April 18, 2008
A surprising thing happened today: the Global and Mail ran a story by Ivor Tossell about… wait for it… rickrollling! (thanks Luke for the link, I’m glad someone still reads the paper;) )
I’ve been lamenting the sad state of journalistic reporting on internet culture for a while (in fact, it was part of the focus of the talk Leigh and I did at Notacon a few weeks back… where we also rickrolled the audience. heh!), so it was really nice to see an article that mostly gets it (4chan is mentioned!!), save for the slightly curmudgeonly “What is all this haberdashery!!!1 You kids get off my lawn!!!!!!1111″ kinda tone. And to be picky, LOLcats don’t speak like hacker kids, they speak kitteh! It’s totally different (GNARR). But how can you not love Tossells description of rickrolling as “a dead end made flesh and given a bouffant hairdo”?
So, I want to know who this Ivor Tossell guy is and how he convinced his editors to let him do that story. I suspect it has something to do with Facebook and LOLcats softening everyone up to the idea that hey, this internet thing may be more than just gadgets and nerds.
PS Fono says he’s a sad boy because there are no more good internet cartoons, like Magical Trevor and those fucked up GI Joe PSAs.
Tags: rickroll, journalism, internetculture, academic
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March 22, 2008
Everyone wants to know what the next big thing on the internets is gonna be… At SXSW everyone wanted to know” what’s the new Twitter?” We’ll I’m not exactly sure, but I think it has something to do with lulz.
Why? One word: ROFLCon…
Mix up a bunch of super famous internet memes, some brainy academics, a big audience, dump them in Cambridge, MA and you’ve got ROFLCon…
It’s a group dissection of internet culture. What makes it work, why it works, how it works. We’ll talk about where internet culture has been and where we think it’s going.
Then, there’ll be parties. A music show, with memes performing their work live. And then a big blowout party at the end, with everyone dancing and rocking out.
Needless to say, this might be the most important gathering since the fall of the tower of Babel.
The lineup of serious biznass people includes David Weinberger, Josh Schacter (the guy who made deli.cio.us), Anil Dash from Six Apart, while the crazy fun internet memes include Leslie Hall, the Homestar Runner guys, Tron Guy and Leeroy Jenkins! It strikes me as totally weird, amazing and important that all these crazy fabulouses are converging for discussion of something so ridiculous and fun as internet memes. I mean, Facebook is so serious and corporate in comparison… and blue-coloured. What does it all mean?! I’ll tell you when I get back cuz all I know right now is that I’m going to throw up I’m so excited.
(PS there’s still room in the car if any of y’all wanna drive down with me and Lukezors!)
Tags: roflcon, internetculture, memes, academic, thesis, internets
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