Cons: Yes, they are becoming that aren't they…
Yes, I’m worried about conventions. Good ol’ sci-fi fantasy geekery conventions. There’s too much damned melding and mashing together of every kind of fandom under one roof! A comic book convention can be linked with tv and film sure, but the tv and film linkage should be kept to a minimum. Table-top gaming, video gaming, and comics can all be together, but not with tv and film and anime, that’s too much! You are overloading me and I’m super ADD most of time on a good day!
I understand that people want to get bang for their buck, but when I go to conventions I don’t even see any Trekkers/Trekkies anymore and it makes me so sad! Forget looking through the dealers tables, there’s so much stuff you can barely find what you’re really looking for. It’s work to go to these big conventions. Work and tiring navigation through tightly woven rows of genre. There’s too many of them! It’s too much!
I know this opinion is not shared by all and many people like more, more, more. I just think that conventions can be about a few things and not about everything and still be successful. I dunno, there’s a difference between being a fan who is “open to everything” and accepting of “all genres” and being a person who willingly lets their geeky passions be mingled and mixed to the point of absolute dilution whilst handing over fistfuls of cash just to get into the the damned mega-expo-dome-of-doom for a single day of exposure.
Just because we are geeks doesn’t mean we have to be farmed by all the big companies. It used to be about getting together with like-minded people to talk about the hidden geekiness within. Now it’s about lining up for hours to get into a building where you can pay huge amounts of money to buy things to make your geeky world complete, sit in huge auditoriums listening to the latest hollywood tidbit (which is usually some starlet or star going on about how they didn’t read the comic but they love the fans and the history and this kind of story needs to be told again in today’s context), and let your tender mind be assaulted by flashing screens, blaring speakers, and free samples of the latest energy drink.
That is all I have to say about this….for now.