Comments | animedetour: THIS IS WHY WE CAN HAVE NICE THINGS

wombat_socho in animedetour

THIS IS WHY WE CAN HAVE NICE THINGS

May 16, 2010 16:02

History is important. Studying it and (hopefully) learning from other peoples' horrible mistakes in the past keeps us from repeating those mistakes, and moves us a little further along the road of progress to a happier, healthier, more productive society. That's the theory, anyway. I've made occasional posts about the theory behind the organization ( Read more... )

Comments 11

mle292 May 16 2010, 23:36:24 UTC

I'm not sure how productive this is to the group because I think that some of this (especially the snark) might alienate several of the people who are now involved with Minicon, all of whom were not on the high-res committee.

Is alienating another fan group really the best way to learn from mistakes of the past?

wombat_socho May 17 2010, 00:24:32 UTC

I didn't write this for them. This may be rather parochial of me, but the only fans I care about in Minnesota are those that attend and/or run Anime Detour. The people that run Minicon now weren't responsible for the HRMP, and I wish them well, but *shrug* - not my convention, not my people, not my problem.

mle292 May 17 2010, 01:40:01 UTC

I don't think it's parochial, but I do think that it's got a really strong potential to give outside groups the impression that AD people are a bunch of stuck up assholes.

If the people who run Anime Detour are people that you care about, why make 'fan community relations' harder for them, just because you don't care about something that's *not your problem?*

wombat_socho May 17 2010, 03:31:33 UTC

Have you somehow missed the part where I'm not on convention staff, am not an ATC officer (in fact, living in Virginia, I'm ineligible), and don't speak for them? Because I've only mentioned it a few zillion times since stepping down as Registration Head/ATC Secretary back in 2007.

Thread 6

mle292 May 17 2010, 01:56:17 UTC

Here's the post that I should have made. In the interests of disclosure I should reveal that in addition to being on the concomm for Anime Detour, I'm the co-head of programming for Minicon.

What wombat_socho is talking about happened twelve years ago. I wasn't involved when the high res thing happened, but it's in the past. Right now, Minicon is a convention that I enjoy and that I think is more welcoming than other conventions in some ways. The bitchyness over the 1998 decisions has not aged well and it's grown tired as the bad example of how *everyone else* is naughty and corrupted by power, but *we're* unlikely to fall prey to such evils ( ... )

wombat_socho May 17 2010, 03:26:20 UTC

I think you completely misunderstand the reasons behind the post. I wasn't involved in Minicon, before or during the HRMP Wars. I did the anime room for Greg for one year because I was asked to. So in my case, at least, this is not all about wreaking some kind of revenge on the Resolutionaries. I don't care about them, except as examples of what *not* to do.

...*everyone else* is naughty and corrupted by power, but *we're* unlikely to fall prey to such evils.
No. Not at all. I have no delusions that my compatriots and successors at AD and ATC are any less prone to evil than I am or Joe from Cedar Rapids or Myra from Duluth is. This is why the structure of ATC and AD is completely different from MNSTF and Minicon, and it is intentional. To paraphrase this obnoxious old fuck named Thomas Jefferson, "Since otaku are base and prone to evil, let us bind them down with the iron chains of the Bylaws."

Speaking only for myself and not for any committee of any organization, I think it might be time to let this bitterness go and move on. ( ... )

mle292 May 17 2010, 03:43:30 UTC

I have never suggested that you "ignore" past troubles in volunteer run conventions.

I do think that pretty much everything in red reeks of bitterness and non-constructive griping.

wombat_socho May 17 2010, 04:03:50 UTC

I think you didn't bother to read last comment in its entirety. Or any of the others. Think what you want; your opinion is of little or no importance to me. Have a nice week up there.

Snark and Learning badger2305 June 4 2010, 00:47:15 UTC

As someone at Ground Zero of The Late Unpleasantness, I cannot claim to have an unbiased opinion about the matter.

As someone at Ground Zero of The Late Unpleasantness, I cannot claim to have an unbiased opinion about the matter. mle292 is correct in saying this stuff is old, so my comments are less evaluative and more musing ( ... )