My God, it’s Full of Internets

If you’re a commentator trying to shake up the system, being angry at people who create things out of love will get you nowhere. Teach them to be angry alongside you instead.

Toscanini’s “Internet” flavor: vanilla with nerds. Photo by Dave Coustan.

So anyway, how bad was our lack of diversity? Out of the 160 people we’ve ever featured or asked to speak at ROFLCon, 26 have been women (16%), 19 have been people of color (12%), and 6 have been women of color (totally embarrassing %). The stats went up from ROFLCon I to II (+1% for women and +5% for people of color). Obviously this completely simplistic sociological inquiry via Google Docs leaves out a lot of other important factors, but overall it suggests a homogeneity that isn’t pretty.

SO JUST PUT MORE WOMEN IN IT RITE?

There’s been a smorgasbord of suggestions for improving diversity at tech conferences, but we aren’t a tech conference. Most of the speakers in general on this Women for your Conference list are totally unsuitable for us: those women are srs bsns, and we just aren’t.

This is a controversial statement, but I want to make it clear: it’s hard to find women that fit the bill for the original ROFLCon agenda because there simply aren’t that many. Women, for the most part, do NOT make the memes that circulate on that particular corner of the internet; when they do, they usually don’t take ownership because it becomes uncomfortable very quickly.

For ROFLCon II, we tried hard to invite Boxxy, the most famous female user on 4chan: we even called her high school! But she and her family are understandably wary about Boxxy’s fame being tied to her real world identity, not just because of the violent threats. For all of us, it’s a taken-for-granted privilege that what we did in our youth didn’t determine how we would be judged in college and in life; that grace may not be afforded to Boxxy and others like her. As ROFLCon staff Allie Pape put it beautifully over email 2 years ago:

Like it or not, women aren’t doing silly things on the Internet, or deeply personal things on the Internet, without consequences (look at [former Harvard sex blogger] Lena Chen). So I think a lot of them aren’t doing these things at all.

Basically, the nature of white, male privilege on the internet and in the world is that you can do transgressive stuff and become famous for being funny, while most women or people of color who do the same will be attacked and stigmatized for as long as the internet cares to remember simply because they stand out. Their voices get marginalized, drowned out by the furor. That’s why even when they are creators, so many of them stay anonymous, or hidden from the public eye.

Is this indicative of a negative, hostile environment for women and people of color on the internet (and in real life)? YES. Do I want to fix this? YES. Are there people who defy this and do it anyway? YES. Is ROFLCon happy to support them? HELL YES. But, is ROFLCon capable of fixing the misogyny and racism of the internet from which it sprung? …

Are you serious?

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