Conventions are typically joyous events where people come together to celebrate their passions with like-minded individuals, but DashCon 2014, a convention aimed at fans of various Tumblr subcultures and fandoms such as Welcome to Night Vale and Attack on Titan, has attracted nothing but criticism, and it’s not difficult to see why.
Along with only having 1,000 attendees out of a projected 3,000-5,000, DashCon also failed to foot the bill for the accommodation and travel expenses of a number of its panelists, including Welcome to Night Vale, who pulled out of the event due to the convention’s organizers not paying them. Worse still, during the convention staff members put a donation button on their website after stating that the hotel the con was being held at demanded $17,000 from them, claiming that if this number was not met the convention would be shut down. However, after the $17,000 was raised by a number of alarmingly gullible donators, the hotel claimed that it had made no such threat and therefore DashCon had likely scammed its attendees out of their money.
The most ridiculous part of the embarrassing debacle, though, was its now-infamous ball pit. The ball pit, which somehow found itself being branded as a major attraction of the convention, was offered as a form of compensation to those who had traveled to the convention to see Welcome to Night Vale.
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As it was only able to hold six people, the amount of time each attendee could spend in the ball pit was limited, though those who had reserved seats for the panels that had been cancelled were given an “extra hour in the ball pit.” Here’s a photograph of said ball pit:
Thrilling.
The hotel has yet to issue an official response to the myriad of complaints made about the convention since last weekend, and it should also be noted that the con had absolutely nothing to do with Tumblr – this was an event hosted by a completely separate party, which was intended to be the “largest gathering of Tumblr users to date.” Inevitably this meant that the majority of attendees were teenagers, which also led to on-site protests of the event largely consisting of 15-year-old girls holding up the ‘Mockingjay’ salute from the Hunger Games series.
Here’s some awkward footage of a staff member announcing Welcome to Night Vale’s cancellation of their panel:
In other news, I’ve got a ball pit, too – only $60 for entry. Free Wi-Fi to browse as much One Direction fan-fiction as you want.
Header Image: emmagrant01/Tumblr
