DashCon may go down as, at the very least, the most well known disaster con of a generation. It was far from the worst con ever held, but as it literally was based around social media, its story spread like wildfire while it was happening.
We’ve covered the fate of the event pretty extensively here at Nerd & Tie, including when they tried to rebrand as “EmotiCon” and when they eventually cancelled their 2015 event.
That rebranding and cancellation was why I was a bit confused when my social media feeds lit up with reports of “DashCon 2015” coming back in Florida this year. We’ve even gotten a couple of people submitting this to our tips email over the last few days. All of these things pointed to a Tumblr account with the dubious username “DashCon--2015” (with two dashes).
Well, sorry to disappoint you guys, but DashCon 2015 isn’t happening and the Tumblr account is a hoax.
Besides the obviously intentional errors on the page (“county of Florida”), the lack of a firm date and location should tip off most people to the page’s inauthentic nature. There’s also no reason to believe the convention would relocate from the Midwest (as the first was held in Chicago and the planned second event was supposed to be in Indianapolis) to Florida in the first place.
Not to mention, the original operators of DashCon still own the DashCon Tumblr username, the DashCon.com URL, and the EmotiCon URLS as well — begging the question “why create an awkward, two dash Tumblr URL as the official site?”
The account isn’t a new one, as it’s existed since shortly after the last DashCon. Some theorized then (as DashCon 2015 was still a real thing at the time) that it was an attempt to scam money out of people (as there was also a fake DashCon 2015 crowdfunding campaign created at the same time). I don’t know if that’s true, but we figured out pretty quickly back then that the account had nothing to do with the (then still active) DashCon staff.
So if it’s obviously fake, why is the rumor spreading?
Many of the posts are full of attempts at satirizing the original con, but since the original creators were almost seemingly caricatures to begin with, none of it actually seems that different than the real DashCon’s communications. Since most people have encountered the site either via social media posts or have just skimmed the page, the subtle satire has either gone over their heads or just gone unread, so people continue to mistake it for the genuine article.
And frankly, people believe it because they want it to be real.
DashCon is an event that people want to ridicule. People from within Tumblr’s various subcultures like to laugh at it because of the over the top ridiculousness. There are those on the outside of Tumblr who mock it because they think its emblematic of Tumblr itself. In truth, it was run poorly by some pretty terrible people, and we all get to feel superior without a whole lot of guilt…
…and we want to keep going.
Sadly, reality does not acquiesce to our desire for schadenfreude, and DashCon is dead. If the creators ever do put on another event, we’ll be sure to let you know.
And show up to it.
