Internet Stars to Visit Boston

It rhymes with “waffle-on,” and it’s totally awesome...It’s ROFLCon.

ROFLCon is the brainchild of Tim R. Hwang ’08, a senior in Eliot House who is turning his potentially embarrassing obsession with LOLCats, The Tron Guy, and Chuck Norris Facts into what promises to be a historic conference at MIT later this month.

It all started when Hwang asked himself, “what would happen if we got all these people in one room?” Lucky for us, he decided to find out, enlisting a group of Internet celebrities to come to Cambridge for panels and discussions on Internet pop culture. Close to 500 people are expected to attend the conference, as well as the huge after party.

Attracting all this talent was easier than Hwang expected. “In certain Internet circles, I think we’re bigger than Jesus,” he says.

Ryan North, author of the popular Dinosaur Comics, knew instantly that he had to attend. “I remember thinking, ‘this is ridiculous,’” North says. “This is going to be absurd and I want to be a part of this.”

Though humor is a large aspect of almost any Internet phenomenon, ROFLCon isn’t all fun and games. Scholars from around the country will moderate the panels and address online pop culture from an academic perspective. The topic doesn’t currently command much serious intellectual study, but ROFLCon may help change that.

“A conference devoted to Internet culture is legitimizing in itself,” says Alice Marwick, a Ph.D. student at New York University’s Department of Culture and Communication and the keynote speaker at ROFLCon. “Studying these products is as important as TV and film studies.”

In just fourteen days, ROFLCon will bring the best of the Internet into real life. It’s every geek’s dream come true—but some favorites won’t be there. “Getting the ‘2 Girls 1 Cup’ people was a failed venture,” Hwang says. But that’s probably for the best.