Apparently there has been some kind of fuck-ups as this year's Worldcon, and people I follow on Bluesky are mad about it.
I've been to Worldcon once, back when it was in Helsinki in 2017. And it was the worst con I've ever been to. The programme was uninteresting, and the few things that could have been interesting were held by people who clearly didn't know enough of what they were talking about. I particularly remember the guy who claimed there were Roman ruins everywhere in Europe.
The contrast to a good con was made clear by the fact that year's Ropecon (a local roleplaying convention, which – despite its name – has a very similar programme to Worldcon) was held just one week earlier at the same venue. That year's Ropecon was a muted affair, people clearly expecting Worldcon, but it was still so much better than Worldcon. Eight years later, I frankly remain disappointed I ever wasted money on going to Worldcon.
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skribe
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Ilves
in reply to skribe • •I agree, but: the main gripe of my Worldcon experience were not the organisational fuck-ups (which did happen, but which I was willing to forgive), but the quality of the programme. Almost every presentation, panel etc that I went to see was run by people who were amateurs in the English sense of the word, clearly out of their depth – not amateurs in the original French meaning of the word, as I had come to expect from just about every other con I had been to.
(I admit the astronaut was an exception).
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