#philefest

Code "Paranormal25" for 25% off VIP tickets or Code "Phile10" for 10% off everything else

Anon, in all of your comfortable, self-righteous anger, you forgot one important detail: you probably meant to send this message to someone else. And if you'd previously sent me an ask of this nature-- months ago, I imagine-- then it's safe to assume the rate of the show's success rests more in your head than with the many others who still enjoy it.

Regardless, I'm not surprised there's less money to be made in X-Files events when the economy is as bad as it is (other fandoms with dedicated fan bases have been hit hard, too.) To offset that financial cost, there would need to be something happening now-- a new movie (announced earlier than CC's I Want to Believe director's cut), an appearance by both David and Gillian, etc.-- more substantial than a signed autograph and the same stories told again with familiar warmth to stir up excitement.

Since the present always loops back to the past, I'm sure there'll be more interest or curiosity or both (and more) from fans when the franchise makes a new announcement.

So I am WELL aware that this is old news, but I was pretty busy at the time and/ or away from my laptop and I wasn't gonna type all this on my phone lol.

As most of you know, a few weeks ago there was an announcement from the convention that it was canceled due to low ticket sales. There was a few people going "hur hur" the x-files are a dead fandom" and while the size of the fandom nowadays isn't near what it was in its heyday, I am certain that it isn't its only factor. As tempting as it was to respond directly, I decided to make a whole ass post about it instead. Mind you, I don't have any inside scoop from the convention itself, a an just some girl on tumblr dot com with a stupid url. However, I am a convention vendor. I have been to many, many conventions over the years, and have a pulse on some things that some others may not.

TL;DR: Basically imo, there was a few factors that lowered both ticket sales, and as I suspect, revenue. A few reasons in their domain, but a lot not, and is unfortunately the way of the world right now.

First off, I am going to deal with their point of txf being a dead fandom. For one thing, I have been in much deader fandoms before. The thing about older fandoms is that there are some core fans that have been into it for decades, and probably will be in some way, shape, or form for decades more as it is a very important part of their identity at this point. With newer fandoms there tends to be a very flash in the pan spike until they wander off into the new big thing(tm). The fan base also tends to be older and have that sweet, sweet disposable income (kinda, I'll get into that), more than their teenage counterparts. The point is that that particular media means a lot to them, and they have the adult freedom and money to actually do something about it. At the same time, every day there is a decent amount of new material posted here by a shitton of different people, and on other platforms. On the hellscape known as facebook, there are plenty of normies posting on the txf group every day. Seems like a functional fanbase to me. Is it anything like it's heyday? I was a child then, but still I know the answer is no. Is it dead? Nah.

This is where it gets a little tricky though. A specialized convention of ANYTHING runs into the problem of it being too niche. Anime conventions are alive and well, but you don't often see one for a particular series, even if it is very popular. For example I haven't seen a My Hero Academia convention. At most, you typically see a a fan group in a city and they do events, like a tea party or at the zoo or something. Now, I have seen, and been to niche conventions before (star trek, there is a town in my province called Vulcan, so you know…), but there is two ways these things usually go:

1) It's essentially a party con. Rent out somewhere cheap, or have it as a camping thing, and a bunch of nerds use it as an excuse to nerd out together during the day and (probably) get drunk at night. This is how Vul-con ran. There wasn't very many guests and I can't imagine there was many long distance attendees, but that didn't matter as much

2) Do what I think PhileFest was trying to do. Be as big as they could be and try to draw in the crowds to cover the costs of doing this, including from people flying in.

Why number 2 failed this time is well, I am going to bring in the elephant in the room: World Politics, and speaking as someone that is not from the US. I reeeeeally don't like talking about politics, and admittedly I'm not the most knowledgeable on it, but here we go. I really do believe that it had a factor in this.

Frankly, as a Canadian, it is very discouraged to go down to the states, even as someone that is NOT from a marginalized group. If I was, there would be even more warning bells of why not to go. For my sanity, I do try to avoid deep dives of reports of what happens to foreigners going to the states for xyz reason (even for legal work or just as a tourist), but ultimately when you have new reports of people going and then ultimately ending up imprisoned somewhere, it's not a good look, and does a number on tourism. Meanwhile, for my country specifically, there has been a looming tariff implantation that really flared up a few months ago. Basically, Canada was super close on getting our stuff tarriffed from the states, and regular citizens were SUPER pissed off about it. Many boycotted American products, and cancelled plans to go to the states. The Canadian-American tourism is a decent chunk of money (to the point we have the term snowbirds: People that go to the states for warmer weather during the winter), and there was reports that there was an significant impact from the tourism trade there. Meanwhile here, there was definitely people getting the side eye and snubbed for mentioning going to the states, and you kind of had to clarify "oh it was already paid for before all this stuff happened". When I mentioned "I was considering going to the states but with everything going on, I decided not to" People around me were like "Do NOT go to the states right now. It's not worth it." And otherwise agreeing that now is not the time to go (also our dollar sucks ass right now, as well as some other countries).

Meanwhile, its not just Canada, even on their official cancellation page on social medias there was people saying essentially "I would have came, but I'm from (x country) and I'm LGBT etc. and don't feel safe going to the states." For others, I know that even if they are not in immediate danger, they don't agree with the current administration there and is refusing to go to America. ALLLLLLL of this makes an impact on the PhileFest turn out. With the route they took, they needed more than what the locals could do, and when you have people from other countries not feeling safe to travel there, you got yourself a problem.

Mind you, even within the states was a little bit of a problem. Apparently the location they chose (because they are apparently from there?) is a little out of the way, which unfortunately jacks up flight costs. With the current costs of living, that is a significant cut into people's tightened entertainment money. This is a widespread problem right now, and is Nothing anyone could do about, but it is a big factor.

Okay, so we got the world climate out of the way, what about the con itself?

Well, unfortunately, I really do think the prices were high, especially since they weren't able to get DD and/or GA. Die hard fans MAYBE wouldn't care as much, but that does make a huge difference for people that are "mid sized" fans, or fans that are living paycheque to paycheque (see economy reason above) which right now is an unfortunate reality. $120 USD for a weekend? Dayum. Highest tickets at $3999? DAYUM.

There is also advertising, which I can't speak of TOO much, but when you have people in txf spaces going " what there was a txf convention?? I didn't hear of this" You got yourself a problem. I'm not sure how much traditional advertising would work in this case, or how much local advertising was done, but perhaps being active in more of the platforms that fans are and even posting there may have helped.

Now on the vendor side. This is not as important, but its something I'm knowledgeable about so I'm going to blabber on about it. After the pandemic, there has been a surge of artists basically crawling over each other to get in conventions. For larger shows, there are literally thousands of applications for say, 300 tables and it has become a competitive field. Events that have ANY kind of fcfs is being filled within seconds, and/or crashing their websites. I tried to get into the artist alley for anime north last year, and remember it crashed google forms so hard that the coordinator couldn't even get in to open the document, because they said they were going to close it after the first 1000 applicants or something? I can't remember. Anyway. People are also panic applying, even if they know the show may not be as great. The thing for artists though, is they will usually not apply for a vendor booth unless they are large enough or it is cheap enough. The space is usually too big for them, and it is too much of a risk. PhileFest, according to the wayback machine, had no artist alley prices, nor were you allowed to share a booth. I feel that shows that they don't have a pulse on current convention trends imo.

The vendor tables themselves are decently priced, however there would be a couple of things that i would be annoyed at.

1) It states that ALL items would need to be txf or scifi themed: This isn't too egregious but for a convention this niche, it is much more realistic to have just an emphasis on such items, but allow other things to pad it out. Some people may roll their eyes at this, but its kind of the reality. I'm not talking about people selling their mlm's there, but actually if you have a popular item, it helps your sales to bring that along with your x files vhs tapes and your homemade frohike gloves you know?

2) It was open for the Friday but most people wouldn't be able to afford the tickets that got you in on the Friday? I would be pissed off and bored.

3) Its in the states, and the US is so anal about foreign artists and businesses selling shit there that I can't really give a fuck anyway or else I'd be deported (its a whole thing: extremely difficult to do it legally, most artists and vendors either has relatives or duel citizenship or lie and hope not to get caught. Not as hard to sell in other countries apparently though).

4) this is a pet peeve, but I really do hate when conventions don't include the attendee ticket with the price of a vendor ticket. For fuck sakes, I usually would at most be only seeing a couple things as that is all I have time for, and is paying more than your average attendee, I gotta buy more?

One other minor thing. Listen guys. I know "phile" is super meaningful to the fandom itself. But when I say "philefest" to a normie, at best I'm going to get a weird look, and at worst they are going to think I belong in the woodchipper, y'know?

Philefest 2025 is at risk of cancellation due to low ticket sales.

According to u/remedialpotions97

So they‘re offering 25% off VIP tickets and 10% off everything else: Code "Paranormal25" for 25% off VIP tickets or Code "Phile10" for 10% off everything

The tattoo: