A week after Otakon, about a month away from New York Anime Fest, and knowing my friends are going to PAX at the end of this month, I have conventions, or more specifically congoers, on my mind.

I support fans doing what they want with what they love. One might call it one of the pillars of the concept of fandom itself. However, even I find myself being at times bothered by some of the behavior at anime conventions, even things that I normally would not be too bothered by outside of a con. It bothered me as being hypocritical, and it still might be, but I knew something was different about each situation. I mean, a lot of things are different about a con, but the main one is that it’s a lot of similar people in one area.

When you have one person who loves being the center of attention, it’s a perfectly okay personality trait, especially when you have people who can reciprocate. However, when you have 100 of those attention-craving individuals, and ten times that many people reciprocating and giving them attention at the drop of a hat, it magnifies the negative facets. It’s like inbreeding, where the more it happens the more concentrated the disadvantageous genetics become (no Koi Kaze jokes, please). And because so many people ARE vying for attention, their individuality tends to get lost in the mix, making them faceless, making them “attention whores.”

Being the center of attention is just an example, and not any sort of focal point for criticism. And it doesn’t just apply to personality traits but also tangible ones as well. When everyone who is not in a costume is wearing a t-shirt (myself included), you start to notice that fact.

Once you get to know someone individually, this sort of thing almost always stops mattering, but it is in this initial stage, this first sighting, that these judgments are formed, for better or worse. Moreover, many geeks, nerds, dorks, and otaku are bad at making first impressions in the first place, so this doesn’t make it any easier.

And though I say this is “at Conventions,” I know that this is less about cons in particular and more about human behavior and the interaction between individuals and masses. This is just to put it all in a context which is meaningful to me so that I can think about it more readily.