West Wishes 5: Why I Almost Left Vidcon

Why I Almost Left VidCon

(and why I’m glad I didn’t)

(For our YouTube video made at the YouTube conference, click here!)

(For a really great video talking about fans and especially teenage girl fans, go here: https://youtu.be/dcnwrqaBr4o)

An hour and a half after getting to the registration line and an hour after standing in a signing line and ten minutes in the exhibition hall, I was ready to leave VidCon. I’d had enough with all the people and the noise and the squeals and the rush. There were all these teenagers around me, talking in high voices and squeeing and rushing off to see someone I’d never heard of and all these vendors selling equipment that I could never afford much less justify purchasing. At that moment, there was absolutely no point for me to be there. This was a conference for someone who wasn’t me, someone who was either thirteen and a little obsessive and a lot loud or someone who was thirty and creating content. I didn’t want to be there.

So, of course, I sat down with my notebook and had a little pity party about how tired I was and how hungry I was and how this wasn’t what I wanted. I listened to guys next to me talk about how this was more calm than last year and how they liked how things were spread out and hearing about how much more overwhelming this experience could have been spiraled me down into depths of self-doubt not seen in… well, days, but I’ve been pretty doubty lately. 

I wore jeans, a fitted tank top, and a flannel to my first day at VidCon because we woke up late and because I assumed there’d be people like me. I saw dresses and dress shirts and snarky t-shirts, but no one who looked like me. My body does what it wants to do and the tank top kept slipping down and I felt like I looked like an old person trying to be young, except I probably just looked like a young person because my face doesn’t belong to my age. I decided that I needed to conform, just a little. I bought a green VidCon tank top. 

Now, I’m not saying that solved all of my problems. I left a signing line because I couldn’t deal with another line with a bunch of high school/first year college students meeting someone who I peripherally knew and also I was hungry. But hours later, after food and music and time away from people, we were sitting in the opening ceremony and wonderful person after wonderful person took the stage and I felt okay. Here was the community I had been missing.

And after that, it was just a battle of remembering that community. Joy was much better at I than I was- she took pictures with everyone she met, talked to everyone she wanted to talk to. I’m not an anti-social person, but this conference was not socially sound for me. There’s just a lot of stuff on youtube and so many different fan groups. There are nerds and nerdfighters and people who enjoy science content and those are the ones that I appreciate the most, but there are also all of the makeup people, the comedians, the people doing pranks and living their lives on the internet, and apparently people that preteens are really, really excited about. But there are people there, like the ones I met at Mental Floss trivia and took a tentacle picture with, and the ones who were in the Wheezy Waiter signing line, and all the scattered lovely interactions around the convention. 

Even without those people, all the panels I went to were beautiful and uplifting and encouraging. The Women on YouTube panel was full of brilliant women who were so empowering and so supportive of each other. The Race and Representation panel was a master class in awareness and boosting underprivileged voices. The Sexual Orientation panel was funny and heartfelt and gave me chills. The Vlogbrothers Q&A was like a little piece of home on a stage, shared with hundreds of other people and going to the Driftless Pony Club/Hank Green and the Perfect Strangers concert was a mosh pit of friendliness. 

The last night of VidCon, you have VidCon Prom, which was planned as the last flight of the blue dress. I wanted a picture in front of the VidCon sign, though, so we walked back around from the arena to the entrance we’d been using all week. I have never been told I was beautiful by so many people in a row.

And then, at the end of the night, walking back to our car, the heels switched out for flip flops, one of the girls walking back to the convention center said, and I quote, “Your dress slays me.” 

Well, damn. Thanks, kid. A perfect cap to a waveringly perfect three days.