kevin_standlee (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kevin_standlee) wrote2013-09-16 05:45 pm
kevin_standlee) wrote2013-09-16 05:45 pm
The WSFS Must Be Crazy
I have to conclude that the way in which the World Science Fiction Society is organized is so utterly insane that to a significant number of people, they simply cannot believe that it really exists that way. The way they would set up WSFS is as a small, close corporation controlled by at most three or five people, and they certainly wouldn't let the attendees (a.k.a. "marks") have anything at all to do with the governance of the convention. And of course, the Board would decide where to hold Worldcons, keep all of the money, sign ten-year deals with convention centers, and otherwise engage in sensible economies of scale.
Because the "Worldcon Must Change to Suit Me!" crowd would never set up such a crazy situation as the members actually deciding what to do themselves (members obviously being too stupid to make up their own minds for themselves), they have great difficulty believing that anyone else ever did it that way. Thus there must be a Ruling Cabal (call them the "Secret Masters of Fandom") who really run things, so you just have to find those people and subvert them.
Alternatively, if you really are so stupid to have set up an organization whose mere members get to decide how things are run and where their conventions should be held, then those 4000-5000 people should just go away and never come back and give their property to Someone Else who can Do Things Right, which in this case means throwing away all of the things that those 4-5K people enjoy doing and Doing Something Else because a different, larger group like doing them.
There is nothing wrong with Anime Expo having 50K anime fans enjoying themselves, or ComicCon having >100K enjoying themselves, or for that matter Comiket having something like a quarter-million people as I recall. Why do so many people want the World Science Fiction Convention, which primarily (but not exclusively) celebrates written science fiction and fantasy, not comics, anime, movies, television, ballroom dancing, baseball, trains, regency-style dancing, costuming, or any of a number of different popular activities to die right this second to validate their own personal hobby entertainment preference? Why do they, to quote someone who recently Got It, want to "appropriate the cultural identity of thousands"?
Worldcon is a club. It's a club with between four and five thousand members, but it's a club, and it's run very similarly to how a club of only about two hundred people — the approximate attendance of the first Worldcon — might be run if organized by a group of opinionated know-it-alls who trust nobody but themselves to run things. And the members, on the whole, like it that way. Yes, the club might eventually go out of business when nobody shows up for their meetings, but until then, what is so wrong with the members running their club the way they want to run their club for the benefit of the other members of the club?
Because the "Worldcon Must Change to Suit Me!" crowd would never set up such a crazy situation as the members actually deciding what to do themselves (members obviously being too stupid to make up their own minds for themselves), they have great difficulty believing that anyone else ever did it that way. Thus there must be a Ruling Cabal (call them the "Secret Masters of Fandom") who really run things, so you just have to find those people and subvert them.
Alternatively, if you really are so stupid to have set up an organization whose mere members get to decide how things are run and where their conventions should be held, then those 4000-5000 people should just go away and never come back and give their property to Someone Else who can Do Things Right, which in this case means throwing away all of the things that those 4-5K people enjoy doing and Doing Something Else because a different, larger group like doing them.
There is nothing wrong with Anime Expo having 50K anime fans enjoying themselves, or ComicCon having >100K enjoying themselves, or for that matter Comiket having something like a quarter-million people as I recall. Why do so many people want the World Science Fiction Convention, which primarily (but not exclusively) celebrates written science fiction and fantasy, not comics, anime, movies, television, ballroom dancing, baseball, trains, regency-style dancing, costuming, or any of a number of different popular activities to die right this second to validate their own personal hobby entertainment preference? Why do they, to quote someone who recently Got It, want to "appropriate the cultural identity of thousands"?
Worldcon is a club. It's a club with between four and five thousand members, but it's a club, and it's run very similarly to how a club of only about two hundred people — the approximate attendance of the first Worldcon — might be run if organized by a group of opinionated know-it-alls who trust nobody but themselves to run things. And the members, on the whole, like it that way. Yes, the club might eventually go out of business when nobody shows up for their meetings, but until then, what is so wrong with the members running their club the way they want to run their club for the benefit of the other members of the club?
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The thing is, a physical convention can be a frightening and intimidating place, especially if you don't know many people. No physical event actually owes a duty of care to anybody to be welcoming, even if you could work out what that means. It's fairly scary going into something for the first time when you don't know people and imposing yourself on a bunch of new people. In the old days you'd probably do your first conventions with a college or university or local SF group and avoid that. If your only access to fandom is online then turning up at a smaller convention where there's a much lower probability of even vaguely knowing people is going to be potentially terrifying.
Still, the thing is, in my experience of social and work events, the probability of a successful event goes up with smaller events. I'm not sure large events are a panacea, unless it's purely as a way to ensure you can go with people you know.
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OTOH, something that doesn't help is if a clot of, say, ten people go to a Monster Huge Convention and never talk to anyone else and just huddle together gawping at everything around them.
The kinds of conventions I enjoy are not in general a place for what might be called "tourists." I expect everyone to be part of the act. That's why I use the Fandom as a Pot-Luck Dinner metaphor. That model doesn't work well for 100,000-person pop culture fests, but I think it's still plausible for Worldcons up to the approximately 10,000-person size, at which point the convention would be a lot less expensive per person to organize because I don't think we'd outgrow our current size of convention facilities.
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I do wonder what interactions people actually have the mega-conventions. The stories I've heard of ComicCon mostly seem to revolve around waiting to get into thing, being in huge talks with the famous people at the front, or standing outside premium events you're not invited to.
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Didn't one of the Glasgow Worldcons offer a dealer's-room-only day membership? I have vague recollections it could be upconverted to a full day membership.
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Suppose ten percent of the attendees do or know things interesting too you; that's 800 people; over a three day con you can squeeze in no more than 40 hours of human interaction - so if there are 800 interesting people you only have three minutes per person!
Size is not the best metric for judging conventions. There's a place for the Humugous Fannish Extravaganza, but such things are the frosting not the cake.
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Slightly off-topic - some cons are more club-like than others. I attended Minicon and was consistently introduced as "the guest." It felt at times like I was showing up at a family reunion.