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.

 

—§—

 

Hello Open Sauce 2024

by   •   Conventions, Face, Highlights
 

FTC Disclosure: Open Sauce, Inc. did not ask me to write this blog post, did not pay me cash 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 financial incentive to attend Open Sauce 2024 by way of free VIP admission and free lodging. The public retail value of such incentives amounts to a VIP ticket worth US$1,499.00 and a hotel stay worth approximately US$600.00. All other expenses beyond the aforementioned items were self-funded.

 
I’m not really the biggest fan of the San Francisco Bay Area in California (which should be unsurprising to you if you’ve read my blog post about how I got ~US$3,000.00 of stuff burglarized from me the last time I was here), but my friend Billie-Rae invited me to attend Open Sauce, a science and tech­nol­o­gy convention taking place at the Cow Palace in Daly City. Billie-Rae is a full-time employee at the company that runs the convention, so I de­cid­ed that was enough of a reason to support her work and check it out last week between June 14-16.

I’ve been to a lot of events and conventions of all different kinds over the past decade. I’ve attended as various roles, including an organizer, staff mem­ber, host, tournament competitor, exhibitor, media, broadcast talent, and plain old con-goer. Many conventions and brands have compensated me (or have tried to compensate me) in the past with high-end luxury accommodations worth several thousands of dollars, as well as hefty cash payments.

With all that being said, I can confidently say that Open Sauce 2024 was my favorite convention of all time.

Yes, I understand that people probably think my opinion doesn’t mean much because I got a special invite from my friend who works there. However, long-time readers know that I take my reputation very seriously and would never write an intentionally inflated or exaggerated review just to help out a friend. I have been very honest and transparent about disclosing everything up to this point, and I feel that I am being objective and unbiased with every­thing else in this blog post as well.

 
Open Sauce had a very different feel to it than any other convention I’ve ever been to, which made me enjoy it a lot more; upon some thought, I’ve con­clud­ed that that can be attributed to a handful of factors:

  • It does not feel commercialized.

    Revenue from ticket sales are pretty much never enough to run a large-scale convention. A convention center will have limited space for attendees, and consequently, there will be a limited number of tickets available for sale. If the ticket price is scaled to cover all expenses, it would be pro­hib­i­tive­ly high and cause fewer people to attend, thus reducing revenue. There is a sweet spot of balancing ticket price with attendance, and that sweet spot is usually nowhere close enough to cover expenses associated with venue rental, attractions, experiences, staffing, utilities, equip­ment, dec­o­ra­tions, marketing, etc.

    For this reason, conventions will sell space in their exhibition hall to sponsors, and these sponsors will promote their brand and products at their booth. Every other convention I’ve been to has had its exhibition hall feel like a gigantic three-dimensional billboard of endless advertisements with logos plastered everywhere. Companies furnish their booths with plush carpeting and nice fake walls to attract con-goers and incentivize them to get ex­po­sure to their brand.

    Open Sauce did not feel like this whatsoever. There were four exhibition halls, and all of them looked like massive empty warehouses with no love or care given to their presentation… which fit the convention perfectly, because it made it feel more genuine and authentic. All the focus of Open Sauce was on the science and technology of the cre­a­tions that people brought to the convention. Each booth was run by passionate scientists and inventors, not salespeople. There was nothing fancy in any of the booths—it was just the creator and the creation, and nothing else there to distract you from taking in their work.

    This doesn’t mean there were no sponsors at Open Sauce. However, the sponsors they did have were extremely well-integrated. For example, PCBWay sponsored the admission credentials for the convention, so everyone’s badge was a thin metallic circuit board (as opposed to just a flimsy piece of laminated paper like every other convention does). At their booth, you could finish soldering the connection with a battery and LED and make it light up. Formlabs also appeared to be a sponsor, and they brought high-end 3D printers that people could experiment with and try out. Both of these were directly relevant to the theme of the con­ven­tion and were actual interesting interactive things, as opposed to just ads.

    I diligently went up and down every aisle in all the exhibition halls, and I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it. This is the one and only con­ven­tion where I regularly stopped at many booths to try out their activity because of how inherently fun all the creations looked. I heard from a mu­tu­al friend that Michael Reeves (who was also in attendance) calls it a “science fair” instead of a convention, and I think that is a pretty accurate de­scrip­tion.

  • The special guests were pleasant people.

    Due to the nature of my work at Tempo during our prior esports and influencer marketing era, I’m used to interacting with stereotypical content cre­a­tors and broadcasters, especially those related and adjacent to Twitch live streaming. I’m fairly outspoken about my dislike of most of these peo­ple due to how disconnected they are with reality—many of them have a false and egregiously inflated sense of ego and self-importance com­pared to the rest of the world, which manifests in them coming off as extremely vain, arrogant, ignorant, lazy, and irresponsible.

    Open Sauce also had content creators in attendance, but the attitudes of these content cre­a­tors were very different. They all acted like normal people, and they all treated me like a normal person. I have had my fair share of encounters with meeting Twitch streamers during which they acted genuinely insulted that I didn’t already know who they were, but all the content creators at Open Sauce introduced themselves to me with a clear intent to meet new people and make new friends. I imagine there was a fairly thorough vetting process to decide who was and was not invited as a special guest, and this vetting process was well done, because I felt comfortable around everyone who was there.

  • I personally liked how the panels were scheduled.

    Most conventions have many panels scheduled and happening at once, and attendees have to pick which ones they want to go to, oftentimes hav­ing to miss out on some panels they want to watch in lieu of others. Open Sauce seemed to have a fairly limited number of panels, and there were only two places where panels were taking place—the main stage and secondary stage.

    This had two interesting effects. First, the panels that it did have were higher-impact panels that appealed to a broader audience, as opposed to having a lot of more specialized or niche topics. Second, because there were limited options of panels to watch, the audience was naturally bigger for each of the panels. Because the main stage was in a sporting arena and the massive amount of arena seating was used for the panel audience, it actually felt nice enjoying panels together with a large group of people.

    In a similar vein, I think Open Sauce realized that, although some people attend panels to listen to the topic, many of them go just to watch their fa­vor­ite content creators and broadcast personalities speak. I heard that most panelists held small meet-and-greets after speaking, so what the pan­els functionally ended up being was an opportunity for fans to know when and where to find their favorite creator, so they can meet them af­ter­wards.

    I heard that some people didn’t like this format, but I personally think this was a very efficient and practical way to run the schedule.

  • The activities for special guests were fun and relevant.

    When I am invited as a special guest or otherwise receive VIP treatment during conventions, the “exclusive access” usually just ends up being a lounge and a networking party. Although Open Sauce also did that, they further scheduled two fun activities that really stood out to me.

    The first was a visit to “The Cave,” Adam Savage’s workshop. The second was a visit to CrunchLabs, Mark Rober’s facility. Considering that both Adam and Mark are well-known personalities in the science field, being able to see their offices was very meaningful and interesting. I didn’t watch MythBusters when it was on TV, but I do watch all of Mark Rober’s YouTube videos, so I loved being able to see in-person the things he built for his channel.

    In a not identical but still similar vein, I enjoyed the fact that there was a hotel fully booked out exclusively for special guests. At first, the staff por­trayed this as being done for “security” reasons, which made me chuckle—I’m from Las Vegas where even A-list celebrities walk the casino and ho­tel floors alongside everyone else, so the fact that YouTubers would need that level of security was funny to me. However, I realized that having this kind of hotel was a good idea for a different reason.

    What was nice about the booked-out hotel was that everyone knew everyone else there was a science-related or science-adjacent person. In a reg­u­lar hotel, if you saw a stranger, you wouldn’t know if they were there for the same convention as you, or for something else entirely unrelated. How­ever, for Open Sauce, you knew that, if someone was inside that hotel, they were definitely there for Open Sauce. This encouraged people to be much more social and approach and initiate conversation with strangers because they are going into the interaction knowing that they share some degree of interests.

The second and fourth points obviously will not be relevant if you are just a general admission attendee, but for the sake of thoroughly sharing an an­ec­dote of my own experience, I decided to still include them.

 
So, if it wasn’t blatantly clear by now… if you are interested in science and technology and want a fun and high-value convention to attend, I highly rec­om­mend Open Sauce based on my experience that I had this year. The general admission ticket for 2024 was US$200.00, which I think is a very rea­son­a­ble price for a two-day convention that has so much to do that you’ll probably fill both days from open to close with interactive experiences. Their web­site currently shows early bird purchases for 2025 coming soon at US$99.69, which I find to be insanely cheap for what you get.

Below are some photos I took (and some that others took of me) during the convention:

 

—§—

 

Hello, “Fight Mii” at PAX East 2024

by   •   Conventions
 

We’re already over halfway done with PAX East, and my friends Dan and Jay completed their two panels. If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you may recognize one of them from PAX West 2023—”Fight Mii,” a show where audience members come up to create Miis live under a time constraint and pursuant to a prompt provided by the host.

Here are some photos I captured from the show:

These final two bonus photos are from the Mario Kart tournament on the day after “Fight Mii.”

 

—§—

 

Hello, “Fight Mii” at PAX West 2023

by   •   Conventions, Face
 

With a successful “Friends ’til Death” panel on day 2 of PAX West, we went into day 3 with an autographing session followed by Failboat’s “Fight Mii” pan­el.

The premise of “Fight Mii” is for audience members to participate in creating Miis in accordance with a prompt given by the host. Usually, audience members compete against each other, but for this iteration of “Fight Mii,” the audience members were allied against “Team Failure,” the team rep­re­senting Failboat and consisting of his friends.

Here is our friend Aidan, who owns the “Skip the Tutorial” channel on YouTube, filming Dan in a pre-panel interview.

Moments before the start of the show, I peeked back behind the curtain to make sure Dan was still alive. He was mildly surprised.

At 8:30 PM in the Monarch Theater, Dan went live with his signature gold sequin shirt. Unfortunately, his co-host Jay wasn’t able to make it this time around, but Jay filmed some pre-recorded segments which Dan played for the audience to provide them with the prompts.

Between each round, Dan came down into the crowd to pick some audience members to compete.

I was the first challenger from Team Failure, and my mission was to create a Pikachu Mii. This was my first time ever laying hands on any Wii game what­so­ev­er, so it was not exactly a smooth experience. To top it all off, the voting system was highly rigged, in that the audience cheers determined which team won… and of course, the audience voted for their own representatives. Long story short, I got demolished.

The next challenger on Team Failure was Aidan.

Dan realized that the voting system was a bit one-sided, so instead, he brought Stitch from the PAX team up to be the judge instead.

My favorite part of Dan’s panels is when he brings out the prizes. One of the prizes was a book of animals in the “Baby Touch and Feel” series.

Not bad.

Next up was Dan’s college friend Sam. The prompt was simply “red,” so Sam put red foundation on his Mii and called it a day.

Stitch came back up to judge the Miis and select a winner.

The next prize… HP printer ink cartridges.

Hello, Douglas Douglas.

Stitch came back up to judge the Miis again, and she ended up picking Doug’s Mii.

His prize? An inflatable unicorn sprinkler.

In traditional Doug fashion, he decided to pull a prank on Stitch and, on his way back to his seat, he pulled out $11 from his wallet and handed it over to Stitch to make it look like she was bribed to pick him as the winner.

For the final round, our friend Altrive was up to close out the panel.

The final prize? An ironing board.

This was a fun panel, and Dan is a very high-energy performer. Even though I wasn’t notified of my requested appearance until literally the morning of the panel, and then proceeded to have absolutely no idea what I was doing, I am still glad I got to participate.

If you missed it, PAX live streamed this panel on their website—you can check it out on the “Streams” section of the PAX West website.

 

—§—

 

Hello, “Friends ’til Death” at PAX West 2023

by   •   Conventions, Face
 

I’m currently in Seattle, Washington for PAX West 2023. I have a lot of photos of the event, and I’ve also been spending time with friends and doing other tourist activities around Seattle; I’ll be posting those over the next week or two after I get back home. But for now, I wanted to share some photos from yes­terday’s “Friends ’til Death” panel with DougDoug and Failboat at the Oriole Theater as soon as possible.

A part of PAX is taking place in the newer Summit building of the Seattle Convention Center. It’s a very nice building, and I really like its architecture as well—it is very modern, but there are still some nice wooden elements indoors that make it feel cozier and off-set the usually harsher feeling of today’s con­tem­po­rar­y style.

We arrived just shy of half an hour early for sound check, set-up, and a quick rehearsal.

PAX usually has live streams of panels, but unfortunately, they did not have one for the Oriole Theater. We still wanted to share the show with people who couldn’t make it to PAX, so we brought our own equipment to film. As you might have noticed already from my pictures, I was on photography. Berry, Doug’s creative director, set up a camera at the back of the theater to film the primary camera angle.

Our friend Aidan who owns the “Skip the Tutorial” channel on YouTube filmed a side angle, where he was able to get shots of Doug and Dan in addition to some crowd reactions. Doug’s team has all the footage now, and it will likely be edited and published at some point in the near future on one of Doug’s YouTube channels.

A few minutes after 9 PM PDT, the panel started with Doug and Dan walking out on stage.

The entire theater was completely filled, and unfortunately, many people even had to be turned away (which was even more motivation for us to capture the event so we could share it with everyone). There were a surprising number of people in the overflow area, and once the panel started, people who were denied entry started crowding around the glass doors to peek in. The framing of this photo below doesn’t even show the whole theater.

As the panel began, Dan explained the premise of the show—he would be playing Dark Souls while he and Doug answered questions from the crowd, but the instant Dan died, the panel would end. This is a live rendition of their “Friends ’til Death” podcast, during which they are playing a game, but the instant they die, the podcast episode ends.

Here’s a view from the theater from the other corner—you can sort of get a better idea of how packed it was.

Very pog.

As you can see by Dan’s oozing confidence, he knew exactly what he was doing. Side note: this was his first time ever playing Dark Souls.

There were a lot of people lined up for an opportunity to ask their question.

A few minutes into the game, Dan started getting himself into a bit of trouble. The crowd went wild telling him to run away, but unfortunately, their efforts were in vain.

Upon Dan’s death, they both got up and marched straight out of the theater. The panel was over.

A lot of the crowd chased after them out of the theater, but a line formed of people who wanted to meet me, so I stuck around for a while to chat and take photos. Someone even brought a Ryobi cordless power inflator for me to sign.

After wrapping up with everyone inside the theater, I found out that an impromptu meet-and-greet had formed out in the common area outside the theater with Doug and Dan, after their fans eventually caught up with them. Two of Doug’s fans hand-painted these amazing signs for the panel.

If you missed this panel, either because you weren’t at PAX or got turned away at the door, you still have two more chances to see us.

Today, Sunday, September 3, 2023 at 6 PM PDT, Doug and Dan will be holding a more formal meet-and-greet in the Autographing Area, during which I may be lingering somewhere in the background.

Two and a half hours after the start of that, today, at 8:30 PM PDT, Dan will be holding his “Fight Mii” panel in the Monarch Theater, during which Doug will be there momentarily as a special guest, and I will be running around taking photographs again. This one should be live streamed on one of PAX’s broadcast channels.

… See you there?

 

—§—

 

I’m not sure why I even went to TwitchCon

by   •   Conventions
 

A few months ago, I made plans to attend TwitchCon 2022 in San Diego, a convention run by the company behind the streaming platform Twitch.

I had last been there in 2017 when Tempo was still heavily involved in esports and video gaming content creation. I wanted us to have a strong presence at the convention due to Twitch’s relevance to our industry, so we set up a booth, held a panel, and even ran a small tournament on a pair of classic ar­cade machines. Since then, there wasn’t really a good business purpose to attend TwitchCon (and it was shut down for a few years because of the COVID-19 pandemic), so I hadn’t returned in subsequent years.

The reason I was going to attend this year was to accompany my friend Doug Wreden. By now, I’m sure at least some of you are aware of the various fun things I’ve been doing with Doug during my time in the Seattle Metropolitan Area, most recently eating an 18-pound salmon with him live on stream as a stretch goal for a recent charity event.

 
Doug ended up canceling. He had residual exhaustion from attending PAX West, he had a lot of work stuff going on, and he is still not fully recovered from his health issues (which you can learn more about if you look at some of his old YouTube videos where he talks about his condition).

This was perfectly fine to me. I recognize that people’s plans can change, and as long as they communicate that to me, I’m always extremely flexible. In fact, I am the type of person who, if you have plans with me but message me half an hour before meeting up telling me that you want to cancel because you just don’t feel like going, I will still be perfectly fine with that—as long as there is transparency, honesty, and overall respect for my time in the long-run. … More on that later.

Doug let me know weeks in advance that he’s reconsidering TwitchCon. Although my original plan to attend was based solely on going with Doug, I de­cided that I would still attend whether or not Doug was going, mostly because I had a stop in Las Vegas threaded in on the way to San Diego, but also be­cause I don’t really like changing travel plans.

 
I should have canceled too.

 
TwitchCon reminded me, again, just how much I hate the communities within the esports, video gaming, and live streaming scenes. I “suffered” through this several years ago when my primary duties at Tempo were esports and content creation. It was a very valuable learning experience and I am very grate­ful that I got to participate in it, but it’s not something that I ever want to do again.

I honestly don’t know how these people are going to survive in the real world without just all becoming “Karens.” It is astonishing to me how large a per­centage of Twitch community members act as if the world revolves around them. I’m not sure what went wrong that caused these people to think that they deserve to be treated exactly how they want, while completely disregarding the wishes of others. There is no irony more ironic than how sensitive these people can be, yet be oblivious and ignorant to how arrogant, entitled, and passive-aggressive they look to everyone else outside their “safe space” bubble.

I know I’m not the only one who feels this way, because most of my meetings during TwitchCon were outside the convention center with people who didn’t bother purchasing an admission ticket. I think people realize by now that the convention could potentially be a good networking opportunity, but they don’t want to deal with the clown fiesta that is TwitchCon itself. I arrived in San Diego on Thursday, attended all my meetings and appointments, and stayed off-site until Saturday afternoon.

 
On Saturday, I promised someone I would meet them in Room 26 of the convention center at 2 PM. I left my hotel with ample time to walk to the con­ven­tion center, pick up my credentials, and make my way to the second floor.

I received an email from Twitch prior to the convention informing me that I am required to get a vaccine validation wristband prior to entering anything hosted by Twitch. The email indicated that this validation process would take place at Bayfront Park.

Because my hotel was in central Core-Columbia, I approached towards the San Diego Convention Center at its western entrance. Bayfront Park was in the southeast near the Hilton San Diego Bayfront, so I walked all the way across the length of the convention center to get there. Once I arrived, there was no­body there and there were no signs anywhere instructing me where to go. I messaged someone I knew had already made it into the convention cen­ter, and I was advised to go to Entrance A instead. That’s where I just was before walking across the entire length of the building.

I walked from where I was near Entrance H and retraced my steps all the way over to Entrance A, finding a random Twitch employee who was able to give me a black wristband for vaccine validation along the way (very much not where Twitch told me where they would be). After getting my wristband, I went into the convention center through Entrance A and walked through the security checkpoint.

I proceeded to set off the metal detector, but the security officer didn’t tell me to empty my pockets or take off my belt or boots or anything… just to walk through it again. Needless to say, I set it off again. The security officer looked extremely confused at the metal detector, as if she had been on her way to McDonald’s but randomly stumbled upon TwitchCon and was asked to be a security officer for the first time ever, and suddenly realized that this metal detector wasn’t a Big Mac®. After I walked in circles three times (setting off the metal detector each time), she just waved me past.

Prior to being let further into the building, I was told that there was a mask mandate enforced by Twitch and that I would be required to remain masked while inside the Convention Center. I did not have a mask with me because I use masks for scientific purposes and not for political ones, so they gave me an oversized surgical mask with a non-functional nose bridge pinch. I promptly quite literally became unable to see, as my warm breath from having al­read­y walked a few miles was now going straight up the mask and onto my glasses, fogging them to impenetrable opacity.

Now blind, I stumbled my way to the badge pickup counter to scan my QR code (which miraculously worked as intended), retrieved my admission badge, and started heading deeper into the convention center. There were no signs anywhere and I was sort of lost in the middle of an open area, so I went to a group of security guards and asked them if they could point me towards the direction of Room 26. They discussed amongst themselves for several seconds, and then one of the security guards told me to follow her. She led me through a door that said “Authorized Personnel Only.”

On the other side of the door, she told me to take the escalator all the way up to the second floor, and that would be where Room 26 would be. I thanked her and went all the way up, but ended up in an abandoned corner of the convention center that was clearly a restricted area. A janitor saw me and stared at me as if I was missing a head. I meandered around, still half-blind from my fogged-up glasses, until I found a door leading to the courtyard area. As the door shut and locked behind me, I looked back and saw an “Employees Only” sign on the door.

There were a lot more convention-goers around me now, so I was definitely getting closer, but I was still pretty lost, and I couldn’t find any maps any­where. I kept roaming around and asking random Twitch staff members if they could give me instructions on how to finish getting to Room 26, but lit­er­al­ly everyone I asked said they didn’t know and advised me to ask someone else. I would go to the “someone else” they recommended, and that some­one else wouldn’t know either.

With the power of the process of elimination on my side, I narrowed down where this enigmatic meeting room could possibly be to a single section of the convention center—the only section that I hadn’t walked through yet. I saw a sign that led me from Room 31 to Room 28, so I followed that sign, naturally assuming that Room 26 would be further down from Room 28.

I made my way to Room 28 and discovered that the path forward had been arbitrarily blocked off by security. One of the security guards looked like he wanted to let me through anyway, but the other security guard on duty stopped that from happening. He explained that the meeting rooms were laid out in a circle, and I would have to walk all the way around to the other side of the circle to get to Room 26.

I was 34 minutes late for my meeting.

 
Remember how I said earlier that I am extremely understanding when it comes to rescheduling plans, as long as the other person is frank and com­mu­ni­ca­tive about it? Well, the other side of that is, if I don’t receive appropriate communication, I will become extremely irritated.

One of the things that Doug was looking forward to at TwitchCon was meeting up with other Twitch streamers, and not being able to do so anymore was the thing he was most disappointed about when canceling his TwitchCon trip. Because of this, I decided to offer to treat a few of his friends to din­ner instead, in his place. They accepted, so I blocked Saturday evening off my calendar for them.

This was on the same day as the clown fiesta above of trying to pick up my credentials and attend the meeting in Room 26. As if this day wasn’t already ri­dic­u­lous enough, Doug’s friends ended up never picking a specific time or location to meet up, even after I had checked in multiple times. They also didn’t get back to me to retroactively decline my offer either—just complete radio silence. We ended up not going to dinner together, and they needlessly took up a slot in my schedule that I could’ve given to someone else.

If you ever want to speedrun getting blacklisted from ever doing anything with me ever again, that is how to do it.

 
With all this being said, the trip wasn’t a complete catastrophic failure.

Apart from the two mentioned above, all my other meetings and lunch/dinner appointments went smoothly and productively.

The hotel I stayed at—the US Grant—was very nice. I prefer newer hotels with more modern styling, and the US Grant was a bit more on the classic side, but it was still very pleasant. The staff was great, the breakfast was good (it was also very expensive, but I had daily breakfast credits from my elite status, so the price didn’t matter to me), the rooms were stylish, and the location was pretty convenient.

I also met up with some of Tempo’s former employees, and it was nice catching up. I had some nice conversations with their new co-workers from their new companies, we went to get some good food (I ate the best calamari dish I’ve ever had, at a restaurant that they picked), and I watched in confusion as they played Magic: The Gathering and I had no idea what was going on.

I was considering doing some tourist activities in San Diego while I was there, because there is a dense concentration of a lot of interesting things in Bal­boa Park, but I heard that a lot of convention-goers were also going to a lot of the tourist hotspots, so I decided to save it for another visit.

 
San Diego seems to be one of the less miserable big cities in California, so I’m not completely opposed to going back to visit again, if the proper op­por­tu­ni­ty arises. However, if I could go back in time and rewrite this past weekend… I would’ve definitely skipped this TwitchCon trip.

 

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