The second half of last week, I attended VidCon Anaheim.

This may come as a surprise because I’m fairly open and outspoken about how much I hate the stereotypical influencer or content creator kind of per­son, so it would seem strange to intentionally thrust myself into a convention full of them, but there were three fairly compelling reasons to go.

The first was because I’ve been getting pretty bored over the past year with a non-nomadic lifestyle, especially compared to road tripping and living out of hotel rooms full-time for two years during 2021-2023. I missed being in a new place every few weeks, so I decided to pick back up traveling and seize op­por­tu­ni­ties if such travel corresponds with an event.

The second reason, and the more important one, was that my friend Aidan, who runs the Skip the Tutorial channel on YouTube, was supposed to be hold­ing his very first meet-and-greet and panel at VidCon. It ended up not actually being his first panel because he received an impromptu short-notice invitation to Open Sauce to host a Minecraft panel there shortly before VidCon, but at the time that I booked my travel, Aidan’s firsts were anticipated to take place at VidCon.

And finally, the third and least influential reason was because I already knew I wouldn’t like VidCon, but I didn’t want to have a negative impression of it without ever trying it out, so this was a chance for me to see VidCon for myself to either confirm or deny my suspicions.

Unshockingly, I was indeed able to confirm that I do not like VidCon.

 
Let’s start with a mild point first. VidCon was boring.

I felt like there wasn’t really much to do. TwitchCon has a similar problem where, if you’re not there to meet your favorite Twitch streamers, the only other thing left to do is to be a victim of all the exhibition booths that are, to be frank, just massive advertisements hoping to expose you to their brand and leave an impression in your memory so you remember them the next time you have to buy a keyboard or extend your car’s warranty.

VidCon obviously had an exhibitor’s hall, but it seemed incredibly empty and underwhelming. Conventions like PAX pack the halls so the aisles are only the width of about two people laying down head-to-toe, but VidCon’s aisles between booths were gaping chasms. It almost seemed like they couldn’t find enough exhibitors who wanted to buy space in the hall, so they stretched out the aisles to be gigantic so it looked like they were still filling the hall.

The booths that were there weren’t very engaging. There was a really nice Minecraft booth, but there wasn’t actually anything to do in there except for look at the decorations and take pictures. There were some branded rooms on the second floor of the convention center, but those were also just wide-open and empty rooms that were only used for networking purposes and not for actual interactive experiences.

 
Now onto one that is a bit more serious. I have never felt more objectified in my entire life than during the collective handful of hours I spent at VidCon.

For a bit of context, I have been a public figure for over a decade now and am no stranger to being recognized, both at conventions as well as randomly through­out my day-to-day life. I used to be a vlogger and live streamer, I’ve hosted many events and casted many tournaments, and I’m often a guest on a bunch of my friends’ shows. This means I have people recognizing me for dif­fer­ent reasons and I end up meeting quite a variety of dif­fer­ent people, which is nice.

Lately, I have been making very frequent appearances on my friend Doug Wreden’s Twitch live streams and YouTube videos. He is by far my most pop­u­lar friend with the biggest fanbase whose content I regularly appear on, so naturally, an increasing ratio of people recognizing me have been from dis­cov­er­ing me through Doug, relative to other mediums.

The problem with this is that Doug’s content is very different than what I usually do. I’ve historically done very “normal” appearances often revolving around commentary or discussing professional topics with a focus on self-improvement and the practical application of life­style adjustments to achieve personal goals. Doug’s content, on the other hand, throws me in as a target to fairly crude and primitive humor.

In a vacuum, I don’t mind; in fact, one of the more fun facets of being an actor or public figure is being able to participate in a broad scope of scenarios like that. However, it becomes extremely annoying when those artificial or manufactured situations are not contained in those contexts and instead end up bleed­ing out into my real life.

For example, one of the comedic segments on Doug’s live streams and videos ended up being calling me things that I’m not, such as a barred attorney or sworn peace officer. Within the context of his content, it’s supposed to be a show, so that is fine; however, without the proper context, this ultimately just ends up being the same as spreading blatant misinformation. Another segment revolves around obsessing over the fact that I own a firearm, which is fine as part of his content, but the obsession is very unusual out-of-context, especially considering I live in the United States and it is a very normal thing to own firearms here.

Back to VidCon. I guess it is reasonable that people would recognize me through Doug’s videos there, considering that it is basically an unofficial You­Tube convention and Doug’s YouTube channel has over two and a half million subscribers as of today… but never before have I had such a crushing ratio of people recognizing me from Doug’s content. Out of the few dozen people who recognized and interacted with me, all but two were because of Doug.

People who know me for other reasons usually have something interesting to talk about, but apparently Doug’s fans don’t have much to discuss, so they just parrot Doug’s jokes at me. I feel like I only had three good conversations with fans. Everyone else just awkwardly yelled things at me, primarily re­volving around calling me things that I’m not. Never before have I felt like less of a human and more like I had just been reduced to nothing beyond a tool for their entertainment. This happened so relentlessly that, at this point, I never want to hear the words “lawyer,” “cop,” or “gun” ever again.

Was this unique to VidCon? I don’t know. It’s very possible that this just happens to be the tipping point of this being the norm for me moving forward. But what I can say for sure is that VidCon was the very first place where it was so shockingly and blatantly obvious to me that it was happening.

 
Time for a quick intermission. Here are some random photographs I took around the exhibition hall:

(Note: I am aware that some faces are blurred while others are not. Technically, as part of the terms and conditions of a purchase of a VidCon admission pass, attendees agreed to be filmed and photographed while on convention grounds, so I can leave my pictures as-is. With that being said, I still dis­cre­tion­arily chose to censor some faces of minors who had enough of their likeness captured to be recognizable. Please stop attempting to contact me a­bout “forgetting about some faces.”)

As one of my final activities of VidCon, I watched Aidan’s panel.

I thought Aidan did a great job. Every time he spoke, he said something impactful and meaningful. The way he worded the information he wanted to relay was precise and succinct. The tone and cadence of his voice made him sound expressive and engaging, and he enunciated all his words clearly. He was also quick-witted and added on-topic humor to the panel where appropriate.

Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed about every other aspect of the panel. The other panelists rambled on about random things that sounded unre­lat­ed to the panel’s primary topic and were literally just spamming comms. I had never heard of any of them before, but apparently they were all suc­cess­ful YouTubers, so they clearly know what they’re doing, but it felt like they were at a point where they hadn’t yet quite reached a level of mastery of their craft to be able to articulate and teach how they did what they did.

There was an extremely strange and off-putting interaction during the post-panel Q&A segment where, not longer than 15 minutes after one of the pan­el­ists discussed the negative mental impact of hate comments, one of the audience members went up to the microphone and casually unironically in­sulted the hairstyle of one of the panelists. Aidan took over and skillfully diffused the situation by making light of the comment and diverting attention a­way from the in­sult and back to the Q&A, but if it wasn’t for him, that would’ve been a very awkward moment.

So, my final verdict? I did not like VidCon. I do not plan on ever attending again, and I do not recommend it for anyone else unless you are or have child­ren who admire YouTubers.

But before I wrap up, I do want to share one positive thing.

My second-to-last fan interaction of VidCon was with a girl in a cosplay (whose name I did not catch) walking alone on the second floor near the panel stages. She recognized me and was in utter shock that, not only was I was a real human being, but I was standing in front of her.

She was speechless, but just from her body language, I could tell she was either drained of energy or otherwise having a rough time, and seeing me was a moment of bliss in her day. She didn’t say much apart from asking for a picture and telling me that I had made her day. It was very fulfilling to me and I felt very honored that I could seemingly bring so much joy to someone and brighten their mood just by existing.