Conventional Wisdom

Yeah, ya’ll didn’t think there was gonna be a part two to this, did ya?

Context for those who don’t know: it’s become more and more of a thing in recent years for people to make extra ribbons to give out to people around the convention.  If I’m being honest, I think it’s kinda tacky and lame, but then I think that about MOST trendy things, so make of it what you will.  I do, however, think they provide a convenient microcosm of the flip side of the classic convention/location problems.  Sure, somebody who’s plugged into the con scene, lives and breaths the culture, and already saw what the official con-issued ribbons look like will have no problem telling them apart from all the gimmick ones.  But if some rando who’s only there because he needs the minimum wage pay of a second job to cover his rent gets told what ribbons let a person into which door five minutes before going on duty, then suddenly a dweeb with a dozen ribbons walks up… I’m sorry, but I can’t be surprised if he gets the feeling these geeks are deliberately trying to make his job harder than it needs to be, and things start to go downhill from there.  I mean, be honest here: you’ve worked a crap job you didn’t care about before, Lord knows I have.  The Lord ALSO knows what I thought of people who expected me to care more than the bare minimum about a job I was only being paid the bare minimum to do, and how little telling me to Do Better would actually change anything.  To be clear, I’m not trying to suggest that Animazement staff didn’t make a genuine effort to communicate with the convention center people. However, I AM suggesting that anime conventions are such unhinged lonny bins that doing so is probably futile, and those of us living inside the bubble are a bit naive to what it looks like to everybody else.

To be blunt, I think the real problem here is even asking people who aren’t already a part of the convention scene to ever try and work at these things in the first place.  Asking somebody who’s actually normal to try and do their job in the middle of all this craziness is just cruel and unusual. (And before anybody says it, I also think it’s a mistake to let conventions get big enough that they NEED that kind of outside help in the first place)