This post is a first impression and an immediate response to the first convention we have attended in several years, and as such it tends to ramble and jump from one topic to another. I may have more to say when I’ve been able to digest the experience.
We have been here at the convention a few hours, and it’s been both familiar and strange. In the past the hotel would have been buzzing with crowds and activity, lines at the hotel and convention registrations counters, and a coffee shop packed with groups of con goers. Groups would meet, merge in a cluster of hugs and handshakes as old friends reunited in the annual ritual, and then separate - often exchanging members - before merging into the next cluster of friends and “convention family.”
The coffee shop shortly after 11 pm on a Saturday night. In other years every table would be full as attendees fueled up for the round of parties that would continue for several more hours. (One infamous party we hosted didn’t break up until we forced the last guests into the hall at 5 am.)
Steve and I were a part of that family, bringing our kids into the fold as tweens/teens, and introducing them to SF fandom, conventions, and our creative lives in general. We took them to art shows, masquerades, and dealers rooms with a vast array of books, art, costumes, and jewelry. We flew out geek flags and our creative flags proudly.
Over the years conventions changed. The business of publishing changed. Fandom changed. Less and less actual business was transacted at conventions, but we still went to interact with our fans and readers, to confer and collaborate with other creatives, and to stay abreast of what was happening in our creative circle.
And we aged out of a great deal of fandom.
We reached a point where packing 6 or 8 people in a hotel room to save a few bucks wasn’t worth the aches and pains of sleeping on the floor. Eating out of a cooler lost its charm when limited food choices conflicted with healthy eating. The demands of family and jobs conflicted with piling a bunch of friends in a van and road-tripping several hundred miles for a weekend. All of these things combined to curtail our con-going.
That, coupled with the pandemic, have created this familiar-not familiar atmosphere.
The familiar includes old friends, traditional events and panels, and so on. The unfamiliar starts with the lack of crowds. There were no lines at registration, no waiting for a table in the coffee shop, no clusters of hugs and greetings.
Greetings are more subdued. Hugs are no longer spontaneous, but must be negotiated with requests for permission - which are not always granted. Overall, the atmosphere is far more reserved, quieter, less boisterous. No longer do people dash across the lobby (dodging the clusters of other convention goers) to grab a friend in a giant, joyous hug.
In addition, this particular convention is going on hiatus after this year, a victim of some of the same circumstances: for years attendance skewed younger, but multiple factors have prevented that generation from being able to volunteer and develop into con-runners; the proliferation of large, high-profile, professionally-run events like San Diego Comic Con and commercial events like Creation Entertainment’s various specific cons (Supernatural, Game of Thrones, General Hospital, etc.) have segmented attendance; the spiralling costs of even volunteer-run events have reduced their affordability, especially for younger audiences; and the reluctance of hotels and conference centers to offer long-term contracts has fostered instability.
Gone are the days of multi-year contracts that gave a convention a “home” for several years in a row and allowed them to build their audience and to gain experience with both the facility and the staff. Often Guests of Honor are no longer willing to attend a smaller convention in exchange for a free room and a small speaker’s fee, not when they can get all that plus direct payment for autographs, meet-and-greets, and photo ops at a commercially-run con.
We have watched this change from a distance over the last few years, while circumstances prevented us attending our “usual” conventions, and now we are seeing the results up close.
Overall, the attendees are older than a few years ago. It’s not just that we have aged (though we have: I ran into a friend just a short while ago who is awaiting the arrival of her first grandchild in a matter of weeks. We met before her twins were born and now one of them is a 30-year-old expectant mom), but that there are fewer young people in the mix, fewer teens and twenty-somethings than I remember in the past.
An almost-empty lobby and it’s not yet midnight. A far cry from the crowds, young and not-so-young, of earlier conventions.
It feels as though the pandemic has accelerated a change that was already underway, a fundamental shift in the way we meet and interact with the readers, art lovers, costume geeks, makers, musicians, and more that comprise fandom.
I have to admit I am feeling a bit nostalgic for the overcrowded, too-loud conventions of the past, but they were a product of a specific time and place in popular culture, and perhaps their time has passed.
They might make a comeback, or they may be replaced by something different, something that works in the new time and place where we now find ourselves.
Whatever happens, we have to stay open to change. We will miss what was but we need to be willing to embrace what will be.
