where everyone from tumblr can meet up with other tumblr people and we can have fandom booths for each fandom big or little and its free! please?
How quickly they forget.
We must not let history repeat
wat what does this mean lol
History lesson! Yes, a tumblr convention did happen, back in mid-2013, and it was called Dashcon. Basically, tumblr in a convention, right? Sounds cool. People thought it would be really promising since there was going to be a Q/A panel from the creators of Welcome to Night Vale! But, following the convention’s start, the panel was cancelled. Everything went downhill from there. Barely anyone attended, except some cosplayers(namely homestuck fans, we’re here for everything) and other folks.
That ball pit up there? That thing quickly started a rumor that the staff would give an ‘extra hour in the ball pit’ to make up for missing the Welcome To Night Vale Q/A. This is what started the ‘extra hour in the ball pit’ meme.
People payed 17,000 bucks for this con. Literally nothing happened.
And so, everyone here who was on tumblr circa 2013 knows and wants to prevent it to happen again.
And some things that should not have been
forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for
two and a half thousand years, the the ball pit passed out of all knowledge.
the above commenter left out soem details and had some inaccuracies. it’s way more wild than that.
dashcon actually took place in july 2014, which places it in the era of tumblr where superwholock had fully fallen out of fashion. it was even more of a trainwreck than previously described. this post gives a great rundown of all that happened and i definitely recommend reading through it. there’s also a wikipedia page!and a knowyourmeme page!and a fanlore page! but here are some highlights:
the wtnv panel was cancelled because the con didn’t pay the wtnv team’s transportation and performance fees before their panel, so wtnv walked out as they had full right to imo. here is their apology. well-known artist gingerhaze apparently didn’t have her hotel room paid for and had to sleep on wtnv’s pull out couch. yikes!
the con was run by a few people who were superwholocks (and the dregs of it) the homestucks in the ball pit was simply one of the first iconic images out of the con. tickets were $65 for a first time con that was basically empty by saturday afternoon - all the vendors packed up and left.
okay, the $17,000 bit? not to be glossed over, because what happened was at the end of the first night of the con the organizers made a speech to the crowd asking for $17,000, or else the hotel would kick them out. so they passed around a hat and people just dumped money in - no signing of names, no nothing - until they got the money. then there was loud wailing of “we are the champions.” there was a lot of suspicion, and basically everyone considers it to be a scam.
here is a screenshot of informative panels one could attend:
apparently, names and descriptions were changed by con staff - reports from the “homoerotic subtext” panel actually said the panel was about queerbaiting in the media! which is cool.
following it, there was speculation on the con’s llps, allocation of payment, and just a whole bunch of stuff that could easily pile into a bunch of lawsuits. i havent heard anything about any of them coming to fruition… pity.
As someone who was there (and accidentally helped start the ballpit meme whoops) I can confirm most of this. As far as I know the vendors didn’t pack up as the vendors hall was still open on sunday when I went through it, but WTNV did pull out for their liveshow that was scheduled on Saturday (they were at the Friday meet-n-greet tho and signed stuff for those who won the raffle to get tickets to that). The $17,000 fundraising is also true, people were donating 1′s, 5′s, 10′s and 20′s to try to keep the con going bc the people running it told us that the hotel was kicking us out unless they could pay the down payment since ticket sales had been slower than expected on the first day. There’s been mixed rumors as to whether that was legit or not but generally the opinion is that it was some form of bullshit, but the rest of the con was pretty good for a first time deal. The homoerotic subtext panel WAS all about queerbaiting in media and the panel was made up of entirely LGBT+ individuals (and they basically called the fuck out of the entire superwholock trifecta for queerbaiting and explained the difference between queerbaiting and actual representation as well as giving examples of media with actual queer characters). Also there were rumors flying around that kids under 18 were being allowed into 18+ panels (which started before the panels even occurred) which pissed off some of the panelists, because everyone was carded before entry and rumors like that could ruin their careers.
Basically the panels were great, the people who were there were great and I still follow most of the people I met when I was there, but the management was shitty and larger events crashed (there was supposed to be a superwholock scavenger hunt and I believe that crashed and burned, the dashprom was cancelled/postponed bc of the fundraising, WTNV cancelled, exc.) and because it was advertised incessantly and even WTNV brought up that they’d be there in their show intros (i still cringe when listening to those) every flaw and mishap was hypermagnitized and broadcast out to all of tumblr basically as it happened. Also the Extra Hour in the Ball Pit was real and it was bullshit and it still makes me laugh.
when u show ur parents an Amusing Thing on ur phone and they like “who is that? who wrote that? did ur friend take that pic? whos pet is that? where is that?” like i dont KNow fam its just floating around cyberspace and i caught it in my Blog Net and bestowed the Amusing Thing upon ur eyes i dont know the specifics my guy
