Extremely Lame

A-kon is this weekend in Dallas. I’ve been to my share of anime conventions and other gaming conventions, and maybe it’s my getting older, but they really don’t sit well with me anymore. Conventions used to be about a gathering of fellow like minded individuals for a weekend to share their common likes, be it science fiction or anime or gothic horror.

Now? For the people running them, it seems more like an opportunity to shill swill to a bunch of people eager to empty their wallets. A-kon used to be run by fans, now it’s run by Pioneer, one of the larger anime publishers in America. Gen Con used to be run by TSR, the company that started Dungeons & Dragons. Then Wizards of the Coast bought TSR and Hasbro bought Wizards of the Coast. Then Gen Con got bought from Hasbro by Wizards of the Coast and turned into its own LLC which filed for bankruptcy shortly thereafter. It’s only a matter of time before some megacorp snatches it up again. The Camarilla used to be a non-profit fan club of White Wolf’s World of Darkness games that organized and ran several regional and national conventions through the year. They were sued and later acquired by White Wolf.

And for the people going? With the exception of the very young, it seems like conventions are used as an opportunity to get drunk and have sex with a bunch of other similarly socially maladjusted people. The idea of random anonymous sex partners is squicktastic when good looking people do it; thinking about it with people who don’t bathe grosses me out.

It’s as if nerds and geeks for one weekend get to pretend they’re popular and what do they do? They take up some of the most irresponsible and dangerous behaviors that other people do and eventually grow out of. Well, most people eventually grow out of it. I know a couple people close to my age that still do that and I find it more sad than I do hot.