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| | FANEXPO, or Stockholm Syndrome for geeks
09/03/10, 14:08 5 Comment
Last weekend FANEXPO rolled into town again. Billed as the sort of mega-everything expo in Canada, it's kind of a lower-rent version of Comic Con or Dragoncon, with the organizers getting some names like Shatner, Adam West, Burt Ward, and various others that don't come to mind.
FANEXPO is also a for-profit event - the organizers do this for a living. I'm okay with that. I do, however, take issue with the fact that the organizers take the attendees as cash cows and every year find new and innovative ways to make a buck at the expense of event quality. There's a long history of the organizers cutting corners or going out of their way to gouge the attendees, and I'm not okay with that. They also like trying to bankrupt other local events (one of their favorite tricks is running a loss-leader mini-event the week before or against other conventions), including non-profit events, and I'm not okay with that either. Because of that, and because there weren't any guests I care to see, I give this one a pass in the paying department; instead, I met up with friends outside the convention area both to hang out and do some photos in a downtown setting.
Last year the event was overcrowded, and the fire capacity was reached. Because of this, the policy was changed so only people with con badges could enter the building at all. That's fair in my books, since it ensures that people who get tickets don't get stuck outside because people without badges are loitering inside.
On Friday, people were lined up around the block for tickets, business as usual. People seemed to have a good time from those I met up with for dinner afterwards.
By Saturday, the building had reached capacity shortly after noon. There was only one problem: there was a lineup of people who already had tickets lined up around the block to get in. Why? Because they sold more tickets than the venue could handle. Better yet, they were still selling tickets and letting people in from another entrance. In other words, the people who had pre-purchased their badges weren't being let in as people left because they were continuing to oversell the venue. Hundreds of people, possibly thousands, lined up around the block to gain admission to an event they had paid for. Some of them had bought premium tickets with specific events at specific times - extra money for autographs and such that they were missing because they weren't being allowed in either.
On the inside, from people I know, people were unable to leave because they had commitments in there (helping with tables, events, etc.) and the staff weren't letting them back in either. All the while, they continued to sell more tickets to the event. There was no food for sale in that part of the con, but they couldn't leave without having a table being unattended because the other person staffing the table was stuck outside. And they continued to sell new tickets.
Here's a video rundown of what happened - pardon the rather blah opening bit, the fun starts a little after a minute in. And no, I have no idea who this person is, I just spotted this video linked by others summing up the situation.
An hour or so before the con was closing Saturday the line of people trying to get into an event they had paid for was gone. They extended hours by an hour or so - not exactly compensation for people who'd been stuck for 4 hours in the sun because they assumed that a ticket would get you in the door. They had oversold the venue by thousands of people and didn't see a problem with this, apparently.
Now, this bothers me since it caused many friends to essentially waste their admission fee on an event they couldn't actually attend. It bothers me that the organizers though this was okay to do.
What really saddens me, however, is when asking friends screwed by this if they're going back to this next year, their answer was "well, if they have good guests" or "well, I'll give them one more chance" or "maybe they'll have more space next year"...
...what the fuck, people. This is Stockholm Syndrome as applied to geeks. They do shit like this, and people don't clue in that by showing up next year they're telling the organizers that's it's okay to do this. People are under some unicorns and rainbows idea that showing a business how much you really want to attend somehow makes them want to do better, but year after year the organizers just see that as a reason to lower the bar on quality, and people don't seem to understand why the event is getting worse every year.
That or they do understand that they're being taken for granted but they value their comic book merch more than they value their self-respect. Rather sad, really.
I think next year I take some cosplayers who actually have a bit of common sense and we go some place far away from the convention for photos. Or we just have a Barbecue. I know this won't hurt them one bit, but at least being nowhere near them means we're not part of the problem. |
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