Gawker: valleywag, roflcon

Are Tron Guy and Xkcd the Future of Celebrity?

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 11:20:00 EDT

If you ever watched the Star Wars Kid and Homestar Runner, or gawked at the Tron Guy and web comic Xkcd, you're changing the future of celebrity. You're building a world where Paris Hilton and Tom Cruise will be replaced by captioned pictures of cats and clever comics about algebra. At least, that was the premise of a conference held over the weekend at MIT called ROFLCon, which brought together the web's most famous meme-disseminators to prove that In The Future, Fame Will Be Different. Will it really?

Wired blogger Jenna Wortham quotes opening keynote speaker David Weinberger, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, describing how web fame has transformed fame as a whole:

"We made him, made them, famous," Weinberger said while showing photographs of the Star Wars Kid, Obama Girl, the home page of Turkish net fad Mahir and clips of YouTube's ubiquitous laughing babies. Weinberger went on to describe the current state of the fame game, saying that the traditional model of Hollywood megacelebrity is "based on alienation" — a model, Weinberger says, that opens the door for us to reinterpret our notions of fame.
"[Hollywood celebrities] cease to be famous when we see them as they are," a concept he demonstrated by showing several gossip magazine pictures of celebrities without their makeup. "Blogging, however, is all about taking off the 'makeup.' They're exposing themselves as fallible human beings."

The same holds true for the rest of the web celebs. "What's famous on the web looks like it was done by a human hand," said Weinberger, while showing a Homestar Runner graphic. "They still feel like ours."

"It's not just the homespun quality of what's famous on the web. It's how fame works — it's becoming much more DIY," said Weinberger. "Fame is now living in a long tail, or a long continuum of ways to be famous."

But apparently fame hasn't changed all that much, since as London Guardian blogger Anna Pickard pointed out, most of the web celebrities at ROFLCon just happened to be men. One of the presenters even commented on this, and how internet celebrities have a chance to challenge sexism. (Still not sure how that would work.)

While it sounded like a seriously fun party at ROFLCon, packed with people whose online creations I've been enjoying for years, it's hard to take seriously the idea that web celebrities are truly challenging the sartorial-celebrity industrial complex. Many of the "celebrities" in attendance didn't know who the other celebrities were, and a lot of the attendees were fans of the obscure rather than the popular.

Ultimately ROFLCon was a gathering of people who are subculturally famous, the way many weirdo artists and creators have been for at least the past 200 years. I'd love it if Tron Guy's fame really were challenging Tom Hanks' fame, making all of us into potential celebrities. And making Tom Hanks into less of a big deal, which he really should be. But if anything, ROFLCon proved that challenge isn't happening. Web celebrities, if you can call them that, have hundreds of cool, devoted fans. But they're going to need millions before I'm convinced that, as Weinberger asserts, we're "reinterpreting our notions of fame."

I guess what I'm saying is that millions of downloads aren't the same as millions of fans. Until they are, Gem Sweater lady will never vanquish Paris Hilton. I'm not sure if that's a tragedy or a joke.

Tron Guy photographed by Scott Beale.

A week that saw Web 2.0 dethroned

Owen Thomas — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:00:00 EDT

Web 2.0 Expo this week persuaded that not only was Web 2.0 over, but saying it was over was over. To celebrate other Internet clichés, the 250 — that is to say, the 250 people on the Internet who matter to the 250 — decamped for ROFLcon in Massachusetts. Thank goodness, because some of us had actual work to do. Yahoo showed what it could do with its first-quarter earnings — which is to say, not much more than it had been doing before. Now Yahoos are bracing for more layoffs — when they're taking breaks from stealing credit and stabbing colleagues in the back. Facebookers, meanwhile, buzzed about a rumored feud between founders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz. Moskovitz denied the tiff, but then displayed enough 'tude to explain why even the contentious Zuckerberg might want to stay away. Who wins the dyspeptic crown? Anyone who made it through this week. (Photo by AP/Kevin Sanders)

Brawndo, the irony mutilator

Owen Thomas — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:20:00 EDT

ROFLcon, the Internet-in-joke gathering in Cambridge, Mass., has accepted corporate sponsorship — perhaps the most pervasive of all Internet memes. The giveaway bag all attendees received included a can of Brawndo, the faux "thirst mutilator" sports drink from Idiocracy, an obscure dystopian comedy whose popularity online far exceeded is theatrical run. Redux Beverages, whose other product is a drink called Cocaine, gave LOLcats fans a nod by informing them, "Yes, you can has caffeine." (Photo by dantekgeek)

My young, white, and nerdy boys, let me show you them

Melissa Gira Grant — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:40:00 EDT

CAMBRIDGE, MA — There's still hope, future. A full half of the people behind ROFLcon, the world's largest concentration of Internet-inspired pop-culture trends in one room, are female. Or, as they might put it, IRL LULZ 50% XX! As it's now officially impossible to host a tech-related conference without asking, Where are the women?, a "commenter" posed this to the morning's first all-guy panel. "Girls just have better things to do," answered Kyle "Paperclip to House Guy" MacDonald. Other possible explanations?

Joe "Marmaduke Explained Guy" Mathlete observed that maybe it's because girls grow up with "dolls," and boys get "G.I. Joes." Which are totally not dolls.

Deconstructing Web "memes" — the fancy term for online in-jokes — is serious business, but having a panel of dudes famous for making gags on the internet play Women's Studies 201? Enter sensitive girl-lover and online video svengali Andrew Baron of Rocketboom, explaining that unlike the rest of the internet, in Web TV, women — or at least the appearance of them in front of a whole lot cameras — do rule. Internet meme boys: they might not be the worst people to challenge stereotypes, but they sure are the most awkward.

(Photo: Kevin Chiu)