Tumblr Convention "Disaster" Unfolds at Illinois' DashCon

[AsurasEyes]

Look, I know that Tumblr is the punching bag of the internet right around now, but can we not indulge in sterotypes?

No, we're going to indulge in them all we like because Tumblr and its userbase deserves to be mocked.

http://www.twonkhammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Implied-Facepalm.jpg

I seriously hope that you're being sarcastic here. Please don't make me have to go into why what you're saying is blatantly false.

Spoiler

http://31.media.tumblr.com/f269af68959b5afcc45ff99ade5346ad/tumblr_n8of3p2BkO1rq01f1o1_1280.png
http://38.media.tumblr.com/b9afbc26fb9e48e0ae156b95aa9d9d4f/tumblr_n8l3poGtLe1rdvacto1_1280.png
https://38.media.tumblr.com/98e293226bc8d3a2eabd01bea8a25f21/tumblr_n8ti0hjHbn1squprwo4_1280.png
https://31.media.tumblr.com/e4a981e3a2a4712103d5b1a936b467a0/tumblr_n8ti0hjHbn1squprwo5_1280.png
https://38.media.tumblr.com/92f8ec267be3f802ab2621bff0b240b1/tumblr_n8ti0hjHbn1squprwo6_400.png
https://31.media.tumblr.com/6efc486bc628bdeee4847ffe09845c19/tumblr_n8ti0hjHbn1squprwo7_1280.jpg
https://31.media.tumblr.com/89689581ccaf3fd2ee49c97e1ded6ad8/tumblr_n8ti0hjHbn1squprwo8_400.jpg
https://31.media.tumblr.com/d558870785f778707260d7bd413483e9/tumblr_n8ti0hjHbn1squprwo9_1280.jpg
https://38.media.tumblr.com/68e29f78a6cbeee80f1f44ceaea6f75d/tumblr_n8ti0hjHbn1squprwo10_500.jpg
https://31.media.tumblr.com/606deea3147264d94fd3fe7c16e31b3e/tumblr_n8ti0hjHbn1squprwo2_500.png

I had to search for maybe ten minutes to find about twenty of these. It took me longer to figure out how to upload them onto the Escapist website than it took me to find these.\

Spoiler

I'm aware that Tumblr is a diverse community of many people and creeds, and some of them are alright. Hell, one of my best friends (who I also happen to have a severe crush on) is a Tumblrite. It has a great community of artists and creators, people who I look up to and aspire to be. Hell,they inspire me to work harder and better myself, so I might one day be like them, if not surpass them.

But...so many of them. So fucking many of the users are just bad people. It's not even "well-intentioned but misguided" like I've heard defenders claim. These are people who want to ban words from language, and just make things FORBIDDEN to joke about, to not say a random word in case it might "trigger" someone. And when they're not being fascist, they're just being shallow, immortalizing banal quotes from pretty boys or leaping onto the chance to see them make out. That's not even taking into account the people who draw or write fanfiction involving their favorite characters having kinky man-sex and decide to share that with the rest of the internet. I'm not against fanfiction or erotica, specifically, but I dislike how this is put on a pedestal and praised rather than just being accepted by the Tumblr community.

And then we have the Homestucks. The fangirls and fanboys who scream "HAIL SATAN" while they show up to cons in grey makeup and horns, generally butting into everyone's business. I'm fine with me or whoever else being a part of a fandom, but keep it to yourself. Homestucks don't seem to get this. They're like a child who just found a particularly ugly-looking bug, running around going "HEY HEY HEY HEY LOOK AT THIS ISN'T THIS A THING?!" when people are just trying to get on with their lives, reading other, better webcomics or enjoying our own fandoms.

Oh, and let's not forget the mental illness fakers. Speaking as a person with legitimately diagnosed mental illnesses, it's fucking insulting to see a teenaged girl say she has it harder than anyone else because she thinks that in a past life one of her headmates was a catgirl from Japan, or one of her headmates was a fucking vampire who likes to threaten people. And when her mother was complaining about how her self-diagnosed disorder isn't real, she threatens to kill her own mother in her "vampire voice". This is a legitimate blog, I'm not just pulling examples out of the ether, this is an ACTUAL PERSON. The fact that autism, Aspergers, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and all these other mental illnesses are treated as fashion statements on Tumblr is genuinely offensive to a person who actually has personal experience with them.

Maybe now, that you see where I'm coming from, you can understand why I would say that this site and the community should be mocked. But I am interested in hearing why my statement is "blatantly false", so please tell me why.

 

[sageoftruth]

Yeah, this seems about what I would expect from a gathering of people who would attend a convention for Tumblr. Of course I highly suspect that they are currently trying to figure out a way to blame the entire thing on straight white men as a whole.

I've gotta ask, I get that "blame the entire thing on straight white men as a whole." is from something and it must have some meaning, but I'm lost as to what it is.
I've seen several statements like that from other people and it's really jarring.

I've never been on Tumblr, but I'm guessing the whole "Blame white men" thing stems from another poster's accusation that
"The site is crawling with disingenuous hypocrites, each engaged in a constant uphill battle to prove they're more "unique", more "socially aware", and more "quirky" than every other Tumblr user."

 

[Olas]

Giant Snip

You see this thing?

|
|
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V​

Spoiler

It's called a spoiler tag.


Here's another:

Spoiler

As it's name implies, it was originally intended to hide information so as not to accidentally give away major parts of a story's plot for someone. However, it has also become a useful tool for compressing large images/blocks of text like the following:

Spoiler

To create a spoiler tag just surround the object in question with the word "spoiler" enclosed in brackets with a forward slash in front of the second one like the following:

[ spoiler ] text/image [ /spoiler ]

except without spaces.

Spoiler: This spoiler warning has a message

To add a message to a spoiler warning simply follow the opening spoiler box with an equal sign followed by your message in quotation marks like the following:

[ spoiler="message" ] text/image [ /spoiler ]

Spoiler: Pretty cool huh?

But also important, because posting a large image or body of text into a thread is obnoxious and takes up needless space. So next time you feel like posting something gigantic like your above post, please use a spoiler tag.

Thank you for reading this to the end.

 

[AsurasEyes]

Giant Snip

You see this thing?

|
|
|
V​

Spoiler

It's called a spoiler tag.


Here's another:

Spoiler

As it's name implies, it was originally intended to hide information so as not to accidentally give away major parts of a story's plot for someone. However, it has also become a useful tool for compressing large images/blocks of text like the following:

Spoiler

To create a spoiler tag just surround the object in question with the word "spoiler" enclosed in brackets with a forward slash in front of the second one like the following:

[ spoiler ] text/image [ /spoiler ]

except without spaces.

Spoiler: This spoiler warning has a message

To add a message to a spoiler warning simply follow the opening spoiler box with an equal sign followed by your message in quotation marks like the following:

[ spoiler="message" ] text/image [ /spoiler ]

Spoiler: Pretty cool huh?

But also important, because posting a large image or body of text into a thread is obnoxious and takes up needless space. So next time you feel like posting something gigantic like your above post, please use a spoiler tag.

Thank you for reading this to the end.

Spoiler

I'm sorry sir. I'm not so good at the forum posting thing. Please forgive my ignorance.

 

[deathmothon]

I've only listened to a little of Welcome to Nightvale, but the extra hour in the ballpit totally sounds like something you'd here on the show.

 

[elvor0]

The part about the protest songs, gang signs, and mockingjay signs had me in stitches. I surprised the tumblr people didn't start pulling macro/meme images out on their phones too.

Aye, it's like the worst kind of car-crash. Painfully, and ultimately terrible, but you can't help but watch.

I mean, clearly the best response to a hotel refusing you service because you haven't paid is to use a crummy protest salute that was used against a totalitarian government, you go tumblr, fight the powah!

 

[Atmos Duality]

I think even goddamn 9gag could've done a better than this.

Also, there was supposedly an orgy. Many people got crabs.

So, it was a convention where the crabs arguably had the best time.
Wow. That's...just introspective levels of sad and pathetic.

 

[Brian Tams]

Typical Tumblr, a place where nothing is done and all you see is people whining.

FUCK! I was going to make that joke! D:

OT: Sounds like a gigantic cluster fuck of a mess. That being said, the lone ball pit pic is hilarious.

 

[Saika Renegade]

I've been on staff for a convention before. Minor role in the structure, working with the marketing department to get our ads out there, that sort of thing. Even with that, for the amount of time I've spent volunteering and giving up a fair bit of free time, effort, and yes, even money out of my own pocket, I still don't think even our worst day (of which there are several, as any veteran con staff will tell you) was ever quite this big of a clusterfuck.

Things will happen, don't get me wrong. Miscommunications with hotel staff, trouble with attendees, general unexpected madness, so forth... it's part and parcel of any convention, even the largest and most well established ones. The thing is that most of these conventions have plans for this sort of thing. The best I've seen usually have several contingency plans that go several layers down, in increasing levels of pessimism and disaster. I've even seen a contingency plan for a hotel catching fire.

From what I've been reading, between administrative mistakes that would have flunked them out of a freshman business course and attendee behavior that would have gotten them kicked out of every convention I've yet participated in, the fire would probably have been preferable.

 

[Panda Mania]

That's the saddest ball pit I've seen in my life.

I would make some snarky quip about Tumblr, but seeing as how I do use and enjoy the site often...that might be a tad disingenuous. I do feel sorry for the organizers, as it's never easy to coordinate such a huge event, and doubly difficult to watch it go down in flames like that.

 

[VladG]

I think I got this all figured out. It was the internet press that organized the whole thing for MORE VIEWS!

Think about it... the internet has been exploding over this the past few days... and who benefits? That's right!

I've got my eyes on you Escapist Magazine...

 

[OrokuSaki]

This might just be my own personal degree of awful, but I lost it at the main post and every time I see a reference to the ball pit I burst into a fit of giggles. Forget the politics and the stupidity, naivety and just look, look at the ball pit!

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

This entire thread is really just insensitive towards the feelings of all those disappointed con attendees. Like, imagine how many people were triggered or had negative flashbacks or had a sudden crisis about their gender identification or lost the will to continue signing extremely useful online petitions? Just imagine if you had gotten all excited for what you expected to be the best con ever created and then you were met with this sorry display; and worse, out a ton of money for donating in an attempt to save the con and be a decent person. Honestly I love everybody in the world and no one should ever have to feel uncomfortable ever but I hate all of you fat, neckbeard losers who will never be loved by anyone.

 

[Broderick]

Ok guys, please explain me what's the deal with Tumblr and why for some reason that site is recently getting so much of internet hate?
I even have a really silly Tumblr account myself ( doctordoomsgreatesthits.tumblr.com ), and yet all I knew about Tumblr was that it was simply an image search engine where people posted pictures/photos the liked/made.... yet, there must be something more about Tumblr, judging by the negative attention it's getting.

Well it really depends on which blogs you follow. If you just follow for art or gifs, you are pretty much golden. However, there are many subsets to tumblr, one of those being people fighting for Social Justice, and of course, young women. Tumblr is mostly known(to the outside at least) as a refuge for Misandrists(no seriously, I don't mean that in a derogatory way, there are some seriously racist and sexist people out there on tumblr) and people with "special snowflake syndrome".

I myself have a tumblr and love it to death, but man, the people can really make it hard to stay there sometimes. You hear horror stories all the time about people disagreeing with a popular Tumblr personality, and suddenly they get anon hate to the point where they have to delete their blog.

As long as you follow blogs that dont tend to go in that part of the water, you will be totally fine on tumblr. Otherwise, you might see some drama on your dash

 

[Callate]

What can you say? Some cons are more of a con than others.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Wait. What the heck are "Homestuck gang-signs"? I mean, I know Homestuck, but what are the gang signs?

 

[TheNewGuy]

This is the Escapist. Feeling as though we're better than certain groups of people because of that one thing we heard that one time is basically our community's lifeblood.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who noticed that! People here have such a smug sense of superiority; it get's really annoying at times.

While I'm tempted... the term "toxic" gets tossed around a lot more than it should, and I'm not sure it really applies yet, but the Escapist community seems to have gotten a lot more... outwardly hostile, lately.

It's not just lately, it's been going on for awhile now. This place has been hostile for as long as I can remember.