ROFLcon is a funny convention, in both senses of the word.
At ROFLCON (pronounced "ROFF-L-CON"), they invite all the people who have become "Internet famous" to give talks on creating great content for the Internet. So they have the creators of famous Internet comedy sites like I Can Haz Cheezburger, Texts From Last Night, and Despair, Inc., as well as quirky Internet celebrities like the guy who dances around the world, the guy with the doped-up kid, and the guy behind the piano-playing cat.
Many come in costume.
ROFLcon must sound impossibly arcane and geeky, like an Amish Star Trek convention, but these are actually the people creating the Web's most viral content, so it's kind of ground zero for smart, funny folks on the Internut.
Since ROFLcon is all about Internet humor, we wanted to do something big and fun for this year's ROFLcon. We spent a few months kicking around ideas, but it was actually my wife who first said (as a joke), "So what are you going to do for Waffle-Con?"
"WAFLCON!" I shouted. "That's IT! The world's first convention devoted to waffles!"
The official WAFLCON flyer (click to enlarge).
We wafted into MIT on the first day of the conference, with custom WAFLCON T-shirts and flyers -- as well as an enormous waffle costume, worn by famous Internet comedian Moses Blumenstiel.
"Looking For Mrs. Butterworth"
"Welcome to WAFLcon!" we shouted, to confused ROFLcon attendees who thought we merely had an Elmer Fudd speech impediment. "We'll be serving free waffles tomorrow morning! First come, first syruped!"
As with our Twitter Bird Prank, Moe was an instant celebrity. People kept stopping him for pictures and autographs, sniffing him hungrily for the scent of butter or syrup.
There's something about waffles that is intensely erotic to women. Especially Aunt Jemima.
The fun part of our waffle publicity was inviting all these Internet celebrities to our waffle brunch ... until, by absolute coincidence, we ran into DAN THE PANCAKE MAN.
An uneasy tension as two mortal enemies collide
Dan Lacey is "The Painter of Pancakes," another Internet in-joke revolving around his professional oil paintings of famous people like Barack Obama and Sarah Palin ... with pancakes on their heads.
Unfortunately, as waffle lovers know, there is an intense rivalry between waffle lovers and the pancake people. It took every ounce of self-restraint for Moe to pose for this picture with Dan, especially when he saw that he was wearing a knit fedora in the shape of a frying pan, with a pancake inside.
To a waffle lover, that pancake hat is like wearing a ham into a synogogue.
We managed to pull the two ancient enemies apart, and finish up our publicity blitz (not cheese blintz), preparing hundreds of ROFLCON attendees for the giant WAFLCON brunch the following morning.
As people found out that ZUG.com was behind the stunt, most decided it was a prank. We were amused to see the buzz on Twitter about the WAFLCON "prank," and how there was no point in showing up the following morning, because anyone who was stupid enough to fall for that would be left cold, hungry, and waffle-less.
The more we heard about the reaction to WAFLCON, the more we felt that an even better prank would be if we really did show up the next morning with 1,000 waffles.
Please continue to Part 2: Hot Waffles, Coming Up!
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