Nerd guru Randall Munroe once wrote in his webcomic xkcd, "I'm waiting for the day when, if you tell someone 'I'm from the Internet,' instead of laughing they just ask, 'Oh, what part?'"That day may have arrived with the advent of ROFLCon, a two-day Internet humor extravaganza at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology.

MIT might have a fairly high concentration of nerds on any given day, but last Friday and Saturday, the nerd-count was higher than average. The first annual ROFLCon (so named for the internet abbreviation ROFL, meaning "rolling on the floor laughing"), was organized by Harvard and MIT students. The conference consisted largely of panel discussions featuring such internet celebrities as Joe Mathlete, the One Red Paper Clip guy, and Leslie Hall of Gem?Sweaters, not to mention such luminaries as the CEO of I Can Has Cheezburger and the guy who started Chuck Norris Jokes.

Who are these people, you ask? Joe Mathlete, a Houston-based blogger, had no intention of becoming famous when he began a blog (marmadukeexplained.blogspot.com) on which he posts a Marmaduke cartoon with a deadpan, comedic explanation of the events that take place in the cartoon. Ian Spector, a 19-year-old Brown University student who appeared with Mathlete on a panel titled "You Can Get Paid For This?: Making Some Bucks," found fame in a similar way. Two years ago, when he was 17, Spector began a Web site to list jokes about various celebrities' mythic strength. Now, who hasn't heard something along the lines of "Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird?"

The element of chance plays a big role in the lives of Internet celebrities, it seems. While some, like Leslie Hall (her claim to fame is her vast collection of hideous, ornate sweaters) and Ji Lee (he posted speech bubbles over advertisements around New York City and documented his efforts on the Web), are artists, many more seemed overwhelmed with the idea that their hobby, be it LOLcats-the domain of ICanHasCheezburger.com-or webcomics, could reach such a wide audience and transform them overnight into Web celebrities.

Surprisingly, not many Internet-themed vendors were present at the conference. All visitors were given a can of an energy drink called BRAWNDO upon registration, and the Mozilla Corporation, which makes the popular Web browser Firefox, sent a person in a Firefox mascot costume, as well as a box of apples with stickers advertising Firefox.

The overall mood of the event was very positive. Free pizza from?Bertucci's on Saturday afternoon may have been pretty sweet, but I'd imagine most conferencegoers were exponentially more enthralled with the fact that they were only a few footsteps away from their favorite webcomic writers, snarky bloggers and webvideo stars-the author of StuffWhite
PeopleLike.wordpress.com and writers from the political comedy video site JibJab.com were both present. The student organizers seemed just as excited as the audience as they introduced their bewildered guests.