ROFLThing Draws the Internet Celebrities
There’s famous, and then there’s internet famous. The latter, often obtained accidentally, is often the result of a popular videos, catchphrases, images or ideas spread virally through the Web.
To explore the meaning of both and the nuances in between, hundreds of Web celebrities, bloggers, video creators, fanboys and girls crowded into downtown Manhattan at Santos Party House on Saturday for ROFLThing NYC, a conference devoted to dissecting and celebrating the people behind Internet memes. (ROFL being Internet shorthand for the phrase Rolling on the Floor Laughing, commonly used during instant messaging or on message boards.)
ROFLThing NYC is an offshoot of ROFLCon, a three-day conference spearheaded by then-Harvard undergraduate Tim Hwang in April in Cambridge, Mass. Since then, Mr. Hwang, along with his fellow organizers, has been hosting smaller, satellite events, called ROFLThings, around the United States.
:
