Though he didn’t invent icanhascheezburger.com, Ben Huh has capitalized and leveraged the lolcat meme like no one else on the Web. His two-year-old Pet Holdings, Inc. has spun off a book of those krazy kaption kats and amassed an entire portfolio of desktop diversion sites including failblog.org (photos and videos of things that have gone horribly, stupidly wrong), graphjam.com (PowerPoint presentations gone amok), and ihasahotdog.com (about, yes, dogs). His family of sites attracts over five million visits a daynumbers any major newspaper would be delighted to receive. And as he told The New York Times recently, his business model is fiendishly simple: “We’re turning user-generated content into editorial content.” In other words, the funny stuff we send him for free can end up in books, be used to sell ads, or appear on calendars, coffee mugs, and T-shirts. It’s supply and demand: There’s an inexhaustible amount of stupidity and cuteness in the world, and we all need something to distract us from work. Better still, those who watch are encouraged to submit. And thus the cheezburger cycle continues. Tonight, Hug shares from FAIL NATION: A Visual Romp through the World of Epic Fails and GRAPH OUT LOUD. BRIAN MILLER
Thu., Oct. 1, 5 p.m., 2009
