Reasons to be Glad You're Not at San Diego Comic Con

By Genevieve Burgess | Miscellaneous | July 11, 2015 |

By Genevieve Burgess | Miscellaneous | July 11, 2015 |

The lines - The line to get into Hall H started two days in advance this year. I don’t know about you, but I have NEVER wanted to camp out in downtown San Diego in July for anything, especially not the chance to sit in a packed auditorium with a few thousand other campers who weren’t run through a shower first. Beyond that, though, with over 100,000 people attending you will wait in line for EVERYTHING from the bathroom to the chance to get at an outlet to charge your phone.

Con Crud - When people get sick at Cons so often that there’s a name for it, that should tell you something.

You will still miss most of the cool stuff - Even if you’re there the chance that you’ll see whatever one specific panel or cosplayer or booth that everyone’s talking about is pretty slim. The Con is massive, Hall H holds less than 10% of the attendees, and there are only so many hours in the day. But if you go, all your friends will still be like “OH MY GOD DID YOU SEE THAT SURPRISE STAR WARS CONCERT?!?” and it will be extra disappointing to admit that no, at the time you were over paying for novelty cocktails somewhere else.

There’s no nerd cred to it anymore - Sure, there may be some extreme nerds that hit the Con every year, but with superhero movies dominating at the box office and marquee panels hosted by the biggest movie studios around, this is mainstream entertainment now. I saw ESPN covering it yesterday. This is just a plain entertainment convention, wrapped up in a thin veneer of its previous incarnation in order to preserve goodwill among the rabid fans.

The lines - Seriously, though, it’s like someone looked at what people like and dislike about going to theme parks and thought “I know, lets get rid of all the fun parts and keep the standing around in the sweltering heat forever and then splitting your remaining time between overpaying for food or overpaying for souvenirs!”

All the news leaks anyway - Thanks to the internet, most Comic Con “exclusives” are online about 10-15 minutes after the panel is over. Comic Con themselves puts most panels up on YouTube for you to watch at your leisure. Why bother going all the way to San Diego to hear a Q&A for The Hateful Eight you’ll be able to watch a couple hours later from the comfort of your home?

The damn thing sells out in like 90 seconds anyway - FINE, it’s not like I have a near perfect Daenerys costume hanging in my closet with a full set of stuffed dragons anyway. I’m having a fantastic weekend lounging around in my pajamas and scouring the internet for news, thank you very much.