Every two years, entrepreneurs, researchers and accidental internet celebs gather at MIT for ROFLcon. As one would expect, there’s loads to laugh about, but mostly the conference is geared towards discussing what makes memes work and why.
The consensus from this year’s gathering? By and large the meme remains a mystery.
Beyond luck, a penchant for irony and weirdness, and a keyboard (cat), there’s no formula for getting your 15 MB of fame (or infamy). Then again, it may not matter. On the web, even failure will get ROFL’d right over. – Motherboard
One thing about memes that is not so mysterious, however, is that it’s getting easier for a meme to go mainstream. From a cultural standpoint, the internet culture is ‘the culture’, so what spreads online often gets airtime. Aside from culture, the mainstreaming of memes is made possible by infrastructure; it’s simply easier to bring memes to scale today versus just two years ago, when ROFLcon first launched.
For a behind the scenes look at the emerging ‘meme industry’, don’t miss Motherboard’s immersive documentary, “How I Got Famous On the Internetz.”
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One Comment
Hello,
Nice post.