I was at DashCon.. AMA

durbikins:

First off… Why? How exactly was it? Was everyone as obnoxious as I am making it in my head? Did you go to any panels and if so, were they poorly managed? Would people keep constantly singing Frozen songs only to have someone shut them down them go on a rant about how Frozen is problematic? Were there any fights or heated arguments? How bad was everyone’s taste in anime? Did everyone look bored and like they wished they were at Durbikon? How did the outsiders generally react to this mass? Oh yeah, and the most important question, were you there when “the hotel staff threatened to shut it down”?



Please reblog and respond because not only me but hundreds of people really want to know what happened.

I’ve written some posts explaining some of this, but I don’t mind typing up another one.



At the time I bought my badge – which was sometime last year (yes, I knew about it back then) – it didn’t entirely occur to me that a Tumblr convention would be a absolutely horrible idea. And I still don’t think it is; it was just executed in the worst way you could possibly imagine. I had no way of knowing ahead of time that it would’ve turned out to be THIS bad.

If you go to the DashCon website (http://dashcon.org), you’ll note that there are “committees,” which are predefined by the convention to represent each major fandom that they expected to be present at the venue. See, back when I bought my badge, there was an anime committee. One of the reasons why I bought my badge was because I thought there would be a lot of anime fans at the event, and I frequent anime conventions. At some point, the anime committee ended up dissolving (all I can remember is that they used to have a blog that wouldn’t get updated for months) and the next time I checked, the only anime-related committee left was one dedicated to Hetalia.

I don’t care for Hetalia, so that was a bummer. The majority of people slated to be in attendance were Supernatural/Doctor Who/Sherlock/Harry Potter/etc. etc. fans, which aren’t things I’m a fan of. Still, I’m a local to the area, meaning that I didn’t really have to go out of my way to attend DashCon. And I had already put down a whopping $65 for the ticket - which is the most i’ve ever spent on a convention badge - so I thought I’d at least check it out for a while to make it worth the cost. Mind you, during pre-reg and at-con reg, the staff would continuously try to sell you on a badge bundled with a ticket to a Steam Powered Giraffe concert (who didn’t even end up coming in the end). It was incredibly obvious to me that everything was a money grab, and I only wish I could’ve seen that earlier.

I didn’t plan to stay there for more than a few hours, and I didn’t. The DashCon staff had repeatedly claimed in their FAQ and in person that they expected attendance numbers of 3000-7000, and that they were “right on target” for it, but in reality it looked as if it were half a thousand people at the VERY VERY most.

Many of the hallways and lobbies were barely populated at all; as a person who prefers going to larger conventions, I was disappointed. The Dealer’s Room/Artist’s Alley left much to be desired. There were practically no dealers selling official merchandise of any kind. It seemed as if everybody in there was a freelance artist, selling the same cheap buttons/stickers/decals/piling-prone fleece shit you’d know all too well if you’ve been to a convention before. I suppose the schedule and the panel descriptions speak for themselves. but I did sit in one panel called “Name That Anime” for a cool three minutes or so before walking out the door. It started 15 minutes late and was so poorly improvised on the spot it was terrible; they were giving out hotel mints as prizes if you could name the anime where “clothes are used as weapons!!!!!”

The worst part, though, had to be the so-called “video game room.” Having gone out to Anime Midwest last weekend, I expected a room full of Xbox/Wii/PS3/PS4 playing stations. In reality, there was only ONE TV in the entire room, along with a bunch of tables.

I legitimately felt bad for the few people walking around who had actually put work into their costumes to wear around there. As far as anime goes, the only series I saw anything of were Kill la Kill and Attack on Titan. I was genuinely surprised that I didn’t catch any Hatsune Miku or Pikachu cosplays (usually see hundreds of those).

I didn’t witness any fighting, but then again, I was only there for an hour and a half in the early afternoon before I got bored and left. Everybody at the con seemed nice, but also very young (most people I saw I’d guess were 15 and under) and you could definitely pick out a lot of the socially awkward ones hanging about. There wasn’t a lot of energy due to the fact that there was literally nobody there, so I guess you could say that everybody looked bored. The convention center/hotel was isolated compared to other popular places in the area, so there weren’t that many outsiders around; however, you could definitely tell that the convention center was pretty uppity and intended for business conventions rather than ones of this nature. Exquisite carpeted floors and chandeliers everywhere.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, in my case) I left long before the whole money/hotel management drama apparently erupted. I decided the con was not worth my time and spent the rest of the day at the local mall. I had a lot more fun there, obviously. So, while I’m not in a better position to tell you what actually happened, I can tell you that my immediate reaction to the whole thing was that it was a scam considering the high badge cost and the low effort/sloppy organization evident all around.

If it’s any additional proof that I was really there, I took a picture of my badge after I went on Thursday night to pick it up: http://kirbeh.tumblr.com/post/91420852017/dashcon-the-first-ever-tumblr-convention-as-far