Hello, Collect-A-Con Las Vegas 2026

by   •   Conventions, Face, Las Vegas
 

Earlier today, I attended the second day of Collect-A-Con Las Vegas. As you can probably tell by the name, Collect-A-Con is a convention dedicated to collectibles, primarily trading cards and anime products. Those who know me well will probably be surprised that I decided to go to a convention like this, considering that I don’t really collect anything and I actually don’t even like having too many physical possessions, especially things that don’t serve some kind of practical or utilitarian purpose.

The closest I got to being a collector was buying singles of every different Absol Pokémon card in every rarity, variant, and language I could find. I started doing that in 2018 and it lasted a little while before I lost interest. Nowadays, I only revisit it once every couple of years to see if there are any easy gaps in my collection to fill in from recent releases.

This may sound ironic or counterproductive, but… the fact that I am not a collector is actually the precise reason why I decided to go to this convention. I’ve been to a lot of conventions, but I noticed that they were mostly just the same ones over and over again. For example, I got sick of going to PAX twice a year, every year, and basically seeing the exact same thing time after time. Upon this realization, I decided that I will no longer go to PAX anymore unless I am invited to be a speaker or something, and I will generally avoid conventions that are just repeats of ones I’ve been to in the past. Instead, I want to check out conventions, events, and shows that are different from what I’m used to.

Collect-A-Con is still pretty related to video games, so it wasn’t that new to me. Also, my friend Erin Song, who runs the AgentDMG collectibles brand and consignment company with her husband, was also attending Collect-A-Con Las Vegas, so it wasn’t like I was going into it completely alone and blind. Regardless, it was still an adventurous step into new territory for me.

Upon arriving at the Las Vegas Convention Center, I picked up my wristband and headed into the hall. My first impression of it was that the convention didn’t really seem like a convention. Instead, it felt like a really big farmers’ market, but for cardboard instead of food.

When I think of a convention, I imagine a gathering of a broad variety of industry-specific professionals and enthusiasts who are all coming together to contribute their own little piece of the industry. For example, I expect to see companies premiering new flagship additions to their product lines, start-up companies seeking investment or capital, innovators showing off the latest technology and other developments, sponsors and advertisers selling goods, presenters and speakers sharing knowledge, students seeking to build a network for future employment, and entertainers providing color and flavor to the event, among others. However, when I walked into Collect-A-Con, an overwhelming majority of the booths were just people who were buying and selling trading cards.

With that being said, there were still a few booths that were unique and distinct. For example, I especially liked the ones that had custom-made art and other goods based on the intellectual property of their favorite franchises (and I will conveniently ignore the fact that they most likely did not get a proper license to do so, because it’s nice to see people’s passion projects). I also liked the live music.

Within several minutes of my arrival, I noticed some music coming from the far rear of the convention hall. I slowly made my way through the crowd and to the stage in the back, at which point I discovered that it was Jason Paige singing. I recognized him as the person who sang the original Pokémon theme song for the cartoons. He was performing a small set of Pokémon and Pokémon-related songs, and he closed his show with the main theme song that I (and probably many other people) know him for.

This was overwhelmingly my favorite part of the show. I’m someone who watched Pokémon as a kid, and when I do live stream broadcasts on my Twitch channel and take song requests, I often get asked to play the Pokémon theme song. Thus, it was quite exciting to see it being performed live in front of me as a surprise by the vocalist who originally sang it. Apparently Jason Paige is one of the recurring headliners of Collect-A-Con and does a small set every time, but because this was my first time at this convention, it was my first time seeing Jason Paige, and it was a great experience.

What made this extra funny is that Jason Paige is apparently a particularly controversial figure among the card collector community. Specifically, he was recently accused of “scamming” a child during a trade-up challenge. I was curious and did some research into it, and I found out that the accusation was made by some random guy named Bryan Kuznitz from “Boosters and Bangers Collectibles” who did a combination of making up fake facts and leaving out important context to try and make Jason Paige look bad. I didn’t look for it myself to confirm because I’m not interested in scrolling through Bryan’s social media profiles, but he allegedly posted a follow-up video apologizing for misleading the community, which is an implied admission of guilt.

With that being said, apparently there are a lot of people who just don’t like Jason Paige—in general, and unrelated to this false scamming accusation incident—which is fine. This was evident by the confused reactions I got when people would ask me what I liked most about the convention, and I answered that my favorite part was Jason Paige singing the Pokémon theme song. I don’t know Jason personally and did not even go to his meet-and-greet or autograph session afterwards. However, I can say for sure that I thoroughly enjoyed the three minutes during which he sang the Pokémon song, and I thought it was fantastic.

My overall assessment of Collect-A-Con is that I am glad I went once to see what it’s like, but I most likely would not attend again in the future. I think this is heavily catered towards people who like actually buying and selling physical collectibles, and the amount of activities to do outside of that is very limited. I’d be willing to tag along with some friends again if they wanted to go to the Las Vegas stop of the Collect-A-Con tour circuit and I didn’t have to travel anywhere for it, but that would mainly be just to spend time together with friends, rather than for the convention itself.

Of course, I took a lot of pictures at the convention. I didn’t really have a structured plan for my photography; basically, whenever I saw something that looked remotely interesting, I snapped a shot. Here is a random collection of photos I took of random things around me, with no particular meaning or significance in their selection or order:

 

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Hello Open Sauce 2025

by   •   Conventions, Face, Highlights
 

FTC Disclosure: Open Sauce, Inc. did not explicitly ask me to write this blog post, did not pay me for this review, and did not have an opportunity to review or request changes to this piece prior to its publication. However, I did receive material incentive to attend Open Sauce 2025 by way of free admission, the comparable public retail value of which amounts to a VIP ticket worth US$1,499.00. All other expenses were self-funded.

 
After I had a great time last year at Open Sauce 2024, my friend Billie-Rae, an executive of and the head of marketing at the company running Open Sauce, invited me to attend again this year. Open Sauce 2024 was my all-time favorite convention, so I was happy to accept the invitation and head back to the San Francisco Bay Area last weekend, this year to the San Mateo County Event Center.

As a reminder, the reason why I liked Open Sauce so much last year is because it felt more like a large science fair than it did a regular convention. I’ve been to many conventions, both as part of my work at Tempo and for personal leisure, but many of them feel very commercialized. Open Sauce stood out in that it was a collection of people who were genuinely interested in science and wanted to show off and talk about their experiments and creations. Other conventions’ exhibition halls feel like a gigantic collection of advertisements, but Open Sauce’s exhibition halls are filled with passionate scientists and technology enthusiasts.

The advertisers and sponsors that do still go to Open Sauce are integrated very well and showcase their product in a way where it doesn’t feel like they’re trying to get you to buy their product, but rather, they’re demonstrating what their product can do and are leaving it up to you to decide. Sponsors whose primary objective is brand exposure are still integrated naturally; for example, PCBWay was back again this year with another batch of branded metallic circuit board credential badges that people could bring to their booth and personally solder components onto to make it light up.

When I received my itinerary this year, I noticed that there were fewer special experiences for creators and guests compared to last year. These special activities and parties were some of my favorite things from last year, so it wasn’t great news when I found out that there was less going on in 2025. On top of that, the one off-site activity they had was just a repeat of last year—a tour of Adam Savage’s workshop, “The Cave.” With that being said, I think we were just extra spoiled last year; there were still plenty of opportunities for people to congregate and network with each other this year, which I think is the priority for most of the creators and special guests when they attend events like this.

In a similar vein, there were a lot more content creators, members of the press, and special guests this year. Last year, there was a fairly limited scope of people in attendance, with a vast majority of the creators and guests being science and technology YouTubers. I liked this because these YouTubers felt, for a lack of a better word, normal. They were all pleasant and approachable people, and none of them had any of the undesirable characteristics that you usually find in Twitch live streaming or influencer culture of being self-centered, arrogant, and out of touch with reality. This year, I think there were more people who extended outside the “normal scientist” bubble and gave off a mild form of the “sheltered influencer” energy. With that being said, I think there was still a solid filter with regards to who was invited, and the spotlighted creators were nowhere near as bad as what you’d find in live streaming or video gaming conventions.

(Random side note: While I was in the creator lounge, I managed to meet Alan Melikdjanian, owner of the Captain Disillusion YouTube channel. I have watched his videos for a long time and not only admire his video editing skills but also his philosophy of exposing and combating misinformation through educating the public. We had a nice chat while waiting in line to get our share of catered lunch. I don’t really get starstruck when meeting people, but I think Captain Disillusion is as close as you can get to getting me starstruck for now, so I’m glad I was able to run into him at Open Sauce.)

No matter what the invited guest experience was like, the most important part of Open Sauce was still the exhibition hall. I concluded that, no matter how many special activities there were or who the special guests were, as long as the exhibition halls were the same as last year, it would still be a great convention. Fortunately, Open Sauce did indeed maintain its core identity, and the passionate energy of the exhibit halls remained the same as last year. I noticed that the convention this year was quite a bit larger than last year, so I was actually fairly impressed that they managed to scale it up to this degree, yet still not lose its charming identity in the exhibition halls.

My credentials gave me access to the exhibition halls across three total days, and I spent a good chunk of time on all three days exploring the halls. I walked multiple rounds through all three halls, made sure to try all the demonstrations I could, and even kept track of which ones I missed due to long lines so that I could go back and see it on a subsequent day. Just like last year, everyone was very welcoming and inviting, and I had a great time hearing about and trying out all the exhibits.

 
I’ll start with my favorite exhibit from this year, four-dimensional Counter-Strike. This little booth was set up with two computers from which you could play Counter-Strike, except some of the weapons were hooked up to real-life stimulants surrounding the gaming area.

Detonating a flashbang within range of your opponent would cause blindingly bright lights to turn on next to their computer station. Getting hit with an explosive grenade would cause the entire table to vibrate and make a rattling noise. Walking into the smoke of a smoke bomb would prompt a leaf blower to blow air in your face while a mist sprayed on you from behind.

My second favorite exhibit was a backpack with a motor inside that would gauge your lean and counter-rotate to balance you. The problem is that the motor is pretty heavy and it takes a split second for it to actually counter-rotate properly, so it perpetually feels like the backpack is both trying to kill you and save your life at the same time, which was a very amusing experience.

Here I am getting convinced into finding a Porygon in a Wii game… and ultimately failing.

Hello egg.

There was a crate with a sign that said “Open the crate… if you dare.” I dared.

Next to the daring crate was a computer with Super Crate Box on it. I don’t really play games anymore, but when I did, I was a keyboard-and-mouse gamer and am notoriously bad at using gaming controllers. Needless to say, I performed catastrophically poorly.

Hello hat.

I’m also notoriously bad at using joysticks because the movement feels vague to me and I can’t ever really tell how far in a direction I have to move the joystick in order for the command to register. … Again, needless to say, I performed monumentally poorly.

What I did better at was Crossy Road, but with real-life physical controls. Every time I jumped, a webcam would detect my movement and advance the bird one lane. I managed to get to the river… before tragically diving straight in and drowning.

This is a game of shuffleboard where the weights have sensors in them so they can detect where it ended up and automatically keep score for you. Unfortunately, they weren’t working that day, so I guess you could consider them to be extremely fragile hockey pucks instead.

This was a game where you had to keep a baby alive. I contributed to the effort by rocking the baby back and forth to relieve it of its tiredness, but then some random guy decided to grief and reached over to light a paper towel roll on fire (in-game), so I gave up and moved onto the next exhibit.

I think the objective of this game was to hack into some girl’s computer and read all her personal information. I couldn’t tell what else I needed to do beyond that, though.

This was a game about sushi where the controller was a samurai sword. You quickly unsheathe and sheathe the sword to slice the fish on screen and turn them into sashimi, and you press a button on the sword to block the aggressive fish from reaching you. This was a rhythm game, but the timing of the music was a bit off, so I didn’t do too well, but I got a hang of the delay later on and compensated, which made things better.

This game helped me discover that apparently I’m not very good at roguelikes either. At this point, it’s a mystery as to how I managed to help run a decently successful esports company several years ago.

Here is another photograph of me struggling with yet again another game.

Open Sauce this year had an outdoor section. There was a train out there blowing bubbles, so I decided to take a picture next to it. I didn’t realize how deceptively large the throughput of the bubbles were, and I managed to get soap residue all over my glasses from when the bubbles popped after hitting my face.

This chair is designed to force you to have great, balanced posture when seated; failure to do so will result in the stool tilting and trying to throw you off the edge. As you can see, I did a stellar job and was not at risk of drilling my face into the concrete block next to me at any point throughout the experience whatsoever.

This exhibit tested to see how good you were at balancing; you’d place one foot in the center and then use the other foot to move the gray sliders to match the distances as outlined on the screen beside the device.

Even though you might not be able to tell, I’m in this next photo as well; it apparently uses a camera to see what’s in front of it, but warps the image using circuitry in a pattern determined by which button you press on the controller.

My third favorite exhibit of Open Sauce this year was a robot that tore apart a microwave. As you can see, it was very popular when the demonstration was happening, so I wasn’t really able to get a good photograph of the destruction.

This was an activity where you press buttons to control a robot and attempt to knock out your opponent. I played against my cameraman and defeated him ruthlessly.

This was a modified version of Street Fighter where taking damage causes you to receive an electric shock through the joystick. I figured out a way to cheese it by only controlling the joystick with my fingernails instead of with the fleshy part of my fingers, but switched back to holding the joystick normally for the spirit of fair competition. I, again, played against my cameraman… but this time, I was the one who got defeated ruthlessly.

Here are some more photographs of random things I found interesting around the exhibition halls and stages.

And finally, here is a picture of me with one of my friends in the creator interview area. She agreed to be on my blog, but didn’t want her identity disclosed, so this is the solution I came up with.

Overall, Open Sauce remains my all-time favorite convention, with Open Sauce 2025 joining Open Sauce 2024 as my top two.

There are some elements that I liked better in 2024, and there are other elements that I liked better in 2025. However, the one thing I was overwhelmingly impressed at with 2025 is how much it had grown, yet still maintained its identity as a science fair instead of falling into the expected pipeline of becoming more like a conference. I think a lot of variables had to be controlled and accounted for to pull that off, which I applaud the Open Sauce team for.

I took a lot of pictures with con-goers, some of whom know me from my recent collaborations and guest appearances with some of my friends, while others dated back to my esports years with Tempo Storm; if you’re posting photos of us together on social media, feel free to tag me so I can browse through them.

 

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Hello, Sea-Meow Convention at the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall in Washington

by   •   Cats, Conventions
 

This past weekend, I went to the Sea-Meow Convention, which, as you might be able to tell by its name, is a cat convention in Seattle, Washington.

I do a lot of traveling and I’ve been to a lot of conventions, but all the conventions I’ve been to so far have been work-related, or at the very least, industry-related—all of them have been focused on video gaming or technology. This may come as a surprise, because I live in Las Vegas and there are a lot of conventions hosted in Las Vegas, so you’d imagine that I would’ve had many chances to go to a wide variety of different conventions… but I guess I never really seized any opportunities.

When I received an email encouraging me to attend Sea-Meow, I took it as a calling to finally go to a fun event completely unrelated, and not even adjacent, to my work. I did a bit of research first to make sure that it was actually a cat convention and not a furry convention in disguise, and when I confirmed that the organizations running and sponsoring the convention were cat cafés, cat shelters, and veterinarians, I bought tickets.

Con-goers were allowed to bring their own cats to the convention. Not too many people did, but I got some photos of a few of the cats that attended.

There were also cats that had been brought in by cafés and shelters, which con-goers could pet after making a donation to their cause.

There was a balcony-like area on the sides of the exhibition center from which I was able to look down onto the main floor. Here is what it looked like from the top-down perspective.

Here are photos I took of some of the booths on the convention floor. It was interesting and different than most other conventions I’ve been to in that, instead of it being filled with companies trying to promote their product, a majority of booths were run by independent artists trying to sell their art, custom-made cat toys, or other creations.

On one end of the convention floor, there was a stage that had a handful of panels scheduled. I didn’t watch any of them, but they seemed to have taken a fairly educational approach for their topics.

I got a VIP ticket, which came with free drink refills. Unfortunately, the website did not disclose that the only drinks that are free are hot coffee and hot tea—all specialty drinks were excluded, and even regular iced beverages didn’t count. I don’t really prefer hot drinks, so I didn’t really get much value out of that perk.

Here are some cat-shaped macarons:

The convention was interesting, but small. I don’t know if it’s because I’m just used to conventions of a much greater scale, but there didn’t really seem to be that many booths, and there wasn’t really much to do. I got a VIP ticket for full access on both days of the convention, but I think getting a one-day general admission ticket is more than enough to experience everything.

In the convention’s defense, I feel like there might’ve been more activities in which I could have participated if I combed through everything more carefully and was more willing to wait in line for things. I also went together with a friend who I had not seen in almost three years, and she wanted to spend time walking around and exploring downtown Seattle with me as well while I was in town, so we didn’t stay until convention closing time on either of the days.

Based on my experience, if you own cats and/or are a fan of cats and you already live in or around the Seattle Metropolitan Area, this could be a fun one-day trip to check out a bunch of cat-related artistic creations, buy your cat some new toys, and support independent artists and small businesses.

The VIP ticket I got was US$99.00, but there is a much more affordable US$27.00 one-day general admission ticket, which I think would be worth it for regular cat enthusiasts.

 

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Photo dump from TwitchCon San Diego 2024

by   •   Conventions, Face
 

For the past week, I’ve been in San Diego, California for TwitchCon 2024, a convention hosted by Twitch Interactive. If you remember my miserable experience from TwitchCon San Diego 2022, you might be surprised that I decided to attend again, but this year, I had actual “obligations” at the convention itself.

I still like to add an extra buffer day before and after my travel days to mitigate any delays and allow me to have additional flexibility in my schedule, so I arrived in town the evening of Wednesday and checked into my hotel room at the Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina next door to the San Diego Convention Center.

I’m still on a very unusual sleep schedule, so I went to the hotel gym at 4 AM to have a nice, peaceful, solitary workout session.

Because of my Ambassador Elite status with Marriott, I was fortunate enough to get an upgrade to a room with a nice view of the San Diego Bay, even though I booked the cheapest rate available.

I also have access to the lounge, where they serve complementary small bites, snacks, and desserts. I usually forget to take photos of my free food nowadays because it’s become a fairly routine part of my travel experience, but I did remember to take these three:

Apparently Honda was one of the sponsors of TwitchCon, and I officially present to them the “Most Boring Sponsor” award. I was told that they originally had the Twitch community design the car, but instead of going with the popular vote, they overrode the decision and basically designed it themselves anyway.

My automobile knowledge is fairly limited to within the world of pickup trucks, and the only thing I really know Honda for is that their pickup truck, the Honda Ridgeline, isn’t actually a real body-on-frame pickup truck and is basically just a minivan with a developmental disorder. With that being said, I’m not sure how they could’ve picked a more boring car than a Honda Civic to feature (and it’s not even a Type R).

This car looks like a kid designed it in Grand Theft Auto and then tried to convert it into a real-life car. The racing stripes look tacky. The vinyl wrap looks like someone wanted a nice satin black wrap but ran out of the proper color so went with a weird graphite instead. I can’t even tell what the design is on the rear passenger door, and the glossiness of it makes it look like someone just ripped a chunk out of the vinyl wrap.

I wasn’t interested in watching any of the shows, but this is what the stage looked like.

That night, we went to Meze Greek Fusion where they had a performer swing fire around everywhere. As you can see from the bottom-right corner, my friend Dan was very impressed.

I didn’t have an opportunity to walk through Artist’s Alley, but I did randomly take a picture of it from outside after the hall was closed.

On Saturday, my friend Doug Wreden and I held a Twitch-sponsored meet-and-greet session with convention attendees.

A photographer from Getty Images came over to our booth and asked to take a picture. Not only do I broadly hate paparazzi and the nature of their work, but I also strongly disagree with copyright law surrounding the likeness of public figures captured in photographs, so I will never intentionally pose for or make a paparazzo’s job easier. However, Doug was fine with it and specifically wanted to have the most ridiculous picture on Getty Images, so we ended up with this shot. (I did not realize I was in the frame because I assumed she would just be zooming in on Doug, so that is my genuine and unposed “…” expression.)

(Disclaimer: The following photograph from the Getty Images Entertainment collection, taken by Robin L. Marshall of Getty Images North America, is being used pursuant to the Embedded Viewer clause of the Getty Images Site Terms of Use as accessed on September 24, 2024. All rights belong to their respective owners.)

On Sunday, Doug hosted a show called “Just Figure It Out” where contestants had to… just figure it out. Each pair of the bracket had to come up with how they would determine the winner, and failing to do so after ten minutes would result in both players getting eliminated.

Edit (October 20, 2024): It was recently brought to my attention that a political extremist was in attendance at this show, as a competitor’s guest. During the show, I did not know who this individual was and I did not directly interact with her. Fortunately, she was also not at any point mentioned or shown in my blog post. Please note that being on the same broadcast as another person does not mean I share their beliefs or endorse their opinions.

My friend Abby and I were on standby as fill-ins in case any pairs got eliminated. Comically, one pair bet on the results of a second pair, and that second pair ended up getting disqualified for not being able to come up with a winner, so that resulted in a double-elimination, bringing both Abby and me into the tournament at the same time.

The way that Abby and I decided to figure it out was that we were going to go out onto the convention floor, find three random people who stream on Twitch, and bring them back into the room. We would then add together our three representatives’ follower counts on Twitch, and whomever had the team with the higher follower count would win.

Right as I explained this, I noticed some of Abby’s popular streamer friends (who were there as part of the show) sneak out onto the convention floor, so under the assumption that they might try to cheat and be Abby’s representatives, I slid in a last-second stipulation that the people we bring into the room have to be people who do not know us.

After getting all the rules locked in, Abby and I sprinted out into the convention.

I ran around searching for streamers and ended up finding three of them, but on my way back, I ran into Ludwig Ahgren, who has over 3 million followers on Twitch. I successfully convinced him to come join my team, and I returned to the room assuming I had just secured my victory.

I forgot about one thing. The one thing I forgot… was my own rule that I created to protect myself. Ludwig knows who I am. He was disqualified from being on my team. Abby somehow found someone with over one and a half million followers. I suffered a tragic defeat.

Here are some photos from the show that I took. I feel like these work better without any context or commentary.

For our final TwitchCon dinner together on Sunday night, we went to Zama San Diego.

As our first appetizer, we ordered pan-seared crab cake with red beet truffle aioli and avocado.

Our second appetizer was New Zealand lamb chop lollipops with chimichurri and pomegranate seeds.

For my main entrée, I ordered a sushi roll and wagyu beef nigiri.

Although TwitchCon still isn’t really my thing, this year went way better than previous years. The meet-and-greet went reasonably well. I’ve had some issues during previous conventions with Doug’s fans being invasive and acting childishly towards me, but that didn’t seem to be as bad of a problem this time around, compared to before.

Doug’s show was fantastic, and even though I’m not really in streamer friend groups and I actively try to avoid association with streamer culture, I still enjoyed my time participating in the show. It also helped that the person I competed against was Abby, who I see as an intelligent and business-minded professional, even though she works with live streamers.

I don’t know for sure whether or not I’m attending TwitchCon again next year, but if I’m invited to host a meet-and-greet and make an appearance on a show again, then I’d say the chances are decent.

 

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Hello, PAX West 2024 in Seattle, Washington

by   •   Conventions
 

For the third year in a row, I decided to make a trip over to Seattle, Washington to attend PAX West.

Usually, I go to watch my friends host their shows—like “Fight Mii” at PAX West 2022, and “Fight Mii” and “Friends ’til Death” at PAX West 2023. Un­for­tun­ate­ly, my usual PAX travel group decided not to submit any panels this year and nobody else in my party ended up going… and I didn’t find out they weren’t until my flight and lodging were already booked. I didn’t want to go through the hassle of changing travel plans, so I decided to go anyway on my own.

This year’s PAX West was about the same as what you’d expect from any other PAX. The exhibitor hall was basically a gigantic collection of ad­ver­tise­ments, and most of the interesting booths with compelling interactive experiences had long lines. The other areas of the convention center were nice, but not really for me—there was plenty of space for people to be able to chat and bond over some games, but I’m not really the type of person to so­cial­ize with strangers at a convention. It also probably doesn’t help much that I’ve gradually been losing interest in gaming in general over the past handful of years.

One thing I noticed was that it felt a lot less crowded this year. I’m not sure if ticket sales were just low this year or something, but one thing I do know is that, with the new Summit building of the Convention Center opening, there was a ton more space for people to be spread out. Summit is a six-level build­ing, and it seemed like all of that additional square footage was put to very good use.

I have friends who live in Seattle, so I’ve been spending time with them outside of the convention, and will continue to do so until I fly out in a few more days. However, I guess this is a decent lesson learned that I shouldn’t book my travel too early next time and actually confirm first that my regular PAX group will also be attending.

Below are some photos I took while exploring the Arch and Summit buildings of the Seattle Convention Center.

 

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Hello VidCon 2024

by   •   Conventions
 

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.

 

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