Conventional Wisdom

This big story about Otakon this year is going to be the significant attendance dip… which is to say it was only SORT OF bigger than all the other cons in the area, rather than WAAAAY bigger. Considering what the crowd congestion is usually like at Otakon these days, it’s really hard for me to convince myself that this is a bad thing. What’s more, it doesn’t seem like panel attendance was any lower than previous years, so I have to ask: if a convention attracts fewer people who just hang out in the hall and don’t participate in anything, what exactly has been lost?

(Yes, yes, I know the answer is admission money. But look at it this way: smaller crowds mean fewer brats in the halls wrecking things, which means fewer expenses to cover, which theoretically means fewer badges to sell before you break even! Thank you, this has been “Guy Who Doesn’t Actually Know Anything About the Harsh Realities of Convention Finances Theater”)

(Historical Notes: Past Me tried to dance around the issue to avoid starting any fights… but screw it, let’s just dive right into the uncomfortableness.  Baltimore had a lot of protests and rioting in the summer of 2015, and as a result a lot people decided to just nope out on Otakon that year.  I mean, there were plenty of suburban parents who didn’t like the thought of their kids going to that weird anime thing in scary Baltimore even BEFORE all that was on the news, never mind right afterwards.  The weird thing, though, was how many people in the con scene insisted that this was because of Otakon’s high ticket prices, not Real World events.  At the time, I thought this was because they didn’t want to be seen as blaming things on the protesters, and thus were looking for alternative explanations.  These days, however, I think it was more a case of classic geek tunnel vision.  THEY were angry about Otakon’s prices, therefore everyone else must have been angry about it too.  See that other comic I did on this very subject for more ranting.)