive.

Rob: I do just static content, just text and pictures. M-F had large hits, and Sat and Sun were low. It’s because people were watching my site.

Neil: So many people that view my stuff are in middle school and high school. By people I mean children. They do to school during the day, and when they get home they browse YouTube and they click on to the next video. Sometimes people will be inspired by my things to make their own videos and their own music. Even if it isn’t very good because it’s just some 13 year old shooting it with their camera phone. It’s kind of fun to see people who are doing things that are the beginning of what might be a career. I don’t mind wasting people’s time, because at least 1% of it is going to something good.

ethan: About flash. Flash is political, Apple doesn’t like flash. How are we going to archive this stuff? What would happen if flash were not available, to creators and iPad/iPhone?

Joel: The first thing is that I in no way condone the war against flash. I don’t think it actually matters to us, because all of these things can be published in another medium. From the archiving position, everything is in danger of being lost.

Neil: I haven’t actually opened flash in quite a while. I’m happy of any new reason to make fun of Apple users, so I’m okay with it. I think flash kind of already had it’s heyday — like AlbinoBlackSheep and Newgrounds — and stuff is still being done there. But YouTube has kind of changed the game. It’s gotten so that internet speeds have been fast enough to load streaming video.

Joel: Flash is an animation tool, and I frequently make things that are too big to public as a .swf, but they needs to be exported as a video, because they’re too big, but it’s not a problem.

danah: Joel, you said that all animals are cute but dogs are not as loved as cats. Where does this war between cats and dogs go? Where are we going with this?

Joel: It’s the light vs. the dark isn’t it. I really like dogs, there are some nice dogs out there. But I’m fundamentally a cat person. With a dog, a dog loves you, and if you died, the dog will pine. But with a cat, it pretends to love you, and if you were to die, it would just eat your corpse.

danah: Because they will eat you, they are fundamentally funny?

Ethan: Is there some aspect of things that is guaranteed to be funny? Is there guaranteed comedy gold on the internet?

Rob: Is there guaranteed comedy gold on the internet. That’s an impossible question. No. No there isn’t.

Ethan: The comparison between the work you guys are known for with Americas funniest home videos? Does that comparison apply to you?

Neil: I’m not sure if it applies to us, because we’re not really the found footage kind of thing. There have been a lot of TV shows who have taken the AFHV formula and tried to apply it to YouTube, but none of them have been as successful as AFHV, Rest in Peace.

danah: What is the path to getting traction? How did your videos take off? Is there one path?

Joel: There isn’t really a good answer to that, is there? Fundamentally, the internet works by people talking to each other. It used to be just email, but now it’s through a bunch of social networking things. If you make something that people think is cool enough to want to show to their friends, then people will see it. That’s all there is to it. With a commercial project, there is a lot of money for people to get their video to be posted on the front page, but then it can fall flat on its face.

Neil: In the older days of the internet, it was easier to see when a video went viral, oh yeah, it was on FARK.COM. Now it’s harder to pinpoint, it’s much more of a mystery.

Rob: I know when a ton of people get linked from a huge site, and then the site goes down, and then when it comes back up, some of those people go back.

Joel: There is a big correlation between being linked by a big blog and that will get you a lot of hits.

Ethan: Is it still about Fark or Digg or Reddit? Or is going through social media waves like Twitter & Facebook?

Joel: I mean it feeds off each other. If something is big on Twitter, a bunch of those poeple also use Reddit. There is a lot of cross over between Reddit and Digg.

Rob: People on TV don’t stop watching TV to go to their computer to watch you. If even a medium sized site links to you, and you get a lot of hits.

Neil: YouTube makes it easy for people to flow from one video to another, by keywords, and things getting linked to each other. The vast majority of the hits I get are from a different page on YouTube. For some sites, it depends on other blogs and other sites and link to you.

danah: The internet wants to know if you have day jobs?

Rob: Yes I do, sorry to go first. I’m an editor. It’s part medical and part legal writing.

Neil: I don’t have a day job. YouTube is giving me enough money from the ads and things that I can live. YouTube is a great system, they’re actually trying to get people money from their think. They started a rental service for independent film makers. My online videos got me a day job working for Plymouth Rock Video, I worked there as an editor and making web content for them, and then I got laid off. Because they kept hiring people based on things like that. It’s gonna happen someday, but they’re just kinda small right now.

Joel: I just have always done this.

Ethan: It’s been wonderful to have you here, who are living the dreams. Creating this stuff.

Joel: I do have a thought. Where we started with the long view. The internet is a brilliant democratizing thing. If you think about how it worked a long time ago, they’d get a hit then they’d shut down.

Neil: I remembered something this morning that I had totally forgotten about that once I was reading about this guy who had killed this girl and was planning on eating a girl, and I was looking at his geo cities page, and he linked to me, as some of the funniest videos I’ve ever seen. He just got life.

Rob: The internet is evolving, and there are always new tools, and it’s good to learn them, but there is also something to using the old tools that exist, and using them to make something. Second point: Take pictures of things as you are making them. Everyone always posts pictures of things that have already been made. But it’s more important to share the things as you are making them.

Ethan Zuckerman (Berkman Center for Internet and Society)
danah boyd (Microsoft Research)

When ChatRoulette allowed a new generation of internet users to anonymously heckle, flash, offend – and occasionally build meaningful connections with – each other, old-skool net watchers wondered, “Does this mean that the ‘net is weird again?” In this talk, they will resist the urge to wax nostalgic about the past, but they will use ancient net culture to help ask some serious questions about what’s happened to weird. Researcher extraordinaire danah boyd will look at what’s happened as internet culture has been legitimated and validated, exploring how we maintain a hacker’s mindset about the internet – and the world as a whole – now that our tools and methods are no longer obscure. International man of mystery Ethan Zuckerman will ask who in the world gets to shape internet culture in a globalized age as he wonders whether we’ll end up LOLing together at Kenyan netmemes or LOLing at the incomprehensible and other.

Recorded by: @flourish & @wphillips49
Edited by: @alexleavitt

NOTE: This is not a full transcription of the panel. If you have any corrections, please contact alex@roflcon.org.

Ethan Zuckerman

This is a weird way to start the conference, because you are not coming to see the academics. Academics are less fun than people who do cool things online.
I used to be a musicologist, and you study Bach, and you realize no matter what you do you are never going to write a rockin’ fugue. And at some point you go “Why the hell am I doing this?”
Academics will never create the mystery and wonder of the things that people who aren’t academics make.

Interested in community uses of tech, tech within impoverished communities. Why are some people really, really rich? Why are others really, really poor? Most of the answers are based in history. Bad answers are answers that postulate some human beings are smart and others are dumb. This used to be “eugenics” and now we call it the bell curve. What’s interesting is looking at how cool shit comes from every corner of the globe.

Who has tech, who uses tech, who doesn’t, based on who goes where, and who has economic advantages?

Malawian man, William: wanted to listen to radio, so he just made one.
I’m interested in what happens when we get to the point where people like William, who are utterly brilliant, suddenly have the chance to be brilliant in front of the world.
Challenges the bell curve idea about technology

Transitions to: “Daddy, where do memes come from?”

Where do memes come from?
Normally when we look at where memes come from we look at maps. (Gulf of YouTube, then an image of who puts out memes)
Data from “Know Your Meme”: looking at who/what generates memes, and where

Memetic creativity depends on how long internet has been available/widely available
Brazil/Russia/India/China: BRIC countries going to rule the world: memes emerge from these BRIC areas
As we start thinking about memes, we discover that BRIC countries are putting out a lot of memes: Golimar/India, Brother Sharp/China, Tenso/Brazil, Glazasok/Russia

If we look at world/meme map, we see there are few memes in Africa. As an Africanist, I am deeply troubled by that white spot in the middle of the map and I’m here to tell you that Africans are fighting back.

The first meme that I know of out of Kenya called “Makmende Amerudii”
Makmende is halfway between Shaft and Kanye West. He always gets the girl, etc.
He’s the face of modern Kenya mixed with blaxploitation films and he swept through the Kenyan blogosphere.

The first thing we had to figure out: what the hell does Makmende mean?”
It was used to refer to the guy who thinks he’s a ninja in Nigeria. This means “Makmende is coming back.” Everyone thought it came out of Swahili/English slang but it turns out it came from “Make My Day!” Makmende has been remixed onto the currency, the band who made it (Just A Band) is behind all these remixes so quickly we started seeing videos taking off on Makmende – Makmende meeting the Blair Witch Project.
Also: Hitler Downfall Makmende mixes (And yet Makmende has managed to not get taken down from Youtube)
Makmende stuff mainly happens on Makmende.com (Chuck Norris with an African twist)

Reminds me of hedgehogs
Lexicographers, anthropologists of words: What are the words people are actually using?
Clearly internet memes work in the same way as words: if nobody uses it, it doesn’t have life; if they do, it does. And it doesn’t matter what anybody else says – except it kind of matters what Wikipedia says.

So one of the first things Kenyans did was make sure that they got the Makmende Wikipedia entry summary deleted. Part of it was the people editing Wikipedia going “What the hell are you talking about?” What they had to do was say “This is our first internet meme, this is our thing.” But it got deadpooled immediately and now we’re hoping someone will revive it… but the point is there is a danger that we are keeping things like Makmende out of the whole meme thing?

Cultural context means that Makmende isn’t really easily remixable by non-Kenyans.
What memes can everyone enjoy? Ones that are already cross-culturally famous.
F’rex, the Backdoor Boys. We all feel comfortable remixing goofy Backstreet Boys songs because they are so internationally famous. (The global embrace of goofy identities.)

One question: “Is there one internet or are there many?”
One of the things we’re worried about is China, which has blocked off big chunks of the internet that we all care about. It’s hard to get to YouTube, but you can get to YouKu… Different protocols = different Internets

China has bridged the cute cat gap! They have cute cat dominance! And they have cats flushing toilets! Not just western-style toilets, but also pit toilets! They’re far ahead of us in cute cat technology!

Usually we don’t lol at Chinese lolcats and they don’t lol at ours… which is problematic! Someday we may actually end up with internets that aren’t talking to each other and maybe someday internets that CAN’T talk to one another! We need to meme at each other!

It’s hugely important that we build memes that Chinese people laugh at, this is what allows us to have single connected internet. The easiest way to cross cultural barriers is to laugh at. Mahir, case in point.

Mahir: “I’m going to let you in on the joke WITH ME. We’re going to go from LOLing at to LOLing with.” In that sense he’s my idol. Matt Harding is also my idol.

“We’re going to laugh at this together.” We’re going to go from loling at to loling with. Matt became very famous with the video. Matt’s response to controversy over “Sweet Lullaby” being actually by a guy in the Solomon Islands, not “Pygmy music” was to go to interview the people who actually made that song, to find out the story about it.

“For that, Matt is my hero of the internet.” We need to go from being Weird to Wide. Need to get past loling at and towards loling with. We should approach internet as anthropologists, not bouncers. We need to look for memes in China… shared reference, belief, if we don’t have the same memes, we’ll have different internets. Also, the word “erinaceous” is only a word if we use it.

Final slide bullet points:

- Weird can lead to Wide.
- Are we LOLing at or LOLing with?
- Anthropologists are cooler than bouncers.
- If we don’t laugh at Chinese memes, the censors win.
- “Erinaceous” is an awesome word.

danah boyd

A lot of what we’re talking about, we say is “culture,” but it’s really “subculture.” It’s cool because the internet is populated by geeks, freaks and queers, and we all enjoy them, and have for a long time – cats have been funny forever – alt.tasteless invading rec.pets.cats to teach them how to cook cats – it was funny then and it’s funny now!

Everything we’ve seen was first embraced by geeks, freaks and queers – not actually youth! Subcultures taking and running with things. But what do we do now that things have gone mainstream? You go into anywhere and people know the same jokes, which make it a delightful moment, but… what is inside and what is outside, as Ethan has pointed out? How do social scientists make sense of this?

Connections to rave culture: Sarah Thornton (studies rave culture) argues about the essentialness of subcultural capital. Bourdieu got very interested in the idea of “cultural capital” which is how we got the idea of high/low culture – attending the Opera is high culture; not everyone can get access to it; it requires money, privilege and connections. But then along come subcultures, which remind us that this is not the only way to build culture. Access is easy, but being in the know is extremely hard. Showing up to a rave? Not expensive. Figuring out where it is? That’s hard.

If we think about what’s going on in this space, we realize the connection to subcultural capital, but now everything has been sped up. At one point it would take weeks for a song to go East Coast – West Coast, but now it’s minutes.

FOLLOW THE MONEY: which keeps infecting internet culture in lots of ways. We’re in another boom right now – the MBAs invading our spaces. “Why are people wearing suits? What’s going on here? Where is my San Francisco?” The funny thing after the crash was that we had a moment to reconsider what it meant to be weird and reclaim the internet. But while the MBAs took over Web 1.0, now we’ve got more people invading our cultural space – the Marketer.

You know what marketers are really good at or obsessed with? Cool hunting. All of a sudden being weird got to be cool. All the artifacts of subculture have become mainstream culture. This isn’t new, of course – business loves subculture. HOT TOPIC!

When we think about “for the lulz,” we have to think about what it means. The monetization is one thing, but the politicization is another one. We think about Dadaists, Surrealists, Yippies – people were participating in these movements for the lulz but they had a political statement that they were making.

We’re at a really interesting crossroads. When I was a teen my friends were hackers and we spent a lot of time breaking into anything we could get our hands on. None of us thought twice about what we were doing. How stupid could people be? Did people really make their password ‘password’? But then my high school boyfriend got arrested for hacking into the Navy’s computers. And in the process of trying to defend him we discovered that there was a much wider hacking culture and we had to ask ourselves what it meant to be part of their culture.

For most teens that I interview, things are so mainstream. They consume memes but they don’t think much of it. There are no hackers anymore, basically. The way that that dominated every single internet community when I grew up? Not so much. But there’s a similar mindset in social hacking. It’s no longer about hacking computers, it’s about hacking the attention economy. People do these things but they don’t realize that there’s a collective.

And we’ve got cultural capital now. We’re becoming mainstream, becoming the dominant discourse.

What we have to ask is, what do we lose in this process? What are the economic possibilities of this? How much of the decisions we make are about becoming part of the mainstream and getting validated? We’re going after all the people who are “selling out” – but nobody’s quite sure what that means anymore. What does it mean to sell out? I work for Microsoft Research! To what degree is that selling out and to what degree is that just “working from the inside”?

Remember and own the hacker mindset. Think about where this is going and what kind of cultural hacker you want to be. How do we make sure that hacking makes connections, not splinters?

Question Tool – Q&A

Ethan: danah, you’re saying a couple things: we’re hacking different systems than we used to. We’re still trying to hack attention. But at the same time you’re pointing to the “crisis in weirdness” – what happens when the weird goes mainstream really quickly? Are we suffering from a national weirdness deficit?

danah: I don’t think we’re in a national weirdness crisis, we’re running into a new and interesting tension. Memes immediately become a commercial. The attention economy is where the mainstream is going. To what degree are we becoming the attention economy and to what degree are we challenging it?

[slapstick with a screen that comes up and down all the time]

Ethan: What Kenyan friends wanted more than anything else was for people to pay attention to them. Now that everybody has a voice, the scarce thing is who do people choose to pay attention to? That is possibly the answer to the question of “what’s so valuable about internet coherency?”

danah: Subcultures give us a place to be in the world, make sense of things. Finding other people like me, for validation. They overcome geography, but the question is, do we want one global subculture? Does coherency get us towards anything politically valuable? The problem is that people are trying to take fragments and make them cohere, and then depoliticizing them. Because all of these actions individually are making statements.

Ethan: One question is “Are you and I old?” I have the first consumer digital camera right here. And maybe we are! The /b/tards are sort of doing their own thing and not “hacking.” There’s not ONE way to be hacker, no such thing as hacker culture.

danah: Well, yes we’re old but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have something to learn from the past! I spoke at the “35th anniversary of the internet” and was like wow, um, we don’t think about the people who created the internet anymore! But there’s a lot to learn from people like that (Howard Rheingold etc). There are these patterns in it – and it’s worth it to learn this lore.

Ethan: Does it make any sense to follow meme culture outside your RL culture? The internet gives us opportunity to…spread more, to more people. We’re getting to point where we’re worried about our own subcultures, but less attention is paid to wide world of subcultures.

Ethan: I’m answering a bunch of questions about crosscultural memetics. We need to figure out how to archive global memes, yes – I run a website called Global Voices and we realized very early on that we need to find the guy in Namibia to be our African editor (or something) and have other folks in Europe, South America, Asia etc. And this is going to eventually happen in places like Know Your Meme. Now – is it just for the lulz? Memes are incredibly political! River Crab and Grass Mud Horse: when people got censored they’d start a new blog and then they’d say it; then ‘censor’ got blocked. They started saying ‘I’ve been harmonized,’ and then that got censored. Then they started saying ‘river crab’ because it sounds almost exactly like ‘harmonized.’ ‘Grass mud horse’ fights the river crab, because it sounds like an intense swear word. Fact is that viral ideas are pretty much the only thing that DOES save the world. Democracy’s a meme!

danah: re: economics and marketing, is very connected to what Ethan’s talking about. Because in Europe the assumption is “Oh, this is OK if the government does it, but it’s not OK if a corporation does it.” I think of marketing as a way of usurping power from people. I get frustrated with advertising culture because guess who clicks on ads? Those who are least privileged. The way your materials are being used are to market to people who don’t have the money/ability to do otherwise. Ad culture is not about making money in an evenly distributed way.

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#9 – And, of course, you want some WiFi, right? If you find yourself in the Media Lab, use media lab 802.11. For all the other rooms, use MIT GUEST.

#10 – And, as always, check out the online version of the schedule here.

Awesomely enough, right now, as legions of folks spill out across Cambridge MA (and we’re thrilled to finally meet you all in person) — I’m glad to announce a late-breaking (but terrific) sponsorship with our long time friends @ The Barbarian Group.

TBG jumped on board early on the ROFLCon train, and have been strongly along with us every step of the way coast-to-coast, from our original conference, to ROFLThing-SF, Titans of Small Town, and finally to ROFLThing-NYC. So, it goes without saying that we’re thrilled and absolutely excited to have them on board for our massive two-day homecoming to Boston in ROFLCon II.

It’s been two years in the making, and we couldn’t have chosen better folks to have along for the ride. We think that they’re excellent, and hope you get a chance to meet some of them at the conference!

Thanks to the wonders of modern science, no longer will countless internet kittens be without ice cream. More importantly, neither will you.

No kid. For one weekend only, local Boston ice cream institution Toscanini’s will be proudly offering THE INTERNET as a flavor, in honor of the impending reality vortex that is ROFLCon II. From what I hear, it will be a vanilla ice cream base with Nerds mixed in (DELICIOUS).

And, best of all, Tosci’s is literally just across the street from our boozy base for the weekend at the Asgard, over on 899 Main Street. So, if you’re around, dear attendees, absolutely worth checking it out.

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+++.

Oh yeah, we seriously went there.

ROFLCon’s had the honor of teaming up with tons of illustrious sponsors over the years: Mozilla, Breadpig, Omni Consumer Products — you name it.

So, really, when we got the chance to team up with San Francisco based angry-snark-and-rage-button-making outfit Snarky McFuckbuttons, how could we refuse?

What you see above is the amazing work of Christopher Palmer and the Snarky team, translating Almighty’s slick designs to button form. They’ll be available en masse only at the conference. Use them wisely.

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.

AND SPEAKING of the ridiculousness going on Friday night, our talented and brilliant ROFLStaffer Jesse Gold has put together this fantastically great promo of what to expect from the MemeFactory folks for their performance on the first night of ROFLCon. We’ve seen it before, and let us just say that it is absolutely worth checking out.

If you’re so inclined to learn more, you can also see a longer cut of this interview here. Mike and Patrick talk about the internet, creativity, higher aims, and the internet’s most meme-y of memes: the memebrid.

In any case, this is a good time to reveal at least a small part of our grand master plans: Jesse and International Man of Mystery Randy Plemel will be putting together similar long-format interviews with all of our guests throughout the conference that will be released CC post-conference, compiling an (as yet) unrivaled archive of primary source interviews with internet people. Should be sweet!