#dashcon 2015

I thought, at first glance, that the posts of the resurgence of the infamous Dashcon were a joke. I was horribly, grotesquely mistaken. As if the ghost of Dashcon’s past is telling us to avenge what was the dramatic disaster of 2014, like some King Hamlet that cost 17k dollars and left some patrons writing blog posts the size of thesis essays on the pitfalls of--er, well-- the ball-pit.

The ghost of Dashcon’s pitfalls has returned in the strangest of places to begin its ghastly haunting: the con’s own Rules and Regulations: How to have a safe Experience at Dashcon 2015 page on their new tumblr. Ignoring the curent cosplay regulations (which can be an entire post in and of itself) we get to-- ta-da! the “in regards to behavior subsection”

Dashcon doesn’t want tumblr bloggers to blog about their bad experiences, as in the bolded “ -Do not make tumblr posts about any complaints you have. Contact an officer instead so we can sort it out” first point. 

I wonder why this would be an issue. First and foremost, it’s not up to the event to control the kinds of reviews that they receive from patrons; if the services or event is worthy of praise then it gets prasied by teh people atending, if not, well, they gbecome an infamous meme about an extra hour in the ball pit. 

There were plenty of posts of people that went to dashcon and had fun, but that was outweighted by the amount of stumbling and bubbling from the staff that were unequiped and not trained for convention work. Simple as. Big names that attracted people to the con such as Welcome to Night Vale had to cancel their appearence because of money issues. Barring this, there was a 17k dollar raising that was supposed to be refunded to the patrons and donators-- who never heard back.

In fact, a wonderfully written article by Gavier Baker-Whitelaw highlights the 17k dollar fiasco:   

In a Tumblr post, which has since been deleted, DashCon staff wrote, “The upper management of the hotel is threatening to shut down dashcon, unless we give them $17,000 by 10 p.m. Central Time tonight. Please go to DashCon.org and click the Donate button and give her anything you can. Unless we get this by tonight everything is cancelled. We suspect it’s due to the fact that upper management doesn’t like the people at the con.”

What’s worrying is the amount of tumblr users with little to no knowledge of the proceedings that happened at the last dashcon and though it has been a year, it may be better to take the information given with a grain of salt (or an entire bottle of sea salt). The con was problematic the first time around and unless they can verify information such as the people speaking in their panels (and the subject matter for that point, and security so minors are not sitting in on a BDSM panel) and the guests that are slated to arrive, then please i ask and beg you to catch up on what happened last dashcon and get to ask in-depth questions because this is your time, your money, and your community that is being sold and showcased in Florida.

Additional readings:

Dashcon Masterpost from the view of a Vendor

“My Thoughts on Dashcon”