The Online Gallery Playset is a fun new way to curate the Internet with a DIY miniature papercraft gallery (video). The playset was created by Aram Bartholl of Free Art & Technology.

via Free Art & Technology

The Internet Defense League is a network dedicated to spreading the alarm whenever the Internet is threatened by bad laws or monopolies. League members (including Laughing Squid) will receive alerts whenever an Internet threat is identified. Members will have the option of posting alert banners, calls to action, and other interventions on their websites. By broadcasting through member sites, the league will be able to spread the alarm quickly and widely. The Internet Defense League was created by Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian and Fight for the Future. For more info on the league see this article on Forbes.

photo by Blake Boston’s mother

Scumbag Steve is a persona of Blake Boston, a man whose MySpace picture was made into an internet meme in 2011. The photo shows Blake (then a high school student) standing in a hallway wearing a backwards cap. Unbeknownst to him at the time, redditors made up an entire character named Scumbag Steve by adding white blocked text to the photo that, as described by Know Your Meme, “centers around unethical behavior regarding drugs, partying, and other hedonistic behaviors.” Later, his trademark hat became a submeme as people began photoshopping it to other images using similar captions as the original meme. When Blake first discovered his image was all over the internet, he was hurt but later embraced what was happening and adopted the meme as his own.

In May 2012, according to TechCrunch, a Brisk Tea ad campaign featuring his memed photo began running on Imgur. He also began starring in a weekly web music video series titled Scumbag Thursdays as an effort to launch his rap music career. His debut video titled Scumbag Steve Overture currently has over 2 million views on YouTube.

Team Laughing Squid recently met Scumbag Steve at The Webby Awards in New York City and became part of his latest music video titled Dirty Girl. In the video, there are cameos of PRGuitarman (Nyan Cat creator) Brad Kim (Know Your Meme), Shira Lazar (What’s Trending), our own Scott Beale and David Klass, and yes, yours truly. For the record, Blake isn’t a scumbag at all. He’s a really great guy.

video by Ben Lashes

Scumbag Steve (Blake Boston) & David Klass at The 16th Annual Webby Awards

Chris Torres (PRGuitarman), Ben Lashes, Scumbag Steve (Blake Boston) & David Klass

photos by Scott Beale

Scumbag Steve (Blake Boston) & Rusty Blazenhoff

photo & text by Scott Beale, photo memeification by Ken Dashner

More information about the Scumbag Steve meme can be found at Know Your Meme.

Two billboards that read “Don’t mess with the Internet” recently cropped up in Texas in the congressional district of Representative Lamar S. Smith, the sponsor of the defeated SOPA bill. Erik Martin of Reddit and Holmes Wilson of Fight for the Future conceived of the idea. The billboards were paid for by a Crowdtilt campaign in just two days. Billboard designer Breadpig is pre-selling “Don’t mess with the Internet” T-shirts.

via Breadpig

photo via Fight for the Future

Photo Gallery: The 16th Annual Webby Awards

photos by Scott Beale

This episode of All Star Celebrity Bowling on the Nerdist Channel, Team Nerdist takes on Team MythBusters at the Presidio Bowl in San Francisco .

Is Chris Hardwick and Team Nerdist’s bowling superiority a myth? Who better to tackle that issue than MythBusters? Yes, on this week’s All Star Celebrity Bowling, Team MythBusters — Adam Savage, Grant Imahara, Kari Byron, and Tory Belleci — drop by the Presidio Bowl in San Francisco to investigate the truth behind the kegling prowess of Team Nerdist — Chris, Just Cos‘ Linda Le, Wired Magazine’s Adam Rogers, and Crabcat’s Holly Conrad. What do they find? Watch and see. And Team MythBusters is playing for Habitat for Humanity of Greater San Francisco.

The 16th Annual Webby Awards is hosted by Patton Oswalt and will be streaming live in HD tonight on webbyawards.com. The livestream is also available to view on iOS devices via The Webby Awards mobile app. The Red Carpet starts at 4:30 PM ET and The Webby Awards Show commences at 5:30 PM ET.

Tune in to the live online broadcast to see:

*Appearances from this year’s Special Achievement Honorees Louis C.K., Björk, Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, Juliette Lewis and Graydon Sheppard from Sh*t Girls Say

*Hallmark 5-Word Speeches from your favorite Webby Winners

*A can’t-miss special musical performance from Passion Pit

*Plus many more surprise guests as we honor the best of the Web

In the latest episode of Funny or Die parody show In Search of…, comedian Patton Oswalt plays a hoofed, scraggly internet troll who is willing to share some of his trolling secrets. The video is produced by Chip Flayton and directed by Don Red. Oswalt will host the 16th Annual Webby Awards on Monday May 21, 2012 which will be live streamed in HD.

via The Webby Awards

In this round of All Star Celebrity Bowling on the Nerdist Channel, Team Nerdist plays against Team Geek & Sundry at Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel’s The Spare Room bowling alley.

The cyber warriors of Geek & Sundry do battle with Team Nerdist. Will their virtual sword swinging bring them victory or will they get pwnd like n00bs in the wake of Team Nerdist?

TEAM NERDIST:
Chris Hardwick – Founder
Justin Willman – Magic Meltdown
Jenny Fine – Nerdterns
Mo Fathelbab – Nerdterns

TEAM GEEK & SUNDRY:
Felicia Day – Overlord, Geek and Sundry
Jeff Lewis – The Guild
Veronica Belmont – Sword and Laser
Kim Evey – Executive Producer, Geek and Sundry

In this Funny or Die video, comedian Patton Oswalt plays Walluks Bashley, host of parody show In Search Of…, who investigates the first “first” Internet commenter (also played by Oswalt). Funny or Die’s Charles Ingram is the director, editor and writer of this humorous piece. Oswalt will host the 16th Annual Webby Awards on Monday May 21, 2012. The Webby Awards will be live streamed in HD.

via The Webby Awards

Story of Send is a new webiste by Google shows what happens when you send an email using Gmail.

If you’re anything like me, you send and receive a lot of emails every day. But have you ever wondered where your message goes after you hit “send?” How does an email travel from your computer to your friend’s smartphone across the country or around the world?

We’re answering those questions with Story of Send, a new site that gives you a behind-the-scenes look into how all that virtual information makes its journey through the real world—from your Internet service provider to our data centers and beyond. Along the way, you’ll discover everything from where we filter for spam and scan for viruses to how we’re minimizing our impact on the environment through energy efficiency and renewable power.

via Gmail Blog

Jacob Appelbaum was recently a guest on The Alyona Show on RT where he talked about Tor Project and the fight for anonymity online.

We often talk about the increasing attempts by the government to threaten internet freedom and privacy, and create new ways to monitor what you do and say online. But there’s also a large push out thereto help internet users retain their anonymity, and even monitor how much meddling there is on your computer’s network connection. And it turns out one of the people behind these tools, has himself been a government target. Jacob Appelbaum, developer with the Tor Project joins the show

via Boing Boing

Mad Men actor Jon Hamm answered questions from teens and gave them candid advice for the Ask a Grown Man web series on Rookie, a website for teenage girls.

Farting is farting. Everyone farts. Go read that book Everyone Poops, it’s the same thing.

via Lindsey Weber

Simplehoney is a recently launched San Francisco-based travel startup that wants to make booking hotels easier and less stressful. The web service “matches guests to hotels based on their travel preferences, style and upcoming trips.” Sign-ups for simplehoney are currrently being offered and by answering a short quiz, hotels will be recommended to you. Currently, they are covering Hawaii and San Francisco but will be expanding in the future.

Simplehoney is founded by web developer Eric Nakagawa (who previously founded I Can Has Cheezburger) and former corporate attorney Joyce Kim (previous CEO of soompi.com). Here is the story of how they became co-founders, as told by Kim.

via TechCrunch

logo image via TechCrunch
other images via simplehoney

Photo Gallery: ROFLCon III

photos by Scott Beale

Wordless Web is an ingenious bookmarklet that removes all the text from a website with the click of a button. The bookmarklet is by Ji Lee and Cory Forsyth.

via Gizmodo

Los Angeles-based Jenna Mourey aka Jenna Marbles is an internet comedic personality that is best known for her humorous self-made videos on YouTube. Her 2010 video titled “How to trick people into thinking you’re good looking” boasts over 40 million views and her 2011 video “How To Avoid Talking To People You Don’t Want To Talk To” has nearly 23 million views. She uploads a new video to her YouTube channel every Wednesday.

Shira Lazar of What’s Trending recently invited Jenna to her show to “discuss Internet celebrity life and her unexpected launch into YouTube stardom.”

“Fan Art: An Explosion of Creativity” by PBS Arts: Off Book takes a look fan art and fan fiction online communities.

The fan art community is one of the most creative and active online. Taking pop culture stories and icons as its starting point, the fan community extends those characters into new adventures, unexpected relationships, bizarre remixes, and even as the source material for beautiful art. Limited only by the imagination of the artist, the fan art world is full of surprises and brilliance.

In the latest game of All Star Celebrity Bowling on the Nerdist Channel, Team Nerdist played against Team Walking Dead at the bowling alley at Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel’s The Spare Room.

Team Walking Dead includes Steven Yeun, Scott Wilson, Lauren Cohan, and creator Robert Kirkman, taking on Team Nerdist: Chris Hardwick, Indoor Kids Emily Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani, and Dana Gould at the Hollywood Roosevelt’s The Spare Room. No zombies among them… as far as we know, that is.

Staten Island-based Josephine Lamberti (aka Josie Dimples or “J-Dimps”) is having a lot of fun making videos with the help of her grandson Donny Brandefine. He’s been teaching his sassy 80-year-old grandmother internet skills and has been filming her for a couple of years running. The New York Times City Room recently featured her and is reporting that she is an “Internet sensation” and has caught the attention of several celebrities through her Twitter account. Dimples says on Twitter, “I want 80K followers (or 1 million) before I die”. She has just over 76,000 followers as of this writing.

Corey Kilgannon of The New York Times City Room wrote this about Ms. Lamberti:

Because of his grandmother’s smile, he gave her the nickname Josie Dimples — J-Dimps, for short — and began making videos of her as a wisecracking grandma with a secret penchant for “Jersey Shore”-style, fist-pumping dance moves.

“I figured, let’s put Dimps to work here,” Mr. Brandefine said. “It’s obvious she’s not your average 80-year-old.”

…Other celebrity Twitter users who have retweeted or corresponded with Mrs. Lamberti include Rosario Dawson, George Lopez, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Khloe Kardashian. Mrs. Lamberti exchanges messages on Twitter with some of the players on the New York Knicks. Nate Robinson of the Golden State Warriors sent her free tickets when the team was playing the New Jersey Nets at the Meadowlands and met her after the game.

Italy-based graphic designer Lumen Bigott has combined Keds brand sneakers with images from familiar online companies in her 2011 concept project, Social Media Shoes. She has more images at her Behance portfolio.

I’m a big fan of inspiration blogs, I also spend a lot of time in social networks and I love fashion: those three things are responsible of this shoes collection. The idea was to find the most important graphic elements of my favorite social networks and apply them to my favorite pair of shoes trying to keeping alive the essence of each brand.

via Flavorwire and Bored Panda

Now in its fourth year, The Webutante Ball is a celebratory evening event that is part of Internet Week New York 2012. The 2012 ‘Unruly’ Webutante Ball takes place on May 16, 2012 from 8 PM to midnight at Marquee in New York City. Tickets are available to purchase now. The Next Web and Unruly Media are two of the partners of the Ball.

Courtney Boyd Myers has a post on the The Next Web with more details about the Webutante Ball.

The winners have been announced for the 16th Annual Webby Awards. Winners will accept their awards and give their Webby 5-Word acceptance speech on May 21, 2012 at The Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City. The show will be streamed live in HD via the Webby Awards website. As we posted previously, comedian Patton Oswalt will host the show.

Here are the Special Achievement Award winners:

Webby Person of the Year: Louis C.K.
Webby Artist of the Year: Björk
Webby Actresses of the Year: Juliette Lewis and Graydon Sheppard of “Sh*t Girls Say”
Webby Breakout of the Year: Instagram

Congratulations to all the winners!

Gallery1988 Melrose is hosting Memes, a group tribute art show to the “Internet’s best inside jokes” which is also a celebration of the gallery’s 8th year at the corner of Melrose and La Brea. The opening reception is May 4, 2012 from 7 PM to 10 PM and the show runs through May 26, 2012. On Saturday May 5, 2012 from 12 PM to 2 PM, Gallery1988 is hosting a special event as part of the Memes art show. They are bringing in “Randall,” the voice from the Honey Badger video.

Gallery1988 celebrates it’s 8 year anniversary in style, with over 100 artists creating paintings, prints, sculptures and one-of-a-kind all in the name of Internet “memes.” Whether it’s Nyan Cat, I Like Turtles, Cat Breading, Star Wars Kid, Hipster Ariel or LOL cats, some of our favorite artists pay homage to our favorite way to waste time online…

We’ve invited over 100 of the gallery’s favorite artists, and some new names to 1988, to create artwork inspired by the Internet’s biggest phenomenons such as Antoine Dodson, Scumbag Steve, Sad Keanu, Philosoraptor, Sh*t Girls Say, Hipster Mermaid and Honey Badger. Artists have created original paintings, prints, sculptures and plush that have to be seen to be believed.

by Dan Lydersen

by Priscilla Wilson

Now in its fifth year, Internet Week New York is a festival that celebrates digital culture and is a showcase for New York City’s thriving technology industry. Internet Week New York 2012 takes place May 14-21, 2012 and passes to the event are available now.

…Internet Week New York 2012 is expected to bring more than 45,000 people from around the world to nearly 250 events at the festival’s new 50,000 square foot, two-story Soho headquarters at 82 Mercer and dozens of locations throughout the city, including such hot-ticket favorites as The Webby Awards hosted by Patton Oswalt, The Webutante Ball, Girls Who Rock, and Time Inc.’s “10 NYC Startups To Watch“.

Judah Friedlander: The star of 30 Rock was a 2011 Make The Stage winner for his entry “Everyone’s A Comedian: Comedy is Hard. So, Why Is Everyone Doing It On The Internet?”. On the panel: comedians Michael Ian Black, Sara Benincasa, Alf Lamont, and moderator Sean McCarthy