What did you do this weekend? I spent mine with several other Barbarians at ROFLThing NYC. It was everything I had dreamt it would be, and then some. Hey, even the New York Times thought it was awesome! But as your read that Time article, you’ll notice that some folks think its all just a waste of time.

So why the backlash? Well to the outsider, it would be easy to categorize this mini-conference as a place for the internerds to get out of their parents basements and share their tips on how to make your cat a superstar on Twitter or wear their best homemade costume of a character from the world’s first video game inspired movie. That was all true, but the reality was that the majority of participants were anything but that stereotype you have in your head. The people I met were mostly web designers, business folks, and others in various creative industries whom all share a common bond, making funny stuff for the web. I find this to be very intriguing because it says to me that the web internet is breaking down barriers that would otherwise probably keep such a diverse group of folks from mingling with each other.

Another thing I’ve heard, especially from the comments on that New York Times article, is that we have too much free time on our hands. To that I say, so what? I think perhaps the best example of the spirit of everyone at the mini-conference is the image above from Jason Scott’s presentation. To some people, this stuff may seem like a waste of time, but to us, it’s our form of self expression. I say three cheers to that! The internet is the new comedy club, it is the new community theater, it is the new dance hall, and most importantly, it is the new artistic medium.

Maybe we all need to mess around with making ourselves laugh a bit more, rather than taking so much in life too seriously. For instance, think of the best job you’ve had thus far. I bet it was full of fun and laughter. Yeah, I proved my point. Go forward and spread the word.

Lastly, I wanted to give a big public thanks to Tim Hwang for putting on such a great conference and to TBG’s own Eva McCloskey for helping with so much of the behind the scenes work. You guys are really awesome!