@lindsay.at

Jonathan Coulton: I do think the common thread that a lot of internet culture shares is a kind of hyper-postmodernism. I barely know what I'm talking about here so bear with me, but you know I think there's a kind of humor, in particular, that is unique to the Internet and it has to do with referencing other things in an ironic way, in re-imagining them in a certain way, recycling ideas. Of course this is part of what postmodernism means, but I think there's sort of winky aspect to the things that become really popular in internet culture that sort of sits on top of that standard postmodernism, you know, collage combination of different ideas. Look at LOLCats for example. Which is bizarre and could only exist on the Internet and is, I think a real good measuring device for determining if somebody is part of internet culture or not. You know, they're basically funny pictures of cats, with a caption you know. And so you can say, well that's dumb, that's you know there are lots of greeting cards that are like that. We've had that for a long time. But there's a self-referential quality to LOLCats and it's the language that cats speak, somehow, it's this kind of pigeon language that cats speak and it kind of makes sense. I mean, if you're a fan of LOLCats, the reason you like it is because you see a caption and a funny picture and yes, you are looking at a funny caption of a funny cat picture, but also there's a joke there and it's very hard to explain what that joke is to somebody who doesn't get it. And it has to do with that language that cats speak, that is made up, that somehow a very large group of strangers all seems to agree that this is the language that cats speak. And so, I sound like a lunatic just talking about it. And that is, I think, a perfect example of the things that become popular on the Internet and why, even though I haven't really said why because I don't even know why. 

Thanks to @siracusa for pointing this out. Note that this is a transcript from a video interview, and not necessarily reflective of Jonathan Coulton's prose style or even spelling of “pidgin.” Grr.

Anyway, this segment collided in my brain with what Noel Murray has been grappling with in multiple “A Very Special Episode” columns that I read recently, namely ones on MST3K and especially The Simpsons. This fragment from the former steps a little closer to what's so utterly compelling about referential, highly-specific humor:

That’s reflective of the whole Mystery Science Theater 3000 ethos. The show featured a barrage of pop-culture references, drawing on movies, music, sports, television, commercials, comics, children’s books, and more, with a good mix of old and new. When I watched Episode 403 for the first time, my eyes popped the moment Mike Nelson appeared as Morrissey, because I wasn’t expecting a Morrissey joke in a cheap, science-fiction-y basic-cable show. Nor was I expecting the show to drop references to Goodfellas, Muppet Babies, Ray J. Johnson, Mel Tillis, and perennially disappointing NFL quarterback Jay Schroeder. The writers free-associated, and if their free-associations jarred one viewer’s memory, they’d made a new fan. In some ways, MST3K is the ultimate example of what I referred to in my Simpsons “Very Special Episode” column as “laughing at the known.” Quite often, the references on MST3K were funny to me only because I “got it.” And when they referred to something I’d never heard of, I didn’t laugh. 

And that reminds me of the person who introduced me to Mystery Science Theater 3000. My girlfriend at the time, she mocked my occasionally goofy sense of humor, especially my favorite joke ever. I had the last laugh (and MST3K burrowed its way deep into my heart) when the episode featuring “Wild Rebels” referenced the punchline, “Silly Rabbi, kicks are for Trids!”

Anyway, it all forms part of what the web, blogs, Twitter, and meeting new people are about for me. I've thought of myself as alone-in-my-head for so long (being an oddball geek growing up, discovering my own particular tastes for myself, often by myself) that it's utterly compelling to find a common point of reference. For that reference to make its way through the gauntlet of mass media to broadcast, well, that in itself is laugh-out-loud-worthy. Twitter? Dozens of little points of connection, every day.

ROFLCon is slipping away into old news now, but for all my posts on the topic, I didn't get to talk much about my own panel (which, incidentally, has just been released on video). So, I shall navel-gaze upon the nature of memehood. My blog, my prerogative.

As I've alluded to in my guest post on the Digital Natives blog, the LOLCats panel moved quickly, to great effect. I had imagined a much more chin-stroking, pipe-smoking, deliberate affair, but Alexis Ohanian of the LOLMagnetz and of the big hands knew to keep it moving and light.

However, as a result, there was a bunch of stuff I thought I'd get a chance to talk about, but didn't get to say while on the panel. As we're at LOLCODE's anniversary, I thought I may as well collect those thoughts now.

On the panel and the one preceding it, everyone got to comment on success being a fluke. I expanded upon that, and was quoted quite extensively, that you can't own the idea. I felt it very acutely because there was an inevitability to LOLCODE. If not me, anyone could have come up with it. If I hadn't've put LOLCODE out into the world, someone else would have within the month. Variations on the theme already existed.

I also have strong feelings on the meme-ownership issue because of the issue of standardization. A computer language doesn't really prosper when it varies from implementation to implementation. On the other hand, I think the LOLCODE meme would be strangled at its infancy had I taken hard line with the specifications. "Ye canna call native functions tha' way! We haven't defined it yet," would have been foolish. LOLCODE is a much stronger meme than it is a programming language.

And that's a key change in how I've viewed LOLCODE over the past year. I thought it could be a nifty, fun, teaching language, but it hasn't been that. What it has been is a fantastic, fun "Hello World" for compiler writers. I'm pleased as punch that LOLCODE gets mentioned next to Microsoft's DLR and Perl's Parrot virtual machine now. That in itself makes me think that LOLCODE-as-meme will be around for a fairly long time, being so embedded in the computing tools of the future.

During the LOLPanel I also thought there might've been an opportunity for more shout-outs. While I thanked most of them personally for the inspiration, I thought it should be done more publically. I did get to thank Stephen Granades personally for his LOLTrek for inspiration. Although I had been seeing cat macros around the place for months, and they amused me, LOLTrek was the first variant on the LOLs that made me think there was really something to LOLCats. I've long acknowledged the analytic role Anil Dash's and David McRaney's articles played, but regretted not approaching Anil in person.

I also wanted to say here, for the record, that the people I really admire in the web and meme sphere are the web-cartoonists. The LOLpanel were recognized for their contributions to humor over the past year or so, but I really think the people who bring teh lulz day after day, week after week, really don't get the recognition they deserve in that community. (Of course, they probably don't cry too much about it, having sussed profitability from free content on the web ages ago.)

I will need to discuss traffic more some other time. It's an incredibly rich topic. I know one of the first overwhelming moments with LOLCODE was "Oh, shit. I had no idea there were so many people on the internet." It's pretty overwhelming when thousands of people march through your front door each minute, as happened on the first day of LOLCODE's launch. Now, a year later, after interacting with people incredibly versed in the internet at ROFLCon, and seeing a steady march of new blog and forum posts introducing new people to the language, my thought was "good lord, so many people haven't heard of LOLCODE yet."

That keeps me in my place, but I also see it as an opportunity.

ROFLCon felt like a life-changing event. I don't know if the effects will really be that long-lasting, but it feels good for now. What really affected me was the massive outpouring of positive energy from nearly everyone: the enthusiasm of the organizers was infectious, and the attendees were touched with a sense of childlike wonder upon learning that the conference was really real. At first I was concerned about the dynamics of 600 introverts in the same room as 100 extroverts (largely from the marketing contingent), but it worked. People found their respective crews, and there were enough good will and shared reference points that misfits like me could wander from group to group with no resistance and lots of good will.

I was blown away by all the kind words said and blogged about the LOL panel. I actually couldn't explain the effusive praise from such worthies as David Weinberger. Alexis Ohanian, our moderator, certainly kept things moving and varied, and the panel seemed pretty well-balanced in their contributions. What really helped the panel, however, was the overwhelming goodwill from the audience. LOLCats were simply a fun, silly thing to talk about, because kittens make everything better.

This is relevant to my interests

What surprised me most about ROFLCon is how much I was supposed to be there. I thought it was right to attend completely separate from my professional duties at the university: LOLCODE has always been a separate thing, a lark ostensibly done in my spare time. For so long I've said my personal shtick was about tools for creativity, and the day job was more about multimedia content distribution, shading towards metadata, user-generated content, and vernacular creativity. I can be myopic sometimes. The biggest facepalm moment was learning that new pal Kenyatta was 'yatta' from the unmediated blog, from which I nabbed loads of articles for an old work blog. Of course, I didn't learn this until an hour after he left.

I loved how nearly every interaction could be memorable. I think the energy behind this was down to how young the participants were: starry-eyed youths were still in their teens, and the majority of the panelists who had done something tended to their twenties and thirties, with only a few incursions northward. This was in sharp contrast with the professional and academic conferences I'm used to: the young ones are comfortably into their early-to-mid twenties, and the accomplished ones are far older. And yet it seems I'm still most impressed with the youngest set at those same conferences.

I spoke with a fair few young people there. By the end of Saturday afternoon, I was pretty tired, emotional, and perhaps a bit full of myself. I ran into a young man named Dixon, describing himself as a Smosh fan. He "so wanted" to come to a school like MIT, and I told him of the relief I felt at MIT and other similar-tier universities recommitting to need-based financial aid. Once again, if you show up as a desirable student, they will make it possible to attend. And if you're there, there's no problem with who you are, regardless of color of skin: the MIT I know is one of the ultimate meritocracies. He seemed a bit relieved and... hopeful. I have hope for him, too.

MOAR

ROFLCon itself might be best termed a symposium: it was neither a conference in a traditional academic sense, nor was it like a convention, with the usual commercial bent (I wanted to get schwag from a number of creators, but there was no way of grabbing it.) Rather, it was a gathering of practitioners (meme creators), theorists (like the keynotes and Josh Green's session), and some engaged commercial interests (e.g., marketers) about the economy of ideas and internet micro-celebrity. It was an alchemical combination, not least because the practitioners were humble, introspective, and tended to be thoughtful about what led to their being there.

I would love to see another ROFLCon happen. I will do what I can to help make it so. I think there's more room for an academic track, not only in the social science of memes and microcelebrity, but on more technical subjects on the dissemination of ideas and traffic analysis, and even on practical technical matters like scaling to handle such traffic.

Can I imagine ROFLCon being a yearly thing? An institution? I'm a bit more dubious about that. What made ROFLCon so wonderful was that sense of childlike wonder from everyone, a hovering sense of disbelief just over everyone's shoulder that it actually happened. The positive vibes that grew from that disbelief permeated all the ecstatic interactions described above. Once the event gets taken for granted, I think it will be time to move on.

And if/when negativity or jadedness invades ROFLCon, it won't be pretty. This year, anonymous was in full force during the final two sessions. Props to them and their session about Scientology: I really think it's a brilliant social hack they hit upon in targeting the CoS. But when they're a masked mob causing havoc with no answerability... not so much. Not clever and not funny, and it really encroached on the good will that permeated the rest of ROFLCon. If ROFLCon can stay on the sunny side of the street, it has a bright future.

The Language Log points out an article from the Boston Globe about a grammar vandal:

The ads said "run easy," but they made Kate McCulley's teeth clench. The 22-year-old grammarian stared at Reebok's Marathon-themed posters on her commute from Somerville to Fort Point this spring, on her way to her job as a research assistant at a concierge services company. "RUN EASY BOSTON," the ads announced, inviting locals to… do what?

She calls herself The Grammar Vandal, but I know this is really the start of the Militant Grammarians of Massachusetts, perhaps only a couple years late.

(Via Language Log.)

Inspired by David McRaney, Anil Dash, and my dear friend Anne, I started thinking of kitty pidgin and its simple grammar, the idea struck me, what else deals with simple grammars?

I bring to you LOLCODE, an as-yet unspecified and unimplemented programming language.

The first step is always Hello World:

HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
VISIBLE "HAI WORLD!"
KTHXBYE

Oh. That was quite easy. The next thing people learn to do is count to ten:

HAI
I HAS A VAR
IM IN YR LOOP
	UP VAR!!1
	VISIBLE VAR
	IZ VAR BIGGER THAN 10? KTHXBYE
IM OUTTA YR LOOP
KTHXBYE

I suppose you could count the even numbers by saying "UP VAR!!2".

Error checking on file open (and then conditionally printing the file) would be the next thing to implement:

HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
PLZ OPEN FILE "LOLCATS.TXT"?
	AWSUM THX
		VISIBLE FILE
	O NOES
		INVISIBLE "ERROR!"
KTHXBYE

Have any other contributions? Keep on the lookout for lolcode.com....

[Update: That was the soft launch. Did you miss it?]