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.

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.”

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, but he 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.

For me, BlizzCon is generally a scramble to get editorial work done as quickly as possible. Tempo Storm’s attendance at BlizzCon depends heavily on the quantity and quality of BlizzCon coverage from the previous year(s), so having sufficient good content up in a timely manner is important, not just for now, but for future convention years.

So, I usually end up spending a majority of my time attending offline panels, sitting in the media room uploading, then recharging in my hotel room. As a result, I didn’t really have many photos taken.

I do have one from when Tempo Storm’s Heroes of the Storm team was playing against Fnatic in the third game of a best-of-three series. Tempo Storm HotS had taken a game off Fnatic, but were in the process of getting reverse swept. I tweeted the photo out with the caption “pls no lose,” but my hopes didn’t come true, because this was the game after which Tempo Storm got eliminated.

However, I’m happy to announce that the convention grind is finally over. I almost had to extend my grind by accompanying our PLAYER­UNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS team to a boot camp in Santa Monica, CA, then to Intel Extreme Masters in Oakland, but luckily, our house manager was able to cover for me for that, so I finally get to relax.

Now it’s finally time to unwind for a bit, recover from over a month of field work (which I am very not used to, seeing as I usually just work peacefully from my desk), and catch up on everything I’ve missed over the past month.