It was somewhere around the 1 millionth Rick Astley reference when my eyes started to glaze over and a dull hum overtook my thoughts. The surroundings at MIT - a giant walking Firefox, guys in Anonymous masks, the inescapable glare of Leslie Hall's sweaters the gentle, ever-present smile of the Tron Guy and the other Branwndo-fueled insanity had all become too much.

I was ROFLCon-ed out.

Going into ROFLCon last week I was uncertain what to expect. (NOTE: ROFLCon - "Rah-ful-Khan," or as Whitney at Pop Candy put it "sounds like 'waffle-con.'")

A reader had tipped me off to the first-of-its-kind convention, and it seemed like:

a.) The type of place a blogger/columnist who writes about Web culture, pop culture and technology should be
b.) A chance to meet face to face with some of the people responsible for innovative sites and content online
c.) A decent field trip and chance to be out of the office.

Looking back over the weekend that was I can tell you I'm still not sure what happened or how to describe it.

If I worked for MTV I'd say something like "What happens when the people who make cool stuff on the Internet get together with their crazed fans? Find out at ROFLCon!"

While that would be partially accurate, it would not be entirely fair to the thinkers behind ROFLCon, who wanted to create an environment where it would not only be OK to geek out (hard core) but also have serious discussion about the people, tools, trends and dynamics that are creating popular memes and Web sites.

Sure ROFLCon brought together a host of "Internet Celebrities," but it also gathered the "new" new Internet entrepreneurs like Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, Drew Curtis of Fark.com, Matt Haughey of MetaFilter, Joshua Schachter of del.icio.us and the gang over at Mozilla, who are responsible for Firefox.

Sessions at the conference ranged from how people became Internet celebs, how to survive that fame, the systems people use to create and make popular memes, the role of marketers in these new frontiers and where the next big thing may come from.

At least that's what it said on paper. The truth is that sometimes the panels got into those deep discussions on what it all means to develop an online community or create the structure for online communities. But sometimes it devolved into in-jokes, crowd-pleasing one-liners or just awkward silence.

What ROFLCon had in imagination it sometimes lacked in execution, which was evident when panelist were unprepared or just didn't answer questions, or audience members took their questions as a chance to make a broader statement.

But looking back at it now (after a good day of rest) I think that may have been part of the point.

Another MTV tagline for ROFLCon could have been "ROFLCon - Where the Internet Comes Alive!"

The more I think about it the con was two days of a living, breathing, shouting, real-life Internet. It was "The Blog That Walked (and Talked) Like a Man."

Just like any good Web site or blog there were rules, plans and a structure in place, all of which start to change and mutate after it's discovered by a passionate (and often vocal) audience.

Strangely enough this all seemed to crystallize in the one panel I thought I would hate: LOLCats.

If there was one theme I picked up on all weekend it's that you can't force a meme just like you can't force a new product on the public. The LOLinaries on the panel told the audience it's impossible to predict what's going to take off and what's not, but once it does you've got to just let it go and see where the community takes it.

"It's all dependent on the passion of the fans and devotees," said Adam Lindsay of LOLCode.

In that sense the brains behind ROFLCon simply set the table and waited to see what would happen. Was it a perfect affair? No. There are certainly things that can be ironed out if a ROFLCon 2009 is in the works. But overall it was an unusual convention for an unusual crowd - for those two days if you remotely loved the Interwebs or something it provides, MIT was the center of the universe.

Still, if I had to make one request for ROFLCon 2009 - I Can Haz Yacht Rock?

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