DashCon: The Great Tumblr Scam of 2014

[Don Chipotle]

The above is a photo taken on-site at DashCon 2014.


Unless you're new to the internet you've probably heard of the website Tumblr. Tumblr is a shithole of a website. But it didn't have to be. Or DOESN'T have to be. Tumblr is a good idea for a website. It's focused on 'microblogging' which is what people who have no idea how to form cohesive thoughts and sentences cling to. It's for people who see a movie and when asked how it is all they can say was "That was EPIC" and they don't have favorite parts and they can't tell you what was good or bad or even what the plot was, just that it was "EPIC!"


Tumblr is the blog for people who like the Transformers movies.

Or at least that's what it has become. There are three sides to Tumblr. There's the side that just uses it as a weird form of social media, posting shit and commenting on it and generally being harmless in the grand scheme of things. Then there's the social justice warrior side, the side where people post their insane rules and laws that people need to follow to be 'correct' while also spouting off about triggers. Triggers is like post traumatic stress disorder for internet bloggers who have never actually been in a situation that leads to PTSD. It's a way for people to make others seem like an asshole for making a harmless joke. It's one thing for actual victims of, say, rape or domestic abuse to not enjoy it when people make light of or movies show depictions of those things. Triggers are things that cause actual reactions, panic attacks andflashbacks, real psychological shit. Tumblr has reduced 'triggers' to just 'this makes me feel kind of uncomfortable'.

But this isn't about that side of Tumblr.

It's about the fandom side.

Fandoms are nothing new, people love their shit. I'm a fucking fan of Yoko Taro for crying out loud. Fandom on Tumblr is kind of crazy, but not in the fun way. It's for people who become obsessed with things they love, like the show Supernatural, or Joss Whedon, or Homestuck or fucking Doctor Who. Things that are all pretty fucking terrible, but have devoted fans. A large chunk of these people are fans of shit not because of the show or whatever, but because they are sexually attracted to the people on the show. This, of course, leads to Tumblr posts dedicated to shots and shitty gifs of the leading men and women and also really creepy and terrible slash fiction and mpreg fiction and it's just the worst.

Tumblr fandom sites have given the internet some of the worst gifs out there.




WHEN WOULD THIS GIF EVER BE USED? DO THEY NOT KNOW THAT YOU CAN TAKE A STILL SCREENSHOT?



This is the typical Tumblr gif. It's shitty and it's some shit quote taken out of context and not well looped. BUT THE QUOTE SPEAKS TO ME SO I MUST GIF ITTTTTTT



LOOK HOW BAD THIS IS


In short, for every good Tumblr blog out there, there are 50 incredibly shitty ones.

So what happens when some Tumblr people decide to get together and make a convention?




DashCon 2014 happened over last weekend and it might go down in history as one of the wort cons ever. Or perhaps as one of the bigger scams in recent history. Either way, Dashcon was a giant trainwreck.

It also is not affiliated in anyway with Tumblr, it's all users.

Illinois is no stranger to succesful conventions, hell we have C2E2 and ACEN every fucking year. DashCon's first mistake was booking its convention in fucking SCHAUMBURG. C2E2 is at the fucking McCormick Place, which is THE BIGGEST CONVENTION CENTER ON THE FUCKING CONTINENT, and even ACEN, which is a fairly popular anime convention, is at an actual convention center in Rosemont. DashCon was in a fucking HOTEL. A hotel that has conventions for like old people and fishing enthusiasts.

Granted, ACEN also started in a hotel, but even back then there was professionalism.

The first sign that something was wrong with DashCon was that thy charged $65 for a weekend pass. For a first time con. C2E2 didn't charge $65 for the full weekend. San Diego ComicCon only cost $45 for Thursday-Saturday passes.

DashCon cost TWENTY DOLLARS MORE than fucking COMICON.

ComicCon has fucking celebrities and huge announcements and shit and it costs less than a convention that had a fucking kiddie pool filled with plastic balls.

DashCon was aimed for particular fandoms, fans of shit like 'Superwholock' (I think that is Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Sherlock, also known as 'three terrible shows that teenage girls get moist in the panties over'), Homestuck, Welcome to Night Vale (no idea what that is, but seems people dig it), and Attack on Titan (also known as Baby's First Serious Anime).

DashCon is aimed at a younger demo. I guess that explains the ballpit.

So armed with the parents' money, the attendees descended onto Schaumburg, which is Chicago for suburban assholes, for three days of disaster. The horror stories started almost immediately.

On the first day, the organizers stated that the convention would be kicked out of the hotel unless they managed to get together $17,000. Keep in mind that people were paying $65 dollars for a full weekend already, in addition to hotel costs and transportation funds. And this hotel isn't some Holiday Inn Motel 6 place, it's a fairly fancy hotel for the 'burbs. Meaning it's not exactly a cheap reservation.


DashCon solicits for money.

Get a group of Tumblr fans in a room and they fork over money while singing songs and doing stupid shit from The Hunger Games, which is also stupid shit.

There's a lot of sketchy shit involved with this collection of funds. Namely that they were collecting money in fucking bags with no one actually, like, keeping tabs on how much someone actually donated. That's not how you take donations. Even anonymous donations are kept tallied and collected. That's how you give money to homeless people. CHucking money in a bag or a can.

And no hotel would allow a convention, first time or otherwise, to use its areas without having paid in advance and then asking for nearly twenty thousand dollars after the fact. The hotel convention place had been rented out 11 months prior to the weekend. That shit requires both money and a LEGALLY BINDING CONTRACT. If the DashCon staff really were in danger of getting kicked out, they have grounds to take legal action.

They aren't.

Because they weren't.

But money problems ruled the weekend. One of the top booked guests for the con was Welcome to Night Vale which I guess is a podcast? It garnered a lot of hype for people who were fans who, naturally, wanted to see them live or whatever.

You can hear the disappointment

Here in this video you can see a staff member saying that the Night Vale people just decided to walk. You can hear her say that "They [the Night Vale people] wanted everything up front."

Yeah, what a fucking shock, DashCon, the people booked to appear want to be fucking paid. You know what kind of person gets paid AFTER their fucking gig is done? THE KIND OF PERSON WHO DOESN'T GET FUCKING PAID. Night Vale was in the right to walk out. You raised almost twenty thousand dollars and STILL couldn't afford to pay for a panel that you booked months in advance?


Night Vale paid for their own airfare, lodging, and took time out of their tour for this.

And what was the backup for the Night Vale drop?



An extra hour in the ball pit.



The fucking ball pit.

Another guest, some artist lady I don't know but who seems nice, found out that her hotel room hadn't been paid for. So she ducked out early and slept on a couch bed from one of the Night Vale guys.

Another podcast group, Baker Street Babes, had their panel and it went fine. But news of the disaster hit them and they decided to bounce out. As they were checking out they were shocked to learn that their rooms were no longer listed under the DashCon name and were asked to foot the bill.





Some other stories:

- Hotel mints being given away at a panel as competition prizes.

- The so-called “game room” featured a single TV and console.

This guy was able to get in and walk around without a pass

The entire event was an exercise in poor handling and organization.

But the fuck did you expect from a convention organized by people who think that 'British Men...With Cheekbones!' is a good idea for a fucking panel.

Stick to creaming over Benedict Cumberbatch monotoning his boring voice over another fucking movie, Tumblr.




WARNING: LOWER YOUR VOLUME



The ball pit.

[Lancet Jades]

DashCon makes me think Rainbow Dash and thus I've now associated this cataclysm with Yvl. You're welcome.

[Yvlla]

I'll take a lot of credit for this event turning out the way it did, sure.

[Peahohze]

I will never call LAGC "sh*t" again.
Compared to this it's like the best con ever.

[Lancet Jades]

Originally Posted by Pikachu

I will never call LAGC "sh*t" again.
Compared to this it's like the best con ever.

Why is Laggy shit? That's a mean thing to say, even if he abandoned us. ;.;

[Raist Classic]

This is pretty much how I picture Droog irl. Except with the hat on top of an afro.

MAGFest started in a hotel. One year we were double-booked on New Year's with a James Bond convention. A bunch of dudes in rented tuxes and a bunch of dudes in vg-themed ironic T-shirts getting sloshed together as they waited for the ball to drop.

[Don Chipotle]

I would never publicly endorse Attack on Titan


I mean, I wouldn't anymore.

[Raist Classic]

You would be doing it ironically. But then 18 months or so later you would mean it again.

[Don Chipotle]

My dislike of Attack on Titan will withstand the test of time.

[Peahohze]

Originally Posted by Lancet Jades

Why is Laggy shit? That's a mean thing to say, even if he abandoned us. ;.;

He is a bit of a traitor...