In the words of Shane Dawson, “I literally don’t even know where to start”, but I’m going to give it a go.
For the uninitiated, TanaCon was YouTuber Tana Mongeau’s response to VidCon. Mongeau is a 20-year-old YouTuber with 3.6 million subscribers. That’s just 200,000 fewer people than live in Melbourne.
From what I, a clueless bystander, can gather, it came about after Mongeau posted an 80-minute rant in April titled “Why I Won’t Be Attending Vidcon 2018: A Rant”.
Her problem with VidCon can be boiled down to the fact that she was promised the status of ‘Featured Creator’ at VidCon 2016 but VidCon didn’t deliver on this supposed promise. The lack of this status made meeting her fans harder, and her presence was deemed a security hazard, and yada yada yada, she was banned from VidCon for life.
In her rant video, she announced her decision to hold a free version of VidCon in the same area (Anaheim, California) on the same weekend. That convention was TanaCon, and it took place on the weekend of June 20th. The event was…less than successful.
my intentions with Tanacon were incredibly pure & i truly thought that i had everything on lock. i was told a lot that didn't end up happening. i was truly under the impression that we were selling to capacity & took it as far as speaking with several ppl very high up at marriott
— Tana Mongeau (@tanamongeau) June 24, 2018
To give you some idea of just how disastrous it was, Shane Dawson described his decision to attend in support of Mongeau, his friend, as “the worst decision” he’s ever made. And that’s coming from Shane Dawson!
He knows about bad decisions.
The convention was a failure for several reasons. Despite promising that the event would be free, fans could choose to buy VIP passes for US$65. According to multiple fan videos from the event, almost everyone there on the day was sporting one of these passes.
Fans who bought VIP tickets were promised exciting goodie bags that would be worth “more than three times the cost” of their ticket, but in reality, the bags contained little more than stickers and a “TanaCondom”. Seriously.
In addition, the space used for the convention is advertised online as having capacity for just over 1000 people, but an estimated 5000 people turned up on the day. This inevitably meant that people were standing outside and waiting for other people to leave so they could enter, and some fans were waiting outside in the hot California sun for up to five hours, leaving them with severe burns.
https://twitter.com/sbstryker/status/1014190695530352640
After an introduction and an explanation of why Dawson felt he had to make this three-part series, we meet two young fans who actually managed to make it inside TanaCon (!) but only after they waited outside for long enough to get severe sunburn. (They were lucky compared to the 14-year-old who left in an ambulance after being knocked down by the crowd, though.)
According to these fans, there was no security and no bag check, and when the event was cancelled, they thought there had been a shooting as a result of this lax security. That concern would only have been heightened by the fact that YouTuber and singer Christina Grimmie was shot and killed during a meet and greet outside a concert in 2016.
The brains behind this catastrophe seems to be a 21-year-old called Michael Weist, who runs Good Times, a talent management company. Weiss could be seen at TanaCon riding around on a Segway, because walking is for chumps. Dawson interviewed Weist over FaceTime (because immediately after the convention was cancelled, he flew home to Nashville rather than stick around and deal with the fallout), and Weist shared that he is planning on suing the hotel where the event took place, the Anaheim Marriott Suites. Um, good luck with that.
He also vaped during the interview, because of course he vapes.
Weist also said he and his people were filming everything Tanacon-related including planning sessions because they hoped to sell a documentary to Netflix. Why would Netflix be interested in a documentary about a convention that went off without a hitch? Oops, I think I just became a TanaCon truther.
The third and final installment of the series is 40 minutes long, and includes a tearful conversation between Mongeau and Dawson. The pair then call Weist, and Weist and Mongeau proceed to argue in front of the cameras.
Dawson runs through the numbers in his conclusion: Weist and Mongeau both said they were assured by the hotel that 5000 fans could be accommodated, despite the website stating otherwise. 5108 VIP tickets were sold at $65 apiece, for a total of roughly $325,000, while only 250 free tickets were made available.
Mongeau has assured disgruntled fans that refunds will be issued, although refunds would presumably only cover the cost of the ticket, and not the expenses accrued by fans who travelled interstate for the event. According to the contract, Weist, and not the ticketing company they used, is responsible for issuing refunds. We’ll see if this strange GOB Bluth-esque figure delivers on his promise to make things right.
REFUNDS will be issued, even if i write the check out of my own pocket. merch will be sent to ticket buyers, if anyone travelled far feel free to email tanamongeauyt@gmail.com to discuss compensation, from me personally.
— Tana Mongeau (@tanamongeau) June 24, 2018
I don’t care about YouTube at all, but as a messy bench who lives for drama, the whirlwind that was TanaCon and Dawson’s three-part investigative documentary is very tasty.
