Just Off the Key of Reason

Since May I've attended four online fan conventions:

Wiscon, a con I normally attend every year, where I mostly just watched the vidshow and talked to people about the Untamed.

VidUKon, A UK vidding convention which I have never attended, but have previously gotten supporting memberships to, at which I watched a LOT of vids, and interacted a fair amount on Discord during vidshows and anywhere people were talking about the Untamed.

Con.txt, a DC-area fanworks con that I've attended twice and always wanted to go back to, at which I modded two panels, attended and talked a lot on several more, and hung out a bunch on Discord, especially anywhere people were talking about the Untamed. (Are we sensing a pattern here?)

Fanworks, a new fanworks convention, which I attended the first of last year and planned to attend again this year, at which I VJ'd one vid show, attended one panel, watched a LOT of vidshows, and hung out on Discord a bunch during vidshows and not a lot otherwise.

Fanworks ended yesterday, and today I crashed hard. Con-crash is real, and I find it particularly brutal for online cons.

I find online cons both exciting, exhausting, and ultimately unsatisfying in some very specific ways.

Exciting because fuck, I miss people right now, and twitter and small group chats just can't fill that gap on their own. Exhausting because staring at screens is hard on my eyes, and interacting with people I don't know well or at all without visual input and cues is hard on my brain. And unsatisfying because they're missing and cannot replicate the two things that I love most about in-person cons: hugs (don't we all miss hugs), and the casual interactive space between "everybody" and "nobody."

Panels are great! Going out for a meal and chatting with a handful of friends after a panel is ever better, and not something that can be replicated online.

Lobbycon is great! Barcon is great! And to a certain extent both can be replicated on Discord. But Discord can't replicate hanging out in your hotel room with your roommates on separate electronics and intermittently chatting. Discord can't replicate 2am Lobbycon when it's just a handful of people and conversation turns both more and less serious as the hour gets late. Discord can't replicate one-on-one or small-group conversations with those close friends you only see at cons.

Discord and Zoom are great at large-group hangouts and chatter, and attending a con from home makes it very easy to close the computer and have alone-time. But the best part of cons for me is the stuff in-between.

The small group and individual interactions aren't just emotionally satisfying, they're also energizing and rejuvenating in a way that's very different from complete alone-time. And I miss that. I miss it so much. And I hadn't realized how much I missed it until this weekend when attending a smallish con I attended in person just last year made all of those gaps so incredibly clear.

Anyway, this is just to say that I miss my offline people, both in Ottawa and at conventions, and when all this is over there are going to be so many hugs, and so many quiet hangouts and it is going to be so good.