 But but but up I think we're streaming Scott's not muted And I ain't wearing pants cuz it's warm out Yeah, I ain't wearing shorts. I gotta fix that my crap open Let's go to the YouTubey that looks good. All right It's Thursday April 26 2018. I'm rim. I'm Scott and this is Geek Nights tonight We're talking about not just failed conventions, but actual scam conventions But also failed conventions. They have the same effect Even though the world doesn't do it that way Well, we do it is pointed that we do separate first-degree murder from second-degree from third-degree sure like the difference of did You intend to kill that person in particular? Did you plan it in advance like the fact that we do agree that on those lines like we do recognize the difference between It killed someone because you were mad at him versus you killed someone by planning for three months on how to kill them Versus you killed someone because you suck at driving But I do feel like that last one should be punished way more strongly. That's what I'm saying. Yeah All right. All right. You'd never be allowed to drive again ever anywhere at the minimum So, yeah, I Every two years or so I got a new cell phone And it's about that time because I noticed that just in the last week my current cell phone, which is about two years old So actually a little over two years old. I got a pretty good run with this thing It used to have a for 30 to 40 hour battery life Like the whole reason I bought this phone is that it's the one small Android phone like the only one that's good and the battery lasts forever And it's it's running out of juice now because it doesn't throttle itself and slow down like the iPhone does when it's batteries Diane you can't just replace the battery. No, you can't replace batteries on most phones I mean, I guess I could try to take it to a custom shop, but I could replace the battery on my iPhone At an Apple store or some third-party person doing it either way. Yeah, because this phone is actually waterproof Can't just open it and it's been said that many phones are waterproof and simply do not Advertise as such because they don't want people to like jump in pools with their I've jumped in pools with this one I've used it in the water at the beach. I've showered with it I've read Farke like while I was show my iPhone 7 has been through many wet has been dropped in submerged in water I have taken photos underwater with my phone, but it has You know, it has been in many rainy and wet and splashy situations yet It is working a hundred percent. Well, but anyway, so the batteries finally running out of steam It's been about two years and by new phone I look and sure enough there is a brand new like just coming out the latest iteration of that same kind of phone However upon looking at it, it's bigger. It's like a centimeter taller Even the compact version of this phone now is starting to grow Also, it looks really fuggly But last year they released an updated version that is basically just a far superior version of the phone already have and because it's a Year-old design it costs hundreds of dollars less. So I just bought it and for the first time in my life I am buying a new phone Before my old phone was actually unusable You didn't break it on purpose to feel better about yourself. Yeah I mean you I really do well like you broke your computer so you could upgrade your computer Yes, yeah, you definitely did except that getting gave that computer to someone who then recognized it. Yes It was definitely oh, no you broke it and they they fixed it. How could I break a computer in that specific way? Even if I wanted to you set the RAM timing wrong. I assume you were smart enough to set it, right? I always trust auto. I'd ever look yeah, just trust auto the one always just one part of your life You just trust the auto configuration even though you should have known better. I trust auto in all parts of my life I default everything. That's my policy. Yeah Yeah, I didn't know that your motherboards default is some weird overclocking nonsense. Yeah, why is the default wrong? That's a good question. Why didn't you know what the default does? I just do I just why'd you brought you set up your computer to break So you could buy a new one So anyway, I bought a new phone gonna review it on Monday because it's coming tomorrow Because I live in a city if I buy anything on Amazon it arrives either the same day or the next day So it's gonna be it'll be waiting for me when I get home The funny thing is our friend Chris Reimer who many of you know as the last name I say in the patreon callouts at the end of the show every week I thought what happened to Thomas on well and Thomas on Chris Reimer and Thomas on If they ever change the order, it's gonna really fuck me up. They should Thomas on get out The only way to change the order is to change the amount of money They give us no Thomas on could go to zero and then go back to stay at zero because that's the smartest But then I wouldn't say his name good So everyone go to zero it's the wise thing to do. Hey that money is gonna fund our convention It's gonna fund that graphic design thing you're trying to do. No, it's gonna fund Church of the beach Nah, I guess to fund the church on the beach We would the patreon to be a couple order may orders of magnitude above in fact That is a stretch goal. There is an amount of money that is formally in the patreon And if we hit that amount we will quit our jobs and go to the beach And the only thing we'll do is make this person with more money You know what to do with it's a lot of money. They should get on that. Everyone else zero. Oh Yeah, if there's a well now zero rich person the full amount if there is a wealthy benefactor out there who wants to fund us For some reason, I don't think rich people like Ignite's because how much we smack talk about how evil and bad rich people are There I know a small number of pretty rich people who listen And I don't know a lot about them, but they listen to the show and I know about them All right. I've talked to them. All right rich person. You have so much money It's just a giant number in a bank account that does not affect your life in any way But you can dramatically change our lives better yet the lives of someone who deserves it more than we do What the fuck are you doing? Yeah, I feel like you won't even notice anything tomorrow Just be numbers will be different big fucking whoop I feel like they should skip funding us and go right down to someone who needs it more. That's what I'm saying Hate you're on forgive night should be zero, but uh, yeah There's a lot of news to talk about We're avoiding talking about all the breaking news where we don't have anything new to add to the conversation There is nothing news, but there is some pretty big news that we have a lot to say about Is there it's your news? Oh, right? Okay? So the news is Ford, which is I guess a big car company if you're in America But I guess the rest of the world doesn't necessarily give that much of a shit about I have no idea how Ford sells internationally Yeah, I've seen Fords in other countries, but not much. I've never owned a Ford Yeah, but anyway, so we had Ford's we had some tourists and I had I was all Plymouth Pontiac Like that was where I went anyway Ford is a big deal car company because their name comes from Henry Ford who is the first person with the first one The first one with a car factory the Model T the first car I mean, I guess technically there may have been other cars before the Model T Maybe but there was the first mass produced car that everyone could buy who had money You know, so fun side story when I when my when I was a kid and moving it in high school my family moved and we bought a house and The person who owned the house that we were buying it from when we were inspecting the model T We go into the garage. It's just a model T there and we're like, oh, that's cool And she's like, oh, yeah, you want to go for a ride? She was using it as her primary car No, why not? Yeah, people do that. It works the engine real simple Anyone can fix it. You can fix that engine with like pliers screwdriver wrench and Knowledge model T running than some other car because it's just so straightforward. It's like, you know If you'd like a part breaks, you could just make the replacement part probably Anyway, so yeah for the news is that Ford the car company is only gonna be making Two cars from now on no more tourists. No more the only cars there's a dance No, the only car they're making now is the Mustang and There's one Ford focused model. That's kind of sporty and the otherwise They're only making trucks and SUVs fuck all other models now I think there's a lot of reasons why this is big news one Car companies traditional ones tend to move very slowly and tend to make incremental change and very rarely will do a big Part of it is because they're old-fashioned big businesses But also part of it is because you got a big old car factory you got things way in advance You can't just suddenly change the car factory suddenly close one suddenly open one suddenly retool one It's not easy. It takes time But I even if they had decided to do this years ago it would have taken until now to actually make it happen but the reason I think this is big news is that a lot of the car industry like Commercialization model shall we say has relied forever at least for modern history on Taking I the identity of a person and getting them to attach that identity to a car brand and then tying the idea of owning to a car To all these fundamental aspects of American life like freedom and adulthood Well, I think in other countries cars are marketed differently, but oh, yeah I'm talking about America specifically cars are marketed in America is that it's like this whole marketing cultural thing There's a car culture and an advertising culture cars are mostly ads our car Yeah, I'm pretty sure the majority of all ads in America our car ads and their sole goal is to Drive that brand recognition and it's very interesting that when when I got adblock and never had didn't have TV anymore in high school Within a like five or six years. I didn't know what the current like makes and models of cars were anymore I mean, I know the ones that have been around forever Yeah, but I didn't know about new ones like I did I just didn't know whereas previously that was basic common knowledge that I just Learned through osmosis from ads. But anyway, so what's happened over the years is through a combination of marketing but also other factors American people who live in car places have leaned towards driving trucks and Truck like vehicles like SUVs or crossovers or whatever the hell you want to call partly because those are vehicles that actually have very Utilitarian purposes and also partly because those areas tend to skew more conservative and conservative people tend to skew more toward trucks SUVs there's some there's cultural reasons But there's other reasons right it's like my mom drives like I think it's like a Subaru Something it's right But the main reason that you know she drives that instead of a car, but she drove like most of her life Yeah, it's just this higher off the ground. It's like more comfortable to be up there Yeah, I can say that it's like you know It's those sorts of reasons like if you're driving a car after driving, you know, like you like you know Like a van or a truck you just feel like your ass is on the ground You see all these other people are driving the cars that are way up above you now It's harder to see around them. It creates this whole sort of like arms race almost, but it's also a comfort Yeah, it's you know, it's like, you know, there's tons and tons of reasons for this But effectively all this marketing and whatnot stuff worked and now most people who drive cars in the United States Want a truck or non sedan non sports car non coupe most of the Industry press and paid press I've read for the last decade because car sales have been on the decline in America right they have been making this consistent argument paid argument like there wasn't journalists writing these things it was paid journalists like Those fake stories, but they all had the same narrative that car sales are down because Millennials don't have money Not for any other far more intrinsic reason But I've always believed and I'm pretty confident. This is still true The reality is that a lot of Millennials want to live in places where they don't need to have a car Have been more willing to not have a car and it's not just that they can't afford them It's that they don't want them. I don't want one and further even when Millennials and younger people want cars They are much more resistant to advertising than the industry projected and they don't give a shit What kind of car most people I can think of who I've talked to her younger than me who are actually like getting a car or care about cars They want the cheapest car that will let them drive to the thing they need to drive to yes They literally don't person who's grown up on the internet right in terms of culture They buy a car the way they buy a cell phone They may care about clothes or shoes or their phone or their computer More an office chair than a car right these sorts of things they care about but the car like it's like you they don't Car nerdery has gone way way down in you know the years, right? So, you know, it's only certain the number of people who are nerdy for cars is very much decreased and thus Pretty much anyone who's my age who buys a car who has to buy a car gets like a Honda Civic and keeps it forever As long as it works. Yep, so case in point when I was in high school I needed like my I care more about like the fact that their iPhone integrates well with this sound system in the car Yeah, and what kind of engine it has or anything like that my old car I know are interested in like, you know electric car or super efficient car. Yeah things of that nature And I am too if I ever buy a car again one it has to be at least a like minimally self-driving and to Probably getting something that's electric. I'm just holding out until they're you know I don't have to own the car. There's just self-driving cars about And I just call when they just come up to me and I get in them But when I was in RIT and my previous car had literally the engine had exploded And I needed a new car because living in Rochester without a car sucked ass. Yes So we need we as a group needed a car I was the one who had the most money and the ability to buy a car so I bought a car and I remember going to car lots and like trying to buy a used car and Hating every second of it because I literally didn't care. I just wanted the cheapest car that would work And ended up buying this purple Sunfire and apparently no one was buying this thing because it was purple So I got it for like 10 grand and I didn't care Even when I bought I bought I drove it until it literally died Right when I when I had to drive a whole bunch living in Beacon in 2006 I bought a brand new Mazda 3 because it was nice I had a hatch which is way useful for carrying shit to conventions that we're doing a lot at the time Also putting a bike in the hatch stuff like that right tons of groceries in the hatch. Yeah Anyway But it was super nice car and we lived out and it lived upstate you me and Emily each had our own car But even then it was sort of like they're like what color do you want? And I'm like, I don't give a shit Yeah, like it's like which one all right? You're getting this coppery orange color. That's like exclusive to like fine Whatever. Yeah, there's a cost more. No fine. Give me that one I remember you were looking at the Volkswagen and that salesperson kept being like listen to the sound the door Money had less space in it, but it had heated seats and less fuel efficient and also the Volkswagen dealership had a huge line at the service area Yep, but she kept trying to sell you on like the identity of the car and you were just like I do not give one fuck No, not it was really funny because I was in the back seat While she was trying to sell you on this fucking car Well, because it's about like the feel right it's sort of like you're just like luxury goods Right, like they feel a certain ways like the they must have constructed the doors and such in such a way We're like it just gives a really satisfying closing sound right like it's you know And the joint on the door just feels like really satisfying to close Yeah, it's like they're trying to sell you on that But it's like sure that you know, it feels interesting and you know, you know Like but it's sort of like getting a really nice pencil it writes the same even though it just feels nice in here Yeah, like ooh, it's like it's not worth thousands of dollars Yep, and also there's that cost fallacy where if you're buying a big thing then Incremental increases in that cost most people do not value them accordingly So if you're buying a two hundred thousand dollar house, which I wish there were two hundred thousand dollar houses here There are it's not great not here. No, no, not right here. No. Yeah, actually in Beacon There really aren't two hundred thousand dollar houses You can I've seen the two hundred thousand dollar house I looked at in Beacon was a meth lab I've seen some things that are like trailers that are not moving. Oh, yeah $200,000 on a tiny plot of land But people people who are buying a two hundred thousand dollar house will not think that much of a ten thousand dollar swing in either direction But if they're buying a ten thousand dollar car, they will care a lot about a ten thousand dollars swing in either direction As they're buying a five dollar sandwich, they'll care a lot about a one dollar swing in either direction People just have a terrible time of valuation, but I do that. Yeah, I do it too. It's it's human nature It's very difficult to avoid that quandary. I'm already spending this much a one dollar more. All right Yep, it's like that's a whole bagel extra. You give it. I'm an extra bait I I spent $40 more on the new cell phone I just bought because I got the blue one instead of the black one And in retrospect $40 is like two pretty good meals in New York City Yep, like pretty good with like an appetizer So yeah, I think to not turn this into a whole show that this news from Ford Indicates a seismic shift in the car industry in the United States I think it's a consequence of a seismic shift that already happened long ago. I know I think so. Yes I agree. This is the consequence of a seismic SUV ain't new but the seismic shift is that a car company Admitted that this is happening and is trying to get ahead of it All the other car companies are kind of fucked and it's shocking that Ford is the one that was like wow This is happening. Here we go. Well, some companies, right? So like where I talk about Honda Civic It's like well Honda's Japanese company. There's yeah, they get there selling those civics everywhere in the world And this is only happening in America. Yeah, I Like how you still say America to this day because other other cut you see SUVs rolling and you know like I don't know Japan I'm just still shocked that I see SUVs rolling here. Yeah How do you park that thing and the answer seems to be you don't people dropping in New York for some reason? Yeah So I guess it'll be real interesting to see how this shakes down over the next decade No more Ford Taurus a legendary car. Yeah So in some other news, it's just sort of fascinating that this happened. So I know a lot about serial killers All right. It's great. Okay next topic in this because when I was a kid remember I watched vampire 100 D when I was in fourth grade What is it? What is vampire 100 D had to do a serial killer because my mom really wanted me you should have said I watched Silence of the Lambs. I also at least make sense. I watched Silence of the Lambs when I was in elementary school Yeah, I mean I saw it also. Yeah, remember when but I definitely saw it when I was you know But my family like my mom was really into like horror fiction and true crime stuff and disease stuff and all these things So I just was very interested in those things as well as a child So I knew a lot about like scary diseases and serial killers and horror nonsense My mom was into horror but more aliens vampires kind of oh, we were we were also into that I was reading Lovecraft like back when my elementary school teacher actually went to my parents I said, you know, your son has that book and they were like what lol Of course he does but anyway, the Golden State killer was kind of a really extra terrifying serial killer Yeah, a long time ago What's crazy is that they just arrested this guy now good like 40 years after he was an active Serial killer slash rapist good and the whole story behind this thing is Ridiculous and the kinds of crime like this is a class of crime like the way it happened That literally could not happen in a modern urban setting or even a modern suburban setting like it couldn't have gone on as long as it did And it's crazy and the whole story behind it is crazy and it is very I guess it speaks well to one tiny aspect of American law enforcement That despite all the other very obvious problems that I could point to in terms of American law enforcement The fact that the the system existed to catch this dude this late is still amazing I mean, that's you know for all that's the thing is like like there are To try to catch people like this. Well, no, I mean that it's just even the bad cops try to catch people like this Oh, yeah, they just also shoot random innocent black people for no reason right is that that's the thing that they do is they'll be like They're actually doing their job and you know enforcing the laws, you know Yeah, I guess part of their job is maintaining this racist status quo Right and then if you try to say hey stop doing the bad stuff you do they'll say well Look at the stuff that we're doing that we're supposed to do right and that's the thing that you know It's like yeah, they do what they're supposed to do and they also do these other bad things at the same time But also just doing a good job today does not excuse doing an evil thing tomorrow But also the nuance I want to point out is that this is the biggest new like it is big news. It's crazy news It's a crazy story But also if they had just ignored this guy and maybe shot a few less innocent people It probably would have been a net benefit to society. I Went short because we went along on the car thing Someone bought America the trivia game America. Yeah, that game is so good It's pretty good. Oh Artisan crafted sedans. I think there will be like hipster artisan self-driving cars within 20 years I don't know But I think definitely your people are definitely if today and stop being sold people are definitely going to be Maintaining sedans even that are boring now and go because even you think about like hot cars in the 50s and 60s That were sedans, right? Like, you know a Cadillac or whatever It's like those are boring normal cars then and now they're hot cars and even like sedans from the 70s and 80s now are hot cars Yeah, so well like look at these like in the 90s 2010s will eventually be cool cars at the auto show some gal drive up with this 2007 Ford Taurus at the auto show people like whoa cool, dude. Yeah It's gonna happen. Yeah, but Once they're self-driving I feel like Customized like boxy vans that just have like tables and beds in them are gonna be very popular among the upper middle class There's plenty of those already rich people already don't even reach people when they can drive themselves the problem with those cars What are those things called? I forget, but they're worthless if you're not rich enough to have a driver Yeah, do you have a driver in front and then it's like a big box behind it once it's self-driving imagine that you and I are like Alright, we're going to PAX tomorrow. So the self-driving cube that we own just comes to my apartment Picks up me and Emily goes to your apartment picks you up We just like fall asleep or play a board game and then it tells us when it's at the hotel at PAX Oh, yes, and then it parks itself some liberties and rich people are using the have been for years At least like a decade or so instead of limos like these box like oh when I was in Istanbul You see these things fucking everywhere Yep, like everyone with money has one of these things driving them to work It looks like a normal a kind of line van But the tall the back is even taller and sort of square and inside is like a nice little office with a little Inside can be pretty much fucking anything and you can't see inside from the outside there could be anything in there They could be beds offices. It could be the benches. There could be like a little living room in there Yeah, all the crazy 400 ducks could anything like nothing else There's so many options to choose from in terms of what you put in there And if you're rich you can just customize it with whatever the fuck, you know It's probably gonna be at least you know a TV or two and you know, all right. Let's do things of the day But anyway things of the day, what do you got so check this out? I don't know if I use this already I forget but I don't think so I don't know anything about this Okay, so check this out. It's an NES rom. It's a file It's a series of zeros and ones on your file system and they add the file name ends in dot NES And you can open it up in your NES emulator and or run it because it's a valid NES rom You could put it onto a cartridge and put it in NES and it would run and a game would appear I don't know what the game looks like. I haven't tried to run it, but it's an NES file. Anyway at the same time If you take those exact same set of zeros and ones and you just rename the file to dot zip It is also a zip file. It is a zip file and an NES file the same set of zeros and ones and if you were to unzip That rom which is also a zip file out would come some source code Like actual source code and if you were to run that source code through a compiler Out would come the set of zeros and ones that is an NES rom and also a zip file I don't even know what to say about this the end This is like that you could you could compile it and unzip it and then take the stuff that comes out and compile it and unzip it And like and any one of those zips could be run in the emulator I've seen stuff like the recursive script of a dolphin or whatever or like the self-compile But this takes it to a level that is amazing. It's like the speed will fun like toy code Exercises like this become the speed running of computer science. Yep You're gonna need a copy if you want to do actually do this. You're gonna need zip python 3 and ASM 6 it's the assembly compiler because the source code that comes out as assembly, right? You're just amazing if you try to use some other assembler It might not assemble into the exact set of zeros and ones. Yeah So there's a song Scott hadn't heard it which I'm kind of surprised by but if you poke her out in the right parts the internet Parts of this song or remixes of parts of this song are used in a shockingly wide variety of Memes and gifts with sound type things like you'll hear this song a lot if you're in the right parts of the internet Most people don't seem to know anything about where this song came from what the deal is with it I'll play a snippet at the end of the show and you'll I'm pretty sure some of you'll be like Oh that song I hadn't heard the song before but you can tell from the instrumentation That it is a Commodore 64 song because it sounds like it's coming from a Sid chip and it is yep but the song is Rob Hubbard's Monty on the Run theme from a Commodore 64 game called Monty on the Run never heard of this game You don't need to play the game It is not worth playing in the modern era at any point the Commodore 64 games universally almost universally have amazing music because that's what the system had the capability for and Among those games the soundtrack to Monty on the Run. I think it's exceptional I think until like the Super Nintendo and Genesis the Commodore 64 still had better audio than like any other non Computer, but I cannot stress to you how good this song is well This soundtrack is and I implore you to listen to this entire thing All right In the meta moment the Geek Nights book club book is Homer's the Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson not some other translation only the Emily Wilson Only the Emily Wilson one I'm uh I'm still really into it and you guys who just read it if you've never read the odyssey just read this translation Don't bother the easiest of the odyssey translations I have seen to read and understand because it is in a modern language and not Pretend old language if you've read the odyssey before Read this anyway I think you live a very different perception of some of the aspects of the odyssey When read through modern language and not obfuscated pop-up book odyssey A pop-up book odyssey is also real good But even the pop-up book odyssey does not really drive home The degree to which slavery was a part of pre-greek society There's also a lot more agamemnon in the pop-up book odyssey that was not yet appeared in the text Is there any legalamnon? I hope so Otherwise geek nights But me not scott will be live not this weekend, but next weekend at zenkaikan in lancaster, pennsylvania. It's gonna be amazing No, it's not. Yeah, it is. It's gonna be a waste of your week. I don't know why you're so down on this con I have a great time every year as lancaster pennsylvania is not a place you want to go Uh, I have more fun. I'm gonna be honest I have had more fun at the average zenkaikan than I did at the average anime boston Even at the peak of our growing anime boston Because all our board game friends go and all I do other than doing our panels is eat awesome like farm to table food Or play board games. You just break your microphone stand on purpose So you could buy a new one. No, I just popped the spring off because it pops off really easily You just broke it. No the spring just latches on here. It's not it's not an intrinsic property of this Literally the cheapest microphone boom on amazon. Okay, so Uh and other meta things we're looking to hire a graphic designer We talked about it a lot on the previous show if you think you could fully rebrand geek nights Professionally like we're talking like press kits logos like if you're ever like motion graphics Right someone who is pro level like you could do it for a legit company that people know the name of level Because you're gonna be paid at probably at least four digits worth of money for this job Yeah, not more. Yeah, it's a real job. We're gonna pay money. You got to be real good to do this job All right We're not looking for someone who's does graphic design for like Ye local e-sports team or ye local small business because frankly our website looks like web 2.0 point 1 Right the idea is to get something done That's so good that it can last for like fucking ever and be timeless You know the way like you know like the greatest logo like mcdonald's timeless, right? Obviously, we're not gonna get that level like one or two levels under that hungry for apples. Yeah Also, there are many places on the internet besides this podcast And you should come find us in all those places if you think about places that exist on the internet youtube twitter Even facebook, I guess if you haven't deleted your account. We're in those places come find us there seriously Just type the word geek nights into google and a lot of different things appear We pretty much own all one word. There's no space in the middle. Yep. I wonder what happens if I put a space in the middle Try it and see Same thing. Okay, same list. All right Geek nights podcast on tv tropes Who made a tv tropes page that's been there for a long time. I guess I never noticed Okay Interesting Anyway, so we're not going to talk about these specifics of universal fan con It is just the most recent egregious convention failure It is my opinion and not all these things are conventions. There was uh, there was the the the thing that was a fire festival Yeah, fire festival and dash con Yeah, but I guess what the what we want to talk about is dash con happened It technically happened. Yeah, it didn't happen again. No But oh the pokemon go thing there has been a rash Of multiple kinds of convention failures lately. We've done shows on fail conventions before major major events Yes festival failures as well expose But they've broken down into sort of three categories And one of those categories I think is something that we need to talk about because I think this is I feel like the problem we're about to describe is going to get a lot worse Before it gets better. I've seen it getting worse So it's like I can see the snowball has already rolled halfway down the hill and it ain't stopping Yep, so you got anyone who doesn't see that snowball halfway down the hill better open their eyes So the first thing we're we're not going to talk about are conventions and events that happen But are just really shitty like dash con like dash con or like course dash con ages into the second category heavily There's a there's a venn diagram here and at the center is a lot of sad kids who show up in a town Right well for example the first ohio con we went to right it was a con it happened right they ran it There was just a lot of failures at the actual event Yep logistically and and otherwise like to the point that we would never go back You know there's the the city con we went to Yeah, we're just like well it actually happened But the turnout was just like and it wasn't a scam it just sucked Right, it's like there's a lot of people they run a convention. They make it happen They put on the event like Philly wizard world happened a bunch of times It's either you know, it's maybe it's just maybe it happens and it's just a bad convention Maybe it happens and no one shows up or maybe that happens in the logistical failures at the thing But they happen right I gotta get in a rub someone pointed when we're talking about the graphic design Someone just said in the chat. What if we dig is spelled capital d i g g your website's current look Mm-hmm. That's that's the appropriate level of burn for our current website But anyway, yeah, we're not talking about conventions that just suck or fail in the traditional sense But that is the thing that happens. There's another kind of convention that fails Before it happens or fails in a way that prevents the event from continuing Almost always either because it was oversold in the fire marshal shut it down Or the people who ran it were so incompetent that they failed to do things like Put the requisite deposit down for the convention center have insurance Yep Have enough money to pay for the things you need to pay for during the event, right? So like the the the fire festival, right? Is everyone showed up to this place But like they didn't have water for people. Yeah, like there wasn't an event I don't remember the details, but I remember I vaguely remember something like there weren't toilets to go in Of course So suddenly you've got a group of people in a place and now it's it's just it's Unfunctional, right as opposed to say like Ohio Con where it's like Oh, the tournaments didn't happen or the video game systems weren't working This would be more like we show up in baltimore and an anime convention that we pre-registered for and had a hotel for Just isn't happening like we show up at the convention center The doors are locked and that's it a whole bunch of people go to packs. They're outside the doors and they can't get in The things aren't set up on the inside now. It's interesting. You mentioned fire festival Someone shows up to their panel. There's just no equipment and no enforcing pretty sure some Charges were filed around fire festival because here's the third part and this is where things get interesting I also want to say very clearly right now. We are not lawyers We are not making specific accusations against specific events who don't know enough about any of them to do so but fire festival And fan con and conventions like it There is a line between it failed because the people who ran it sucked And it failed because it was designed to fail and was actually a scam Right It's hard to tell the difference and sometimes you'll never even know the difference and it doesn't matter It's the same thing either way now. I suspect very strongly that there are Actual events that have happened in the last several years that were scams from the beginning Yes And I feel like they're going to be a lot of these because of the more fundamental problem one As we learned from black beauty ignorance and malice have the exact same effect on on their victims So it does not matter why a convention fails in this matter It harms people who try to attend it the same way But also there's this extra weird problem that is specific to certain kinds of conventions and events where There are a lot of people Both on the On the privilege side who know things about these events and have worldly experience And on the underprivileged side who literally don't have experience with these things like people who've never been to a concert Never been to a convention In both groups, there's a huge percentage of people Who are willing to give other people large amounts of money To attend events that they assume will exist Because there's a website that says that event exists Well, I mean this people willing to give people money just because a website has a thing on it for not just conventions But anything yeah, it's like I don't really I think a lot of this actually comes down to not necessarily conventions conventions like a special most egregious case of a larger problem of simply Pre crowdfunding anything right someone puts up a fake board game Everyone pays money because they want the board game the board game never ships. Yep, right? It's the same thing the difference is that when it's a convention or an event of large scale Right or moderate scale people not only You know pay like oh, I pay 40 dollars your board game that I never get I'm out 40 bucks, which could be a big deal for a convention kids are out like a first night at the hotel Yeah, you're not only you're all right. Well, you can cancel your hotel rooms up to 24 hours in advance depends There's but flights. No, you're boned. There is an increasing trend actually He's already putting your vacation days at work. You or who knows maybe you're vending at it and you shipped things Right to the convention. Maybe yeah, you started printing and manufacturing merchandise You started, you know marketing But I don't want to phone out scout There has been a trend increasingly with a lot of conventions where the hotel blocks have Policies of a week or a month in advance I have seen it many times in the last three or four years I've never seen a hotel reservation that was the longest I've seen is 48 hours I have seen Not I don't deny it, but I'm just saying I personally never seen more than 48 hours I've personally seen one month for multiple events recently And I have seen events that I did not go to where the policy was You cannot cancel a hotel if you book it through the convention's block And this is happening because the idea of hotel blocks is becoming obsolete because literally any major event Will sell out every hotel in every city anyway So no one has an incentive like no hotel has any reason to provide discounted rooms anymore No, not discounted But the incentive is for the events to partner with the hotels to make sure That those rooms are set aside for its attendees and not for people doing anything else in town Otherwise the convention won't get enough people coming to it because they can't get rooms And it'll hurt the convention itself. So the hotels can actually if your event is selling out You can charge the events say hey give us money to a lot set these rooms aside for you But the hotels increasingly can back away from the traditional SLA of canceling hotels But anyway, that's a sort of a side problem But yeah, the point is is that when it's a convention that people are crowdfunding and paying for an advance People are putting in a lot more investment and they get way way way more boned when it fails Maybe they've even like you've gone to the place and then found that it failed now. They really have been super boned Right, you actually flew to a place stayed in the hotel went to a town and there's nothing there So that latter part is what extra terrifies me because it's one thing if someone gets scanned by a website And buys a board game that doesn't exist but if someone Does enough research to know say like, you know the examples from packs where there are people Who have never been to a packs before who know that a particular youtube streamer is performing at this packs in a particular room Not performing appearing. Yeah appearing. They're not musicians. That's usually they're not So this person knows that this event exists and that a person they want to see is going to be in a room at this convention But do not know what day of the event that person is in the room and make arrangements to travel to the event Anyway, and then make a terrible mistake because the event was on saturday instead of friday The the number of people then I have a lot of experience The pack specifically doesn't post the schedule until very close to the actual convention And you have to buy your tickets way way way in advance And if are you really if you're going there to see, you know your margiplier, are you buying all four days? Ah, but this is the thing people who attend conventions and having worked on a lot of conventions over the years Not just attended them. I can say that a huge percentage of the people who go to nerd cons Literally do zero research about the event before they attend somehow they get there Yeah, but like they don't know that hotels charge sales tax and can't pay for their room Like so how can such a how can the person that ignorant and clueless Possibly be able to tell a real convention from a scam convention Yep So I think what I want to talk about right now is how to tell the difference between a convention That's likely to occur versus a convention that is likely to not occur or fail in some disastrous way Rule number one If it is a first year convention There's already like a 20 chance of failure right so a first year convention Even if it's trying to honestly happen is so difficult Especially if the people doing it don't have a lot of experience doing it It has so many ways it can fail in so many different categories That it's like the odds of failure are very very high Even if everything that they're trying hard and they're honest so If it's a first year convention now, here's the thing if I just say don't go to first year conventions That's bad because especially because we want to do a convention. Well, no, but you're basically not just that But you're basically saying look the conventions we have and the only ones we can never have We should never have competition. We should never have new ideas or anything No, we need to have new conventions the more the merrier, right? But how do we make sure that people aren't taking risks and going to first year conventions at a too risky? And here's my advice. It's real simple All right I'm curious what your advice is because not my only go to a first year convention if it's a Near you and that it's not a really big deal and b don't pre register a pre order A first year convention should not and will not sell out because it's brand new buy tickets at the door Here's the problem Most first year conventions either do a Kickstarter or need a certain amount of pre-regis to even happen I would not kickstart a first year convention that is not either so cheap or very close to me So I don't have to risk the hotel. I would only be risking the price of the badge and such Yep, so I think a more nuanced approach is if a first year convention Targets an attendance of more than a few hundred people Avoid like the plague. Yes, because it is unless that first year convention Is being run by a corporation like the new anime convention in new york city It's run by a real company that has real employees who have experienced running big conventions in the jacob javits center Right, for example, like i'm confident that convention to happen like disney I think is going to do some, you know, they've always had the star wars con. There's yeah, if disney does It's gonna be disney con. You know, it's legit. If hasbro runs a my little pony con. I'm pretty sure it'll happen right But if Someone on Kickstarter is kick starting there My little pony steven universe con and they're gonna have an artist alley and they're gonna have 10 000 people attend That convention is almost guaranteed either going to fail or is actually a scam If you see like a small first year convention, right? Usually if you're like you're trying to suss out how legit it is, right? Check that guest list, right? And try to meet those guests one of them is going to be someone you want to see otherwise. Why are you going? Contact them. Ah, so yeah, because if there's a first year con the guest isn't going to be so big You can't contact them, right? Well, if they are if there's a first year con And their guests are like barack obama and carrot top something's up. Yeah Something's fishy. I don't know why carrot top is always the first year con and the guests are riven scott Contact riven scott to see are they actually going to this thing? You know, can it be trusted? Yep Get try to contact and communicate with other people who are going or of community or know the people running it You know, you got to do some sort of, you know networking whatever to figure out how legit is this con? Maybe you'll call us and be like, hey, I see you guys are guests this first year con And we might be like what? Yeah, we might be like what I don't know what that is or and you might laugh that happens a lot Do you know how many of these fake fucking conventions just say they have a guest attending? And that guest was never invited to the convention. They don't even know what the hell it is Yep, or they're like they're selling autographs for someone who hasn't hasn't actually signed a contract to come yet Yeah, but maybe you contact just let me say oh, yeah that cons being run by our friend I you should definitely come. I know it's legit. It's it's real You'll hear us talk about it in the meta moment Yep Then you know you can go if you trust us you got to trust somebody right The point is you got to find someone you can trust In this chain here if you don't know the people running the con Right, then you got to find someone else who knows them that you can trust if there's no one you trust Then you got to stay away wait for the second year if a first year con Is in a large convention center And not run by a big company. I'm pretty much 100 it's going to fail Nope, it's got to be in a small place like a hotel ballroom at the biggest. Yep Uh if a first year comes website Has a lot of like square space look in graphic design and looks really slick But there's no actual content Like there's no community stuff. There's no like there's nothing there below the surface And there's a lot of promises about like an artist alley But there's no form to sign up for an artist alley Avoid it because it's probably just a scam at that point Right if you try to talk to the other people who are thinking about going to this con right and see how Communicative are the people running it with this? You know you form this community of attendees How communicative are the people running the con with the attendee group, right? And what are they giving you specifics or are they leading you on? Yep, if they can't say oh, yes, it's on this day in this place And here's our you know like they're showing that they're doing all the things like here's our policies on this And here's our weapons thing and here's you know, we're gonna have here's we're working on the schedule Yep, right. Also cut take if they're just sort of like yeah guys sign up. Yeah, it's gonna be great It's like uh, huh? Oh even more than that. This is like a specific one I've or if they don't say anything if take if they have like, you know, there's policies on their website Let's say about stuff takes a few sets of text from their website type and copy paste it into google And see if that appears in generic websites Also, look if you can get the names of the people running the con and well If you can't get the names of the people running the con Probably a fail right but google them and see what's up one of the ones that recently failed The person who ran it ran a previous This is the second time they did this and they got away with it full time. Yep, right? This is the segue only after the second fail did people point out. Hey that same person did both of these fails Why would somebody who did a failing con if they tried to if they were gonna try again? Wouldn't they run the exact same like be like, okay, I failed Honestly, I'm gonna try to do the exact same con again. No, they tried to do a different con the second time Well, you know what this is this is getting into the final point like the thing I'm worried about that I think is going to happen a lot I think There's going to be a lot of fan conventions over the next few years that are basically the producers Yes, and I think the roadmap for this seems pretty clear If anyone doesn't know what that means go to your video source Just type the word the producers into google right make sure you watch the melbrook's movie If you can't go to like a theater and see it performed I should watch that movie again. It's been a while. Why not that movie is so good. I watch it every day That movie is so great Uh, but yeah, make sure you watch the the melbrooks gene wilder producers. Oh my god And not any other producers. So here's the roadmap that I see First you have a you and a small number of people are going to run the convention scam But if you just scam people like you kickstart a con and just don't do anything and steal all the money You can get sued get in trouble. You've got you scam fraud You need to proud fund the convention Put the token effort in to show that you did some minimum level of due diligence But here's what you do You target the convention at either underprivileged people Unworldly people narrow fandoms that are underserved like go straight line for like ladybug whatever steven universe Whatever like you go for I mean there are some cons like that. I think there's like a gargoyles con I've heard about right like a gym in the holograms con somewhere It's a these super narrow cons that do happen are pretty good for the people in those fandoms And all right, so it's like if I were to run saying, uh, what's something really narrow Thundercats thundercan. Yeah, that's a little bigger than those. But yeah, that's still pretty niche right the thundercats con I would not go to the thundercats con. I'd be like lioness coming everybody. Yeah But I might actually want if it was close, I would go to it No, if it was if it was in new york city, I would go to it is I could have mom rossing me The But What you do then and this is what I've seen happen a lot of these cons that fail They they fail in a way like they're designed to fail in a way that could in court plausibly be put off on the staff having made mistakes and fucked up Negligence as opposed to gross negligence negligence as opposed to actual fraud So I think what they do is you find people who Go to a lot of conventions or maybe we're slow level staff At a bunch of conventions like someone who's like well for example this person who I've heard I don't I'm not saying the person's name because I just saw this in some tweets I write about it too. I'm not saying the name because I don't want to get involved Right, but the person who tried to run this recent con and the other one that failed both And it was the same person twice that I just talked about Was a person who had previously been a high level staff person at anime expo Or at least is credited as such and thus bring some believability, right? If you're like, oh, I used to be almost the or the con chair or almost the con chair at other successful convention And now I'm doing this one on my own you sort of want to trust that right? But apparently he is a case where a person was in that kind of position or claims to have been I think they were and then did two scam cons as far as we can tell So here's the here's the rub like here's the not the rub. Here's the magic part of this You find those kinds of people who might be earnest. You need to have a staff Who believe in the convention and you guide them into making their own mistakes and being responsible and culpable for those mistakes So you get people who have been low level staff at a bunch of conventions and feel you know You know the people we meet at conventions who feel like it's easy to run a convention because they don't know better They've never done the finance of a convention. They've never done logistics of a convention They've been the person like checking badges at the door or scheduling panels Well, this is something that not just conventions, but I think the world as a whole You know in all sorts of organizations even just like your families and Companies and and all every organization, right? Is there are certain things that people at the executive level do? Right, uh, if you're in a family only your parents know about like how much money they got in taxes Right. It's usually money related things, but not always Um, you know in a company right when business deals happen between the executives and closed meetings The employees don't know what the fuck goes on in there, right? And at a convention only the people on the board deal with things like insurance and who knows what right? And thus people who are not in that top tier of an organization on the executive level Not only don't know about these things that go on Right, they don't know like the details of them. They don't know that they don't know They don't even know that they don't know like you don't even know that the convention has to buy insurance So you name someone like the director of operations for a convention And you set them up to not get insurance because they're not gonna But there's also no way for them to learn unless somebody specifically brings them in and this is why we sort of have like these You know like this big gap in our whole society of like people who know The things and how to make them do Right and people who don't because they haven't had someone who knows how the world works Teach them and bring them up and show them all these things that have been hidden from their whole lives But I think these scam conventions are getting a very earnest staff Who are given all the rope they need to hang themselves? And they will make promises based on assumptions that are false and really try to make the event happen And that provides the cover for the event actually just failing Right, but I think we need as a whole Right, uh, you know in general we need to somehow open up the whole world Right, you know to not necessarily the specific details of any one organization, right? Because that's the stuff you want to keep secret Yeah, but the generalities of like this is how things work on You know executive levels of things people who aren't you know through the wall Of course, at least learn how these things go of course counterpoint That's what people who run big Companies and events go to college for and learn like I learned some of those things some of them But you don't really learn well I learned the thing because I'm I'm I do that kind of work for certain in certain areas I've done I've done a lot of executive work. And you know what? I Learned about it and know about it because it's my profession It's a one thing to expect a professional to learn those things It is another thing to expect like some rando to learn these things a lot of times you can't learn those until you know You it's got to become you it's like you can't get the job to do it and see you've learned it already What's that beeping noise? That's the moran's running out of battery. Good job We're almost done with the show better turn the show off well because our backup is gone I think we should turn the show off because I'm actually really hungry. I'm also really hungry That was a good show Yeah