Part 2!

I decided to go again this year and see if it was as good the second time, and was immediately disappointed that their hotel room block sold out in about five minutes. I complained at the time about how they should've been able to predict demand, but I have to admit that I (and probably they) did not expect attendance would grow from 13.6k in 2023 to 17.6k in 2024. That's an insane amount of growth for one year. I managed to find a deal through Travelocity for plane tickets and a room at a hotel that wasn't in the con block (at the time), so that worked out anyway.

Anyway, this year also ended up being a lot of fun, with a few hitches. Now that I know a few other furries, I met up with @Zeta@meow.social and hung out with them for a while, and that was very cool. Sadly, I did not get the chance to meet @camstonefaux@furry.engineer face to face; I think we just barely missed each other a few times, but I did at least get to see him in the parade. I also got to see @fourpenguins@hachyderm.io , a non-furry friend in the area, and spend some time walking around Pittsburgh outside of the area immediately surrounding the convention center. I spent most of the rest of my time either in panels or browsing DD/AA, which was still very good, even though masks were only loosely recommended at best this time. Come on @anthrocon@mastodon.furrycon.social, you could have a strictly enforced mask requirement when indoors; that would make this a much safer event, and the number of people that would discourage is so small that you'd still be the largest furry con. If anything, a slightly thinner crowd would make it much more enjoyable for everybody. Just do it.

I have to admit I am very bad at interacting face to face with anybody I don't already know and am likely to just run away from any situation where I'm expected to socialize with strangers. I also find it very off-putting that a lot of furries seem to use Telegram as one of their primary forms of social media; practically all of the artists I talked to seemed to prefer that and had a Telegram group of some sort they were advertising. Aside from the aversion of having to use another social media platform, y'all know Telegram is run by and acts as a haven for Nazis, right? Like, I don't even mean "Nazi" as a metaphor for white supremacist fascists, I mean actual Swastika-wearing Nazis. I want to give absolutely zero personally identifying information to Telegram. What is going on with that? Is it possible to meet furries without using Telegram?

That aside, I went to a handful of panels that were both really interesting and very badly handled. Between last year and this year, I have been to three panels where the presenter was five (or more) minutes late, had nothing to present, and there was no con staff organizing or clearing rooms between panels. I feel almost like I need to track down some contact info for AC just to let them know that these people should not be given panel rooms again.

But there were also several good ones, and I particularly want to give a shout-out to the FurScience and "history of conventions" panels for being really interesting. CC2 was also there again and provided a sneak peak of Fuga 3, their next kemono game--it's honestly a little mind-boggling that a major Japanese developer revealed their latest game for the first time at an American furry convention. They showed the same material at AnimeExpo a few days later, but got a much less enthusiastic reception there. Crazy.

The parade was also fun, but I discovered that my new phone just stops taking pictures if it overheats, so I did not actually get pictures of about half the parade. I'll sort through the ones I got and upload them soon. Also, during the parade, AC had convention staff posted at both doors of the convention center telling people that they weren't allowed to go into that entrance and they had to go around to the other side, which was an even bigger problem than you'd expect because the street between them was closed, and you had to walk all the way around the back of the convention center and go through the parking garage to get to the other entrance. I was in dire need of water at one point and so I snuck past the security guard while he was talking to somebody else, but this seems like the kind of situation that could have gone very badly; I was honestly on the verge of heat exhaustion and could not handle being outdoors with no water for much longer. Fortunately, a few other people snuck past at the same time as me, and I think the con staff who were watching just decided it was not worth the effort of trying to chase down all of us.

Anyway, I'll probably try to go again next year. It's an expensive trip and the struggle to get a hotel room means nothing is guaranteed, but it seems like it's a good choice if I can just do one big trip per year. #Anthrocon #Anthrocon2023 #Anthrocon2024 #furry