I never went to these as I wasn't old enough but I've heard that conventions used to be more fun. Actual nerds going there having a good time.No social media attention whores trying to get cloutNot overly woke and annoying bullshit shoved down your throatJust nerds nerdin' out
>>10926084the thots were always there, there's just waaaaaaay more now.no lgbt shit or feminism in anime type shit in the panels.watching anime was one of the primary activities besides panels.it was a magical time
>>10926084It was more fun only because anime was a lot more obscure back then (especially in the very very early 00's), so it was rare to actually get to interact with people who understood the same things as you, and VERY rare to get to buy weeb shit in-person. So the adrenaline rush of having access to "that thing you like from the internet" was pretty high. Anime wasn't nearly as accessible back then, not like today where you can buy anything you want on Amazon or stream any show you want instantly. You actually had to put effort into hunting these things down back then. Social media also really wasn't a huge thing yet, and cosplay wouldn't have been a good way to get clout because A) anime wasn't cool (or even known) to most people and B) buying cosplay was a lot harder, you had to "know a guy" or learn how to sew/craft everything yourself, so the barrier to entry was higher but the standards were lower. So yeah, conventions were fun because it was less people, but those people were more authentic and very dedicated to enjoying their obscure esoteric hobby.>>10926091No idea what this person is on about though. "LGBT shit" has always been around, it was just more lighthearted back then. See: yaoi paddles
>>10926084Yep, no trannies and almost zero fat girls. Great times
>>10926153It was almost exclusively fat girls. Go be a zoomer somewhere else
Certain things appeal to me about old cons but I'm also not for rose tinted glasses either. Starting with the positive>OP picBreathing room + it's not a game of Where's Waldo to spot the lone cosplayer >Smaller scaleThese were always better and always will be. I know social butterflies who turn cagey at the giant cons, and who can blame em? Everything in one spot makes for a better experience in every way, unless you're a "Line go up = always good" type>EnthusiasmMGScon last year felt like a real return to form on that. You know everyone's there for the exact same reason you are, and never have to worry about some fag saying "I dunno what any of this stuff means, cause I don't care about anime". And being unapologetically weird has its perks too. Just check the announcements page here, the calls for official meetups and panels at ACEN and Okaton from almost 20 years ago are STILL up. But leads to the bad>Extreme tismI go to cons to hang out and chat with weirdos, not get up my own ass about being a godtier lore master of 100 franchises. Some online stuff translates well in person-- this ain't one. Today there are more spergs who understand rebuffing everything to be "contrarian" is a dick move. The "Druk" thread's a great case for that>Social media / clout chasersNothing that hasn't been said before, except I now like when the cell towers get overloaded and force everyone to put their phones down
The thots used to be booth babes but some twats decided that was distasteful so now they try to make everyone else simp and pay them instead of the companies. It was better when they were booth babes.The internet wasn't so widespread and everything wasn't so widely available. So going to a con actually meant finding new things and it was fun. Now I can hop on the internet and Google everything in 2 seconds and sponsor companies have taken over cons so if your not into current thing you'll be accosted by it.
>>10926084It used to be really shameful and embarassing and now it's like going to a football game. I still have a good time no matter what.>No social media attention whores trying to get clout>Not overly woke and annoying bullshit shoved down your throatIf "people acting in a way you dislike" is an issue, you would have HATED 00s conventions, some of the worst cringest and behavior I've ever seen and experienced.
>>10926499>some of the worst cringest and behavior I've ever seen and experienced.Yep. (Almost) any good feelings I have for cons of old goes away when I remember this. Oh and this too>>10926154>It was almost exclusively fat girls
>>10926153There were definitely trannies, a few of them existed in my social circle back then. >>10926154 is wrong though, there definitely were SOME fat chicks but the percentage was way lower, especially because it was the era of anorexic goth/emo/scene girls rather than "thicc" so any girl who wanted to be attractive HAD to be skinny.
cons were more fun before discord
>annoying bullshitelaborate because glomping and yaoi paddles definitely werent welcome
>No social media attention whores trying to get cloutSocial Media wasn't prevalent, but the attention whores like yaya Han, alodia gosengfiao and jessica nigri were already doing grassroots movements during this time
I've heard that weebs were huge party animals, I imagine it's nothing like that anymore
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOeuqo875z4these videos make me hate cons
>>10926219booth babes were always a western comic con or sci-if convention thing. They never were much of a thing for anime cons. 1. anime was why more neiche so there was just less industry over here in general (so few/no sponsors for such things) 2 there have always been the anime girlies who were willing to put on reveling Dirty Pair outfits or sailor moon outfits purely for love of the character >>10926609not welcome but still fairly common. Early cons had little to no social decorum. It was the one place you can just be fully autistic and annoying in that weeb way for a brief window. By the 10's you started to see more demand for social decorum because less autistic weebs started to fill out the community and their sense of shame pushed back on unalloyed autism of the previous era. No we are to a place where the social decorum has broken down again but that is because it's extensible normies ballooning the numbers at cons and they don't see themselves as a part of an anime or cosplay community so they there are no social pressures on them to no act in an anti-social way>>10926670They are but it's different. It's much more normie coded now. A image macro that was a inside joke in my friend group was a split poster which on one side had picture of a house party that said "how you spend your weekends," and on the other was a pictures of some cosplayers with the caption "how we spend ours," because anyone in the cosplay sense knows everyone does both. Yes we do the halloween in July thing and where our costumes we made to get photos but we are all day drinking and going to room parties by the evening. >>10926612It was an arms race between Yaya and Nigri to figure out how to monetize cosplay and turn it in job. Yaya tried really hard to try to pitch it as a legitimate art form. Getting her little sci-fy to do a tv focused on crafting (at frist) but it really was Nigir that just saw the trends online for how normies interacted with cosplay and just leaded in
>>10926722I lived in CA 03-07 went to lots of conventions; big, small, amine, comic, mixed. Booth babes were at all types. Anywhere viz and tokyopop were had them.Does viz still give out those super durable totes?
>>10926219Thank god booth babes are still a thing for people who aren't nerds. Restaurant expos have them everywhere. Hell there's a pizza-centered one in Vegas that has to literally just be hiring local strippers to promote wing sauce.
>>10926670>were>imagineWhen's the last time you went to a con? genuinely curious
>>10926736I've mainly gone to midwestern cons. Viz certainly didn't not have booth babes. Again there was little industry to speak of.
>>10926737all of those girls are ugly asf
>>10926545Yeah but nobody wanted to be attractive at anime cons. It was all virgin losers back then and everyone accepted that they were all equally on the lowest rung of the social ladder.
>>10926743The one on the far left is kinda cute. She looks like she's had the least amount of injections
>>10926771Im here for self improvement and fitness, but i hate the trend of jocks who only watched dragonball pulling up to cons acting like the big fish in the pond
>>10926771That's not really true, cosplayers obviously made an effort to look good, and fewer people there were virgins than you'd think, it was a level playing field and didn't take much to get laid in the con scene back then, if you could dress and groom yourself decently and had enough social skills to handle a retail job or whatever you were already ahead. I'm an awkward loser who can't get a date nowadays (being old and overweight isn't helping there though) but I got laid a bunch and got a few GFs out of the con scene in the '00s, and a bunch of them were girls who'd be completely attainable to all but the biggest chads nowadays.
>No gay shitFujos. >No fat girlsFujos.>No pride flagsFujos.>No troonsFujos. Put some respect on our Fujoshi foremothers, you silly bints.
>>10926084Anime cons exploding in size and popularity did not help. The generally smaller cons made everyone there feel like part of a community, not just strangers in an over crowded convention center. I found it far easier to approach people and just bullshit about anime and other nerd shit. One of my favorite con memories is just playing Oregon Trail on an ancient Mac with 2 other Touhou cosplayers in the hallway at a tiny local con.
>>10926783small hotel lobby cons still exist btwdont know if the culture and atittude is still the same
>>10926805I'm pretty new to cons (post-COVID was my first) but the one hotel lobby con I've gone to definitely had more of an interpersonal feeling, a lot easier to meet up with people you hit it off with again and much more chill vibes. Plus extremely easy to go back to rooms and drink lol
>>10926805Sadly not in my area. The last of them died off due to covid. Closest smaller con is about a 5 hour drive away.
>>10926742Sorry to hear it anon, on the west coast we went home with our weight in free stuff.
AX 2006 was my first con and I loved that I could just chat with a random stranger while waiting in line and I certainly miss being able to take pictures in the middle of the hall. Now it feels like everyone is in a rush to somewhere.
considering yaoi paddles, carpet fursuit guy, and glomping both yes and no. also due to being a fairly new concept there were a lot of creeps due to more lax rules.
>>10926865I wanted to ask about this, did cons 10+ years ago have way better freebies? Like grab bags full to the brim with shirt, sweatshirt, books and other quality stuff? I feel like billion dollar companies are doing the absolute least nowadays and barely give you an "exclusive" plastic keychain for waiting in a line for 3 hours .nikke booth at ax had the most stuff in their free bag this year by FAR and it was barely anything
>>10926905At the very least, Gencon used to give way better Free Stuff bags, nowadays it's just a coupon book that requires you to spend 50-100 dollars at a booth for a single free thing, when they used to just give you the free thing in the bag or free at the booth. That's the only con I've been going to long enough to remember, but it did definitely get worse.
>>10926865am i the only one who hates “””free””” stiff from cons?No i dont want another pin/sticker/lanyard of your shitty show or company
>>10926917>free stiffhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wYgnwk3X1w
>>10926917>Free lanyards I miss this these days. All of the conventions in my state have switched to selling lanyards to squeeze even more money out of people. Even the lobby con non-corpro cons. It sucks. Lanyards made collecting buttons and dumb little trinkets more fun.
>>10926907What kind of stuff do they give out at tabletop gaming cons? do games have shirts or is it more like models + dice kind of stuff?
>>10927616It used to be lots of minis and dice and promo cards, and still largely is with those deals. Obviously nowadays that includes redemption codes for video game versions and the like.They've just gone for free in the goodie bag or at the booth to being at the booth with a big purchase.
>>10926609i would rather be glomped and yaoi paddled by a fat retard every weekend morning for eternity if it meant tik tok would be somehow magically erased from ever existing this timeline.
>>10926084Yes. All known cons are expos for the media and normalfag consoomers now. Nobody cares to interact with strangers or put effort into costumes unless paid models now. Also full of twitchfags and youtubers and their underage armies.
>>10927628Speaking as someone who recently got into minipainting, free minis sound nice.
>>10926779To this day fujoshi are the only women whose presence I will never ever question. I know they are real ones and it makes me sad to see them be bullied out of fandom spaces by normie "nerds" for shipping crimes.
>>10926905Absolutely. I recently got into one of my old stuff and sold some to cut down on my collected junk and it if was packed away I can live without it. I had the viz bags which they gave away with 3-4 manga in it if you lined up day one (a Thursday) then friday-sunday they gave it free with any purchase. I have all sorts of signed shit, I've never paid for an autograph. I learned back then to grab things from other promo stations to take to get signed. Like a promo card for an anime which I then took and got the VAs of the characters in the cards to sign. Plus the poster they'd give you to get signed for being in line. Someone used to give out these giant plastic bags with goodies in them that you could fit 2 toddlers in. I came away with tons of shirts, downside is they're always XXL sized and I need a small so to eBay those go. They used to setup these cool cages of heat presses so they had shirt options and you told them what one you wanted and they made the shirt right there. I had a hoard of blow up swords from ninja scroll and vampire hunter d so those were quite old. Last like 7 cons I've gone to I walked away with nothing worthwhile free. Shoe string lanyard for your badge. One had kindbar giving out granola bars and they gave me one of those reusable shopping bags. Another had Jimmy John's giving out food. So I guess at least I didn't have to pay for food. Maybe Colorado conventions are just shit I dunno. I haven't been to any after covid because the last ones I went to were just boring.
>>10926779>troons and pride shitreal fujos were based terfs and hate 3dpd faggots/troons
>>10927658no correlationYaoi paddles look like the type of trend tiktok/vine/snapchat would make up nowadays.
>>10926973>I miss this these daysWhat cons you going to because i still get an ass ton of lanyards from san diego
>>10926973This reminds me, I miss the old badge holders with paper badges in them. You could stash your room key and some cash or a debit card in them when wearing a cosplay with nowhere else to put anything, or stick some extra "flair items" inside the badge holder for fun. You can't do that with the modern "hard card" badges that just clip directly onto the lanyard. I also attended a con recently that didn't even have badges at all, just wristbands, custom-made fabric ones but still lame in comparison.
>>10926148Having some random merch called "yaoi paddles" and having half the panels dedicated to sexuality are very different things. When I say there was less LGBT shit I don't mean a few off items or the presence of actual people in that community, I mean the programming of cons itself.
>>10928745you're delusional, i went to otakon for the first time in 2006 and it was basically a fucking yaoi-fest. you couldn't turn a corner without seeing Gravitation. i don't think the amount of LGBT shit has changed, i just think the format in which it is presented is different. gay shit had more of a "^_^ teehee" vibe back then
Was a mixed bag, but in retrospect I much prefer earlier cons.It was a bunch of weird fuckers getting together in a borderline uncontrolled environment to do cringy shit.While there were far fewer thots back then, it was much more degenerate. Like holy shit levels of degenerate. Especially in the early days of hotelroom parties shit was basically a swinger meetup. I have a bunch of stories that are bordering on unbelievable.These days, everything is cleaner, neater and better organized. Tell someone in 2003 you have a high quality, accurate sub collection of anime and he'll call you a liar - show him some Jap figurines and he'll shit his pants.Nowadays, most cons are 60% relatively high quality but generic vendors.Also cons were much more fucking dangerous. Not just because of the people, but also because of the nonexistant controls. I member a dude brought a crossbow, and dared people to shoot shit from their hands / off their heads. Not even kidding.
>>10928749>gay shit had more of a "^_^ teehee" vibe back thenYes, exactly, and that's how it should be. These events exist as places to have FUN, not get on a soapbox about how great you are for supporting xyz causes>Gay panel about being gayFuck off>Gay panel (actually) about animeMore power to yaI don't dare so much as hint at my homo inclinations at conventions cause it's so annoying to deal with. I'd imagine it's somehow more bearable to discuss in a lefty Protestant church
