Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 218: Going to Cons with Social Anxiety image

Episode 218: Going to Cons with Social Anxiety

Goblin Lore Podcast
Avatar
153 Plays8 months ago

Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to the Goblin Lore Podcast! Today Alex and Taya return to a past topic about Social Anxiety! They discuss managing this distress while attending events both as a general congoer and also as a volunteer!

We also finally have a Linktree with all of our discounts/resources

____________________________________________

As promised, we keep Mental Health Links available every episode. But For general Mental Health the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has great resources for people struggling with mental health concerns as well as their families. We also want to draw attention to this article on stigma from NAMI's site.

If you’re thinking about suicide or just need someone to talk to right now, you can get support from any of the resources below.

____________________________________________

Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle)

Recommended
Transcript

Introduction and Importance of Conventions

00:00:29
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore podcast. We are excited tonight to bring you a topic that we haven't talked about for a little while that is I think super important and I'm so glad that Taya brought it up as a topic for tonight. Before we get too far in, I just want to say Hobbs could not make it tonight.
00:00:53
Speaker
So we're going forward with just the two of us, but super excited for this. So I guess I might as well introduce myself, seeing as I've been talking for a whole 30 seconds without saying my name. I'm Alex, phone on. Twitter, occasionally. I still check in there. I've mostly broken the habit, but I do check in at mil underscore chronicler.
00:01:13
Speaker
and my pronouns are he, him. Teja, do you want to do your intros and then I can roll into your question? Sure. I'm Teja. I'm found on Blue Sky at Teja Transcend. And, yeah.
00:01:26
Speaker
This would be a good, uh, should be a good topic for tonight.

Guest Rescheduling Update

00:01:30
Speaker
Hobbs had been advertising that we would have a special guest on this week. We are going to, um, reschedule that guest when Hobbs is able to make it. So we still will have that guest on in the future. Yes. Yeah. So I'm also looking forward to that, but this, this will be fun too. So the topic where we were, you know.

Revisiting Old Topics

00:01:51
Speaker
You and I were talking about something we could record this week. You brought up the idea of talking about conventions and social anxiety because we both have social anxiety. We both have done cons recently and do cons repeatedly.
00:02:07
Speaker
And that is incredible. I love that idea because this is a topic we've talked about before. And often when we revisit topics, I have the same thing I like to say, but it's really important sometimes to come back to things. It's nice to have new topics and to talk about new stuff, but especially as the podcast is older, we're working on our sixth year of this podcast. We're actually a few months away from the six year anniversary, which is
00:02:36
Speaker
Just wild. You, A, it's just nice. You start to run out of new things to talk about. There's always new things, but you start to have burned through a lot of them.

First Convention Experiences

00:02:48
Speaker
It's good to revisit. There's some things that are just good to come back to and talk about again, both from having new perspectives like Taya coming on. So you haven't been on one of these episodes of this before, I think. And then it's just good to revisit. You think of things, I'll say often, if you haven't recorded podcasts before, it's very common to record.
00:03:09
Speaker
get an episode, think everything's great, and it can still even be great, and then realize 10 minutes after you hit the end button, you missed something that is just such a cool thing of important thought. Yeah, and then there's so few people who have actually listened to every episode of a podcast. Yep, that is a very good point, too.
00:03:34
Speaker
Oh, I'm totally blanking on which podcast I listen to. But I know there's a podcast I listen to a lot that they talk about every episode could be someone's first episode. Yeah. And so it's just it is revisiting topics can also be really important to just help refresh those for people who are new for people who are even refresh for people who've heard it before. So we're, again, we're going to talk about comms and social anxiety and
00:04:03
Speaker
As our opening question to kind of lead into that, we want to talk about the first convention that we went to. And so I'll start off with the first convention I actually, mine's a little bit weird, but the first convention I attended was Fourth Street Fantasy, which is the writing convention I talk about a lot. But it wasn't actually the first convention I registered for.
00:04:25
Speaker
I actually registered for Otacon, which is a big anime convention that was in Baltimore at the time. It has since moved to Washington, DC. A friend of mine who lives in Baltimore would go every year, but it's such a big con. Registration for it opens within
00:04:45
Speaker
shortly after the con each year, sometimes within a week or two, sometimes it's closer to a month, but it's shortly after the con finishes, then registration opens for the next year. So he convinced me to register for this con, nine, 10 months out from the convention itself, having me having never been to a convention, having not really flown recently. And so this was a thing I was very excited for, but also very anxious about.
00:05:14
Speaker
But then in between that time, I was listening to a lot of writing podcasts at the time, and there's a person by the name of Lou Anders, who is the editor of, I think it's Pyre. It was a smaller science fiction fantasy imprint. It's not owned by one of the big four giant publishing houses. It's one of the biggest sort of sci-fi fantasy publishing houses that isn't owned by the big four.
00:05:40
Speaker
but he is on a lot of podcasts. I really enjoyed listening to him. He was very passionate about the industry and talking not just about what he does, but just in the whole. He just happened to mention one day that he was going to be at this convention called Convergence in Bloomington, Minnesota. I was like, wait, I live in Minnesota. I'm near Bloomington.
00:06:00
Speaker
found out about this convention there. That is smaller than Otacon. Otacon is somewhere around 30,000 for the weekend. Convergence is like six or seven. Still a big convention for something, someone who had never been to one. But I'm gung-ho, I'm going to conventions. That convention happened a month before, happens a month before Otacon. Well, then I'm reading guests at that con and like, I found Scott Lynch, who was a writer that I really liked his books.
00:06:27
Speaker
Turns out he attends fourth street fantasy that happens about a month before a convergence. And so through this weird chain of events, I end up kind of works out really well for me because fourth street is like 200 people in a little hotel. Well, bigger hotels, but we take up a small amount of space.

InfoSec Conventions and Atmosphere

00:06:46
Speaker
And for me, that was a really good experience. We'll kind of get into some more of the specifics in the meat of the show, but
00:06:54
Speaker
is it just kind of a weird, a weird chain of events for me to end up there and then to, to find three conventions and then to attend them in reverse order. I guess I was just practicing, you know, stack rules for, for magic. But how about yourself, Taya? So I guess the first convention sort of thing I ever went to was when I was still in high school, they had a local,
00:07:20
Speaker
The community college had a local like sci-fi little mini sci-fi con in
00:07:29
Speaker
You know, I don't even remember what it was called or what it was. And they just had, you know, a little thing with talks and basically, you know, people talking about Star Trek or whatever. And they had a bunch of vendors and everything. And that was just this tiny little thing at the community college. And I remember going to that as a teenager and.
00:07:52
Speaker
I don't remember much else besides seeing some of these really cool magic cards that came out before I started playing and never got an opportunity to get that, that were like a whole $25 and how could I possibly afford, you know, one of these mocks in or something. Yeah. And go ahead.
00:08:17
Speaker
But the first real convention I went to would have definitely been an InfoSec convention after I started working in government information security. And it was probably one of the East Coast conventions, like Shmoocon, I'm guessing, which is about a 1,000 person convention that happens near the beginning of every year in the DC area.
00:08:47
Speaker
So it's on the smaller side, they purposely keep it small, so it's hard to get tickets. There was always a joke of like tickets are, you know, you're rushing to press F5 and refresh the page before they sell out because they sell them in like waves of three and they release a third of them at a time and they sell out in a second. And people would always, you know, run bots and hack the thing to get the Schmuck on tickets.
00:09:18
Speaker
But that was always, that was considered part of the fun because it was a hacker con. Okay. Appreciate that. But so that was probably the first, like actual organized convention I went to would have been true con or another one of the local info set cons in the DC area. And then I went to, I started going to some of the bigger,
00:09:48
Speaker
InfoSec cons like Black Hat and Defcon, which Defcon is like a 30,000 person hacker con that happens in Vegas every year. It's the biggest one in the world. It's kind of ridiculous how many people are at that one. It's known for frequently, you know, kind of getting out of hand and shenanigans occurring.

Volunteering at Conventions

00:10:18
Speaker
Interesting. Yeah. And now that you, you mentioned it, I realized I totally missed Saints Con, which was a con I went to as a, as a teen with my dad in, in St. Cloud, Minnesota at the university there. That was like three or four vendors. Like, I don't know how many people, it's honestly probably even less than three. Two-ish, three-ish vendors that were kind of just like local stores in the city.
00:10:48
Speaker
they had small little tournaments. I can remember my brother went and played in a Soul Calibur. Yeah, Soul Calibur. No, no, it was before that was so Soul Edge on the PlayStation tournament. And I hadn't thought about that. But that, I mean, that was the first convention I'd have gone to. But it didn't really feel in the same way because kind of went with my dad, some of his friends, we'd get like six, eight of us. And we'd go and occupy a table and some people would join us occasionally. But
00:11:17
Speaker
It was a little different experience than going to a convention by myself or with a friend or two. That was a much, much bigger crowd. There's a big difference between your local community college con and an actual organized convention. Yeah. Well, that's cool.
00:11:46
Speaker
All right, so we want to start talking, both transition into the main topic, and then of course, call attention to the fact that we are currently transitioning into the main topic. Yeah. So yeah, the safest segue ever. Oh, absolutely. So I said at the start, you know, both have social anxiety and
00:12:13
Speaker
Do you want to talk about your experiences or should I start

Managing Social Anxiety at Conventions

00:12:17
Speaker
off? I'll go first. And kind of one of the other areas I wanted to talk about is also on top of it is volunteering for cons as well because I do some of that.
00:12:30
Speaker
And maybe I'll talk about that. And I volunteer for OrcaCon, which is a local inclusive gaming con that happens in January every year here. And it's about a thousand person convention that's focused on tabletop gaming and pissing off bigots, which is kind of part of our mission statement. Actually, the
00:12:55
Speaker
And I've talked about it on the show before, but I kind of got involved because this ties directly into the social anxieties. I got involved in volunteering this because the second year I went, I think it was the first year they started having a quiet room. And I went to the executive director of the con and I like thank them for having this quiet room. And I'm like, oh, this is really great because people like me who have
00:13:21
Speaker
anxiety can go hide someplace for a while if I get over anxious or just need a place to deal with my sensory issues. And they were like, oh, that's nice. We don't really have anyone running this. Would you want to run this next year? And that's kind of how I got volunteered into running the quiet room for the con.
00:13:48
Speaker
uh, which I have been doing every year since then, which was like 2018. And now I do some of their other stuff. I do some of their, their video work and other tasks for the con as well. But, you know, I find it, it's, it gives me another opportunity to kind of help offset that social imbalance because I know a lot of people involved with the con itself and
00:14:18
Speaker
You know, I'll get into this more as we go through, but it's just for me, knowing people at the con really helps offset my social anxiety. And so knowing people that run the con kind of gives me a leg up and already, you know, I know that there's going to be people there that I feel safe around and that.
00:14:43
Speaker
I don't have to worry about. And so I know that I'm going to have a good experience and I'm not walking in, you know, with no, you know, completely unprepared. And I think that's one thing that volunteering helps with a lot.
00:15:05
Speaker
is already having that groundwork laid because there's kind of for con volunteering, there's really two types of volunteers. There's the year-round volunteers.
00:15:18
Speaker
that help organize the con and make sure that all the planning happens and everything. And then there's the weekend of volunteers, which are the majority of the volunteers. They work a couple of shifts during the con and get free admission. And I'm one of the year round volunteers. So I really get to know that the people running the con
00:15:42
Speaker
That's cool. Yeah, I've done a little bit, a little bit of volunteering for one of the cons I went to, and it's a little bit different capacity, though I enjoyed it.
00:15:56
Speaker
I was in the logistics team, which is kind of what they, the fancy word for moving in and moving out was the big thing. And so I didn't actually ever do a move in, but I did move out for the con three or four. No, I think it was every year. I think I did that every year because the first year I went, they mentioned during closing ceremonies that they needed help. And so I volunteered and there were three of us.
00:16:26
Speaker
pull everything out of the hotel. And then one person had to leave. So there were two of us to on like the head of logistics who got volunteered because his friend asked him to help and then the friend didn't show up to con and then myself to empty the truck when we got to the storage unit where the stuff was stored for during the year during the rest of the year.
00:16:49
Speaker
I actually have a volunteer shirt from mini con 33. I was, the one I was attending was mini con 50. So he 27 year old shirt, no, 17 year old shirt. Cause I'm bad at math just because like.
00:17:04
Speaker
normal because I'm helping you know we're helping do stuff and they have a bunch of old shirts and this dude is just like here you're the only person helping me what's your size and he just threw a shirt at me and he's like first shirt he found that that was my size he just threw at me so I still have that just because that was it was fun I love that but so then
00:17:25
Speaker
years on, I continue to help with that. Also, the guy's last name was Porter, which was perfect because then they got little badges made for people who volunteered called Porter's Porter. That said Porter's Porter's on it. Oh, me. Which was fun. I have a bunch of like con badge, and then it's like the same con badge except instead of a name, it says Porter's Porter's.
00:17:46
Speaker
So for three or four years in a row, he did that. But so that was fun. And fortunately, subsequent years, there were more people to help. And that was a good way to kind of meet a few people, but especially doing that.
00:17:59
Speaker
For me, and I hadn't thought of it, I hadn't really put this together like this until you're talking about Atea, but it was a lot like when I first started going to F&M shortly after being diagnosed with my social anxiety. One of the reasons, and I talk about this every so often, but I think it's been a little while, but like magic taught me how to talk to people because it gave me a framework where I could go.
00:18:20
Speaker
play this game with somebody, if I'm feeling good, and they're up for it, maybe then I have a conversation. If not, there is no social pressure for me to sit and talk to this person. We have the game, we finish the game, I say good game, and then I get to leave if I want to. If I'm feeling stressed, if I'm feeling anxious, I can walk away and not have any thoughts in my head of, well, they think I'm a jerk, or I broke these social norms. No, I was there, I played the game,
00:18:49
Speaker
That's all I needed to do. And so that volunteering, especially for me, volunteering in the logistics was like that. I interacted with so many people at that con, but it was things like going into the kids' room and asking, hey, is this stuff ready to load up? Going into the con suite where they do food and stuff. It's like giving them an update on where we're at. And so I'm interacting with all of these people who work with the con
00:19:17
Speaker
But I have a very specific framework of we're doing it to load up a truck Sunday night before the con is over, or kind of the con itself is over, but before we all leave Monday morning. And then staging for Monday morning, when then we throw everything in a truck and then like a handful of us go drop it all off at the storage unit. And so I get to know a handful of people who do that much more closely, but I interact with a ton of people in a very specific framework. Yeah.
00:19:47
Speaker
Yeah, and it does make things easier when you're interacting within that framework, like you said. There's expected boundaries and you don't have to worry about stepping outside of them. And then, at least for me, as a person,
00:20:10
Speaker
I really like to socialize. I mean, there's a reason I love, I've been doing this podcast for so long. I just, I love doing this and having these conversations, but it's, again, with the social anxiety, especially years and years ago, before I really started to gain more experience and kind of stretch those social muscles, I had a hard time doing that, knowing how to do that.
00:20:33
Speaker
this gave me a framework to just like make friends. I kept up with Porter for years and years, still chat with the guy, even though I don't go to the con as often anymore. And that from volunteering, yeah, I hadn't thought about that before when we were thinking about topics, but that is a good thought to put out there. That might be something that's helpful for some folks. Yeah, so I think that kind of gets off
00:21:02
Speaker
you know, might have started with something that's more helpful, but you know, talking about where, you know, I struggle a bit and that that's going to cons, you know, where I don't have support or direction and kind of the way that the social anxiety shows up for me is I tend to sit off on my own or I don't reach out to people or I I'll, you know, like,
00:21:32
Speaker
I'll give an example as I went to the first Command Fest Seattle here in 2019. And I was going by myself most of the day. So I think Xavier went with me one of the days, but I didn't know anybody that was going. And so, and there was no organized events for this one. So I was kind of just like milling around
00:22:02
Speaker
you know, trying to find something, you know, a game or something to do or something and not really interacting with people. And, you know, sometimes I don't know how it comes so easy to someone like Hobbs sometimes where he can like interact with anybody. I know.
00:22:25
Speaker
Yeah, going to everybody. He knows everybody and everybody he doesn't know he can. It seems like he can just greet and then kind of become their friend and it's. Yeah, it's a marvel sometimes going to cons with folks like that. Yeah. But yeah, it's just it's kind of like aimlessly there.
00:22:50
Speaker
And I think it's gotten better with the current command best structures where they do have organized events. So at least I can sign up for an event and or they have the organized or they'll organize groups for you too. So they'll find things so that was a little bit better, but
00:23:11
Speaker
You know, and it's kind of the same thing when I've gone to infosec cons by myself is I'll just, I'll sit off in the corner and, you know, I'll go attend talks, but it's like completely on my own. I don't talk to people or network or socialize or anything if I don't know the person.
00:23:30
Speaker
And I know that's supposed to be like a big part of these events is to do that sort of thing, especially in like the info sec con circuit. That is supposed to be a big part of what you do. Like I just got back from one from last week, which was a small, um, private invite only event with about, you know, with a few hundred people. And the only people I talked to the whole time I was there were people that I either had worked with now or worked with previously.
00:24:00
Speaker
And, you know, I didn't interact really with anybody else that was there. And it's just because without a, without kind of like a structured thing, like you said, without a game, without some structured interaction, I don't have a way to initiate that interaction with somebody.
00:24:21
Speaker
Yeah, that can be hard to do. I know for myself, most of the time it's because the con that I've done that, it's because the con helps to facilitate that. Going back to talking about 4th Street, one of the reasons I love that convention, not just because I'm super fascinated by the craft of writing and this is a small, nice little con, but
00:24:46
Speaker
they know part of their strength is that they're a small con, and so the con is built to take advantage of that and to build community. Unlike a lot of bigger cons, basically, like literally every other con I've been to, this is a single track.

Conventions Designed for Interaction

00:25:01
Speaker
I'm sure there's other single track cons, but this is the only one I've been to where there isn't multiple things happening at once. There is one panel happening,
00:25:10
Speaker
And that's it. So every person who goes to this con, you know they've done the same content that you've done at the con. But also, again, because it's small, most conventions, if you're lucky, have like a 10-minute break between panels. A lot of conventions, especially bigger ones,
00:25:30
Speaker
there will be breaks between things happening in the same room, a 10 or 15 minute break, but things will be scheduled in such a way that the entire con is not at break at the same time, if that makes sense. So you end up having to not just choose an A, it gives you a whole lot of stuff you can choose from, which is cool. That's a lot of fun. Especially when I go to something like Awesome Con, it's a con I just recently went to that is a kind of a Comic Con setup. It's like half,
00:25:58
Speaker
sort of media comic cons setup, but also it was kind of a half more fan run fandom setup, which was kind of interesting. So it's like you've got there. I went to a panel about queerness and Pokemon. I went to a panel where we, or it was, I don't even know what they, if they call it a panel, but we went to one watch two of the original actors from the American Power Rangers show, like do an interview and talk to the audience and a whole bunch of different things in between.
00:26:29
Speaker
But at Fourth Street, you just have the one thing, but then they have, because, again, it's a single track and they know it's a small thing, they have two-hour meal breaks. So you just have a two-hour gap where there's no programming. Just go get food.
00:26:47
Speaker
And one of the big things that they have too is they have meal ambassadors. So talking about volunteers, they have people who are volunteers who are just attendees of the con who will take a group to someplace. They're like, you don't have anyone to go to lunch with. You want to go to lunch with someone. We're going to the Indian place across the parking lot. You want to come have Indian food and talk to some randos from the con, come with us.
00:27:14
Speaker
And it gave me an ability to kind of join a group without having to go through the effort of trying to find random people off the crowd and say, will you be my friend? Will you talk to me about whatever?
00:27:26
Speaker
for me and like the first year I went, this con is, it takes place directly next to where I work and have worked for almost 20 years at this point. So I know that area very well. So I, the first time I went Saturday, Friday and Saturday, I mostly went and just had food on my own. But kind of the deal I made with myself was I'll do that, but then Sunday lunch, I go with a group.
00:27:55
Speaker
I find a group that's going somewhere I wanna go, and then I go with this group. And it was, I really enjoyed it. I don't know that I still hang out with any of the folks from that particular group, but it gave me that social outlet without me having to take that first step because the con was set up to help take that first step. You're not gonna find stuff like that at every con, but that was super helpful for me.
00:28:21
Speaker
there. Another place where I kind of took the step, but the structure of the con helped was at Convergence, which was, it's that six, 7,000 person con I mentioned, but it's purely fan run. There you have tons and tons of programming and lots of little things where they have like panels rooms that are 30 person rooms and you'll get 10 people in this room.
00:28:44
Speaker
And so there's just a bunch of stuff like that. And for me, having gone to different cons a couple of times, then I went to convergence and it was like, I would go up and talk to some of the panelists after the panel, especially in some of the smaller ones.
00:29:00
Speaker
They love that the panelists did some bigger things. It doesn't work as well. And that is a context where it's not always going to work, but especially at the smaller one, when it's just random fans who are up there talking about books that they liked or cartoon shows from the nineties or, you know, whatever.
00:29:18
Speaker
those folks want to talk about that stuff longer than the panel timing allows. And so that was some circumstance where I was able to kind of go up, ask, Hey, do you want to chat about this thing? And then they got excited and then spent 20 minutes just standing in the room, especially toward the end of the day when there isn't something else coming in. We spent a bunch of time just chatting with random people who are on the panel. Nice. Yeah, that sounds like a pretty cozy con.
00:29:54
Speaker
I think of it as kind of a party con, because there's a lot of little party rooms and a lot of that sort of stuff going on. Most cons tend to be, it just comes with the con scene in general. It doesn't matter whether it's a board game con or an infosec con or any kind of fandom con or a furry con or whatever. Cons have parties. This one very specifically was set up
00:30:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's fun. I like convergence. I haven't been for a little while.
00:30:20
Speaker
in a way, and I don't know how they do it now because the con moved a number of years ago to a different hotel and I haven't been to it since. But when they were at this old one, there was a big room or there's a connection to a part of the hotel that had a pool and a bunch of stuff in the middle and that's where a lot of the board games happened. But then all of the cabana rooms on the first and second floor were specifically reserved for party rooms that were open to the whole con.
00:30:45
Speaker
And so anyone could apply, set up a party room, and often some of them were wildly themed. Some of the Lord of the Rings and Doctor Who stuff that you'd expect, but some went very super deep and niche. But then people from all over the con could just kind of walk at the hallways and go, that looks like an interesting room and it's not full of people right now. Just hop right in.
00:31:11
Speaker
It, that part of the con was a little more intense than some of the other parts of the con. Yeah, I'm not a party person, so I definitely, especially the InfoSec con scene is very heavy in the parties, and so I really miss that. I just skipped that whole part of the scene. Yeah, I tried a little bit for the parties there, and a part of that too.
00:31:35
Speaker
the con is set up in a way where it's like, you don't have to know a person to get into the parties that literally at least those I'm sure there are parties people had and in their rooms that they were personally renting and that was fine as long as they didn't break the hotel, which is a whole other thing. But like those specific cabana rooms, they had to be open for anyone to wander to as long as the room had space like you could like okay, we've got 15 people in this this room that's we can't let anyone else in but
00:32:04
Speaker
Yig had to let randos in. And so I would, I found a few and that's actually how I found one of the other local cons I started going to, because they had a party room at Convergence, because Convergence was the big one. So they just rented a room and did that, which was kind of fun. And so there, I had a little bit of success there for myself, but by and large, it was, that was not my scene.
00:32:31
Speaker
Yeah, the big cons that happen in Vegas every year for InfoSec, Black Hat and Def Con, they like take over the clubs in Vegas for their parties.

Industry vs. Fan-Run Conventions

00:32:42
Speaker
That sounds intense. No, it's like there's nothing like going to a place where you can't hear the person next to you talking. Yeah, it's I don't know. It's kind of like for me, it's autistic hell. I'm just like, no.
00:33:00
Speaker
I do like the free food though. I do enjoy the free food. Yes. Free food is good. And I don't know if this is a, I assume a lot of cons will do stuff like this, but yeah, the mini cons.
00:33:16
Speaker
convergence and the local ones that I've gone to a lot all have food. They all have specific comm suites like the room rented by the comm to have food for the attendees because they don't want you to not eat. Yeah, a lot of these are sponsored by companies for these big, Vegas ones. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, these are just like volunteer. These ones I'm talking about specifically here are just kind of the
00:33:44
Speaker
volunteer cons, they're the fan run thing is they're just run of their own power and sometimes you have. Yeah, that's what I think is more typical at most cons is they're all fan run. Yeah, the the info suck cons definitely tend to get at least the big Vegas ones get very corporate sponsored and because everybody's always trying to recruit everybody else's people and
00:34:11
Speaker
or sell them their miracle magical product. Yeah, and that's an interesting thing about sort of starting to be more experienced in that world is to kind of see those differences. It's like when I went to PAX for the first time and awesome comments like that too, where technically like PAX is a
00:34:33
Speaker
is not an industry con, but it's an industry con. It's an industry con, yeah. And so it's a different vibe. It's a different environment. Not bad. It's also cool. There's a lot of cool stuff there, but it's different. Because I can tell you, Convergence does not have giant displays for any various company. And Microsoft isn't bringing stuff down there to show off things.
00:35:03
Speaker
You'll see that at PAX, you'll see that at some of the comic cons for some of the big industry stuff, but. Yeah. And you know, at PAX, you know, Microsoft is definitely getting all the influencers together and buying them a nice dinner on their dime too. Yeah. So that's. Yeah, or they're trying to at least because everybody else is as well. Yeah.
00:35:32
Speaker
So yeah, it's, it's a different, it's a different thing. And that's where, again, if you're kind of looking to go to events, there isn't a wrong or right, but it, there may be a wrong or right for yourself. Kind of just figure out what you want to do and what you're looking for. And it might be to try all of it, but, you know, more applicable to us at the magic con events, they do have the dinner passes for the magic cons where you can go schmooze with the magic, uh,
00:36:00
Speaker
you know, Illuminati. No, not Illuminati. That's not the term I was working for. Luminaries? Luminaries, yes. Yeah. The magic Illuminati, as we all know, is it's goblins. That's right. I was going to say Cranko. Cranko, yeah. Yep. Yeah.
00:36:26
Speaker
A lot of cons too, and to kind of circle back to something that you brought up that is very important to point on, very important to know about, is like quiet rooms.

Inclusivity and Accessibility at Conventions

00:36:36
Speaker
All of these cons will have policies and things on their website that you can look at to make sure that this is a place that has policies to keep people safe. That is an important thing to know.
00:36:52
Speaker
the quiet room, they'll talk about the quiet room too. That's good to know if the cons have a quiet room. Yeah, which has become very common. Yes. Which is great, which is really, really good. Yeah.
00:37:06
Speaker
I'm obviously a big fan, but obviously I'm biased in that regard because I run one. Turns out if you need to volunteer for a con, it's a good thing to volunteer for. There's not a lot that goes into running a quiet room. It's kind of a nice gig, honestly. I got to make sure people stay quiet and the room stay stocked.
00:37:36
Speaker
And forcing the quiet ban is mostly up to the on-site body of the regular volunteers, not the annual volunteers who do all the planning and everything. It's who's ever on shift at that time. You know, I open and close the room. I do apparent, you know, periodic sweeps, you know, count if people are using it, that sort of thing.
00:38:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's a really nice thing. And for people, I guess I've talked about it repeatedly over the last 40 minutes, but if you're not familiar with the concept of a quiet room, it's basically an extra room that the con rents out that is meant to be quiet and sensory issue free for people to just go chill when they've had enough of the con floor or
00:38:32
Speaker
don't want to do anything for like ours. We have, you know, puzzles set out, we have coloring books, other quiet activities, and we have couches and just, you know, and then we enforce a, you know, a quiet perimeter outside the room. It's off the convention
00:38:55
Speaker
area it's it's just a separate room in the hotel so it's not right off of where the convention activities are occurring it's it's a regular suite so there's plenty of room you know there's you know a couple of couches it's usually a pretty nice setup area for them different cons a lot of different things like i i went to emerald city comic-con a couple of weekends ago and their quiet room had a bunch of bean bags and some
00:39:25
Speaker
And just, it was just a chill environment. They didn't really have much in there, but it was, you know, they had a ton of bean bags spread out and just a lot of areas to rest and recuperate. Yeah, that's good. And so I know.
00:39:43
Speaker
Fourth Street has a quiet room. That's important. I haven't actually used it, but I know it's a hotel room. Just the way that con is set up. There's a lot of conference. There's the pool and cabana area, and then on the other side of that is where all the conference rooms and things are. Usually they'll rent one of the rooms that's in one of the cabana, so it's nearby. But then
00:40:07
Speaker
I mean, it's near the pool, but you close the door, you're not going to hear much from outside of the room, if need be. Or even there, there's not a ton of noise. It's maybe not the best setup, but it works well for the con that it's close, but it's not right where all the people are. And then they actually, for that con, I think they usually do two, one right next to each other, because then
00:40:33
Speaker
One is not, because then both are gender neutral bathrooms. They use those rooms for gender neutral bathrooms. Yeah. Just excuse me. That's another thing that's nice for cons to do. We get.
00:40:52
Speaker
We get the hotel to temporarily convert some of the bathrooms, some of the general bathrooms to gender neutral for the weekend that we have the con to because... That's cool. Yeah, I know Otacon will do that. Otacon is big enough that they take up like most of the DC Convention Center and they're big enough that there's never anything else with them. It's just them.
00:41:13
Speaker
And then they do that too, where they'll have some of the gendered bathrooms specifically designated gender neutral. Fourth Street is small enough that we are always sharing the hotel with at least one other thing. So that's kind of the solution. This con is found to accommodate that as well. They'll just rent two rooms and then those are gender neutral bathrooms then. So we've talked a bit about what kind of our
00:41:43
Speaker
uh, experience with cons has been, and, you know, what I, and a little bit about what our methods of dealing with anxiety for cons

Improvement in Managing Social Anxiety

00:41:56
Speaker
are. And I think, you know, what would be good to talk about is, you know, how, how things have improved or have they improved or, you know, what is the,
00:42:08
Speaker
What is it like for you to go to conventions now? Or do you still need the same level of support? Or has things gotten better? That's it for me. Things have definitely gotten better, though. I earlier sort of likened, for me at least, to a muscle, a social muscle, as I think I referred to it. And I think of that a lot because that is how it works for me a lot.
00:42:38
Speaker
It took a few years and then every year I sort of kind of go to more and kind of get more used to it. I then have more capacity to kind of go out and be more outgoing and things. And with not being able to do much recently, thanks to COVID and all of that since then, I realized that AwesomeCon
00:42:58
Speaker
that I went to a few weeks ago was the first like actual big convention I'd been to for almost five years. I went to the Magic Con, which is a sizable decent number of people, but it kind of a different setup and a different
00:43:14
Speaker
type of convention, and I'd gone to Fourth Street a few times, but as I said a few times, it's a very small con that has a very different feel to it. And so I realized that Awesome Con this year, it was a little more socially taxing for me than it had been.
00:43:32
Speaker
Having gone to conventions as much as I had, I had sort of my tools. I knew ways that were helpful for me. This is just a general habit. I always carry on myself at least
00:43:46
Speaker
Two things to read, one thing to play. So I always have a portable game system. I always have a book or an e-reader or several magazines or something. And so for part of the con, there was a point, I think it was Saturday. I went, I met a couple of friends out there. It was two friends of mine who live in Philly. And then actually one of their moms goes to awesome cons. So it was fun to hang out with the three of them, but there was a point Saturday where I was just like,
00:44:15
Speaker
I'll see y'all in a few hours. I'll meet up with you, everybody for dinner, but I gotta go sit somewhere. And so I just went and found the DC Convention Center is big enough that there's just...
00:44:25
Speaker
always kind of, there's somewhere you can go to be in the corner, to be away, but not gone. And so for me, I found that is something I like to do when I start to feel a little overwhelmed, but I don't want to just leave the space because I could always go to my hotel room. My hotel was less than a block away. It would have been fine, but it's like, that just feels like I'm cutting myself off from gone, which sometimes you need to do. But for myself, I like passive socialization is how I think of it, where I'm
00:44:53
Speaker
find an open seat, find a bench somewhere in a corner in a hallway, and I just sit there and I read for 30 minutes or play it, do some picross on my 3DS or something for a little while. And I'm still at the site. I'm still kind of part of the con. I'm just taking a break, taking a moment for myself. And so I definitely did some of that. In fact, that was
00:45:17
Speaker
in part from because we were in the Artist Alley, which was really cool. It's fun. And I love especially go to these bigger cons. There's a lot of just incredibly talented creators who will bring their work there. And it was fun to do it. But going through that with
00:45:34
Speaker
with the friends, with the group I was with was very taxing for me because I have just a, I've always been a bigger person and I have a bit of a complex about taking up space. And I always feel super self-conscious about how much space I'm taking up. And so walking through a crowded thing, if I'm like walking around, not a big deal. If I'm pausing, because I'm kind of looking at a shop, that's what you're supposed to do. But if I'm standing there waiting for other people who are
00:46:02
Speaker
looking through shops, I feel like I'm in the way. And that was a feeling that was okay for a little while. But after an hour, hour and a half of that, that's when I told them I had to just walk away. And they were all understanding of it. There was not a problem. But it was just like, I need to go sit somewhere where I feel like I'm out of the way. Yeah. For me, you know, I still
00:46:31
Speaker
kind of suffer with the same problems I had when I first started going to cons, you know, almost 20 years ago was if I'm not around friends or people I know, I tend to just shut down and, you know, I either need an organized event, like a scheduled game or organized game or something to go to, or I will kind of just sit in a corner
00:47:00
Speaker
doing nothing or just wander the vendors or something, but I just kind of need something to engage me. I really, I don't know, I need to be there with people I know to interact with people and hopefully introduce me to other people. That's kind of the only way I meet new people in MeetSpace. It's a lot easier for me to deal with people online than it is in person.
00:47:30
Speaker
Yeah, I get that. I struggle some, and honestly, I haven't gone to a convention like that by myself in a long time.
00:47:45
Speaker
yeah for me to kind of talk to that because it's I even you know when I've gone to a convention like where I know people are going to be there but I'm not spending all my time with them like I knew people who are going to be at EC but I wasn't going to the con with them
00:48:06
Speaker
So like most of the time I was at the con, I was kind of just wandering around aimlessly. And, you know, it actually kind of is depressing to me and feels kind of isolating because there's so many people around. And yeah, I'm there in my own little world. Yeah, let's see that. And if it just, I don't know, it's like a social anxiety trigger for me when I'm surrounded by people, but there's nobody I know.
00:48:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's tough. For me, that isn't so much. Honestly, being in a crowd of people who aren't paying attention to me is almost the opposite of a trigger. That helps my social anxiety sometimes. Again, I think going to being a bigger person, I've spent a lot of... There's a lot of internal monologue and concern about how people see me in a crowd like that.
00:49:05
Speaker
no one's paying attention. And that actually helps me. Like that actually feels better for me. It's like, yep, no one cares. As long as I'm not, again, as long as I'm not standing there blocking the way, it's not gonna matter. So for me wandering around the show floor is actually, I like that. It's relaxing to me.

Enhancing Convention Experience through Connections

00:49:22
Speaker
Yeah. I just, I like being around people and kind of being to be people that I know or I start feeling uncomfortable.
00:49:33
Speaker
No, that's fair. Honestly, I enjoy the content of the cons that I've gone to. That's a reason I want to go to them, but the people that I spend time with is the most important part of the con for me. I don't do a lot of travel for sightseeing. I don't do a lot of touristing. I tend to travel to events and to see people at events. Those events give me a reason to go,
00:49:58
Speaker
I'm putting this together now as we're talking, but it's kind of that whole structure thing. Like, like F&M, like volunteering. Like for me, that the event means that I can stop talking to my friend Sam about trying to come up with a time. We'll just be like, we're going to meet this weekend because this event is happening.
00:50:14
Speaker
And then we meet up and I get to hang out with my friends for that weekend. And then I leave, like I have a lot to talk, you know, it's easier to interact with people online. It's like, I have a lot of online friends myself too. And I playing online games is where I met a bunch of these folks. They're all on the East coast. I'm in Minnesota. So most of these, these, these friends, I see them.
00:50:38
Speaker
Only when we go to events only when we plan something like this because it's kind of takes a big production for one of us to fly or drive across the country to go see the other one so we.
00:50:51
Speaker
something like a convention that we all can go to and that it makes it feel worth the event, worth all the work to do it when really the most important part is going to dinner or seeing Dune with my friends and one of their moms and having her talk about how
00:51:12
Speaker
She's a little conflicted about the most recent movie because it changes stuff from the books. It's like, I love hanging out with these folks. This is great. I still need to go see the movie. I really enjoyed it. Yeah. I really do. I've been wanting to. I've just been busy the last few weekends.
00:51:35
Speaker
Yeah. So fully that it helps some folks who are interested in these things and maybe haven't gone to them.

Encouragement to Attend Conventions

00:51:42
Speaker
I know there's a lot of, it comes down to a personal stuff, but I know early, early on when I, when I was first diagnosed with, with social anxiety, I realized for myself, like the two most important things for me at that time was the two most helpful things was
00:51:58
Speaker
talking about my own things that I was going through obviously is a big help both to sort of friends and to a therapist was a big deal but also just listening to other people talk about some of their stuff because that helped me if I had something similar go, oh that's me too and that helped me work through that or if I did it even there is kind of like, okay that's interesting and like that doesn't quite fit for me but so hopefully this kind of helped some folks who were
00:52:25
Speaker
Looking for that, Tay, did you have anything else you want to add or? No, I just, I just want to say though, you know.
00:52:34
Speaker
it's worth going. It still is. I find it worthwhile. Like you said, a lot of it is about the people you're meeting and going with. And that is the main reason I'm going. But even when I do go, like if I go to a commandment fest by myself, it's once I do get into that game or find either a pickup game or finding
00:52:58
Speaker
Organized event and you know that i'm enjoying it or just surfing the vendors i'm still having a good time and that's why i go so it's you know the anxieties there but it's overall it's worth it to go to the con for me.
00:53:13
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, in a lot of this content, like I said, the big thing for me is the people generally, the most important part, but like the content itself is really cool too, because it turns out when you get a whole bunch of nerds together in a room, like it lets them kind of do some fun and different things that you wouldn't normally get to do. And so by bringing together a few hundred, a few thousand, more than a few thousand people,
00:53:39
Speaker
It creates those opportunities to, I know for magic specifically, when we do those, when they do magic cons, like there's some wild events. Obviously you talked about Gavin, all this stuff that Gavin Verhay has done, but even just firing, you know, mystery booster drafts all weekend long.
00:53:57
Speaker
Any of that sort of stuff, just at any point in time, you can walk over and sign up for a draft of the most recent standard set and boom, eight people done, draft, draft, draft. If that's what you like to do, these events can be incredible. Yeah. And that's our show for today. You can find all of the hosts on Twitter for now. Hobbs can be found at HobbsQ, Tay can be found at Tayatransense, and Alex can be found at Mel underscore chronicler.
00:54:25
Speaker
Feel free to send us any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to the Goblin Lord pod on Twitter or email us at goblinlordpodcast at gmail.com.
00:54:35
Speaker
If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood gobsugs, our link tray can be found on our Twitter account and in the description of today's show. This has everything from various discount codes to the link from our Patreon. The music for today's show was by Wintergotten, who can be found at vintergotten at bandcamp.com. The art was done by Steven Raphael, who can be found at stevereffel on Twitter. Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing Vorthos content.
00:55:03
Speaker
Check them out on Twitter at hipsters MTG or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you for listening and remember goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.