Meme police

Published May 5, 2010 at 7:34 p.m.
...MIT’s ROFLcon, a gathering of the Web’s biggest names, decides what will make you laugh and cry...
I just woke up from some sort of bizarre dream. I was at MIT. There was a weirdo painting nudes of President Obama on a unicorn. Several adults were dressed like domestic animals.

PLAY IT AGAIN: Internet tastemakers like Keyboard Cat’s Brad O’Farrell are subverting popular culture while influencing its future.

I just woke up from some sort of bizarre dream. I was at MIT. There was a weirdo painting nudes of President Obama on a unicorn. Several adults were dressed like domestic animals. Eight-year-old David DeVore, from the YouTube fave “David After Dentist,” was reminding everyone how hilarious it is when kids get high. Toward the end, some dude was aggravating motorists on the Mass Ave bridge by slapping KEYBOARD CAT HAS A POSSE stickers on passing cars.

Or maybe it was no nightmare at all, and instead I was hanging with the nerds who inspire everything that you find sad, funny, or perverted. A gathering that can best be described by a masturbating kitten — and whose name is derived from the Web shorthand for “rolling on the floor laughing” — this past weekend’s ROFLcon consortium on “geek, freak, and queer culture” attracted a historic assemblage of viral titans, including the founders of Regretsy, Lamebook, and Stuff White People Like.

To most folks, these oddballs are merely 15-minute famers — good for little more than a few chuckles on your lunch break. But at this conference, they’re John, Paul, George, Ringo, and Jesus — and not without merit. Strange and awkward as this eccentric parallel universe might be, its inhabitants exert a mighty influence on the majority through billions of YouTube views and infinite LOLs.

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