As I write this, I am back at my hotel for a little bit to get ready for the dance, and thought I’d share with you a bit of Con trivia, and an associated interesting story.
You see, at anime and gaming cons which tend to be perused by a larger demographic of youngins’ (this tends to rulle out more generic Sci-Fi conventions such as Star Trek) a fad started several years ago. It’s called Sign Whoring.
Sign Whoring, in effect, is advertising something on a sheet of paper, usually lined notebook paper with jagged edges, written poorly in pen or marker. Sometimes somebody had their wallet stolen and needs donations to make it back home. Sometimes they have merchandise to sell, and don’t want to go into the vendor room. Maybe they’re poor and want to earn extra cash by being a “slave” you can lead around to impress your friends and make jealous your enemies.
And sometimes, the bearer of such sign is just lonely and wants a hug.
This tradition has been going on for several years and is nothing new. Even if it is pathetic.
Today, the sign whores were out in force in the skyway that connects the Con Hotel from the Conference Center were most of the functions were at. It’s a rather wide hallway, and this is helpful as foot traffic is quite heavy through it. Additionally, it has ledges were you can lean over to peer out the windows to the street below.
As I was passing through the hallway nursing my pained and blistered foot, I noticed the ledges, with many different colorful examples of fellow Con-goers, including a few people carrying signs. I decided to nurse my now almost useless lump of flesh and bone that many others usually refer to as a “foot”, and took a seat on the ledge.
As I needed a good hour off my feet as a healing period, I decided to make a sign and join in the fun. However, as I have no wares for sale, no real need of hugs from 12 year-olds wearing stuffed lingerie (yuck), and nothing else to advertise to the screaming and ubiquotous masses, I decided to make with the funny.
My sign, penned in blue ink on a piece of badly shredded notebook paper, and held up for all of the Con-going world to view, read “I hate Sign Whores”.
Oddly enough, this sign got quite a response from passer-bys, and I got more pictures taken of me than most cosplayers (Costume Players, those who dress up as their favorite anime characters).
I was an instant hit. The people on the West side of the hall (we soon started representin’ ourselves via our respective gang signs) were holding signs for free hugs, as well as calling out their huggle availability like some demented street vendor.
Pretty soon, we started heckling their own calls, with such colorful returns as thusly:
Them: Free hugs!
Us: Free cliche’s!
Them: Free hugs!
Us: Free flashings!
Them: Free hugs!
Us: Free Willy!
Them: Free hugs!
Us: Free Syphillis!
Them: STOP IT!!!!
…And so on and so forth until security showed up.
Anyway, this ceased to be amusing after about 3 hours, and my foot was feeling better, so began to wander around the Con again. After chatting with friends, doing some activities, and generally being a bum witha smile, I prepared to make my way back to the hotel so I could get ready for the dance. One more trip through the skyway to get where I was going, and see how my fellow sign-whores were.
The sight I saw when I rounded the corner and entered the skyway at about 9:00 P.M. was breathtaking, in that “My God, that screaming explosive fireball of death is so beautiful” kind of way.
The sides, and actually, most of the middle, of the Skyway was absolutely packed with people carrying signs, asking for everything from hugs, glomps (kind of a combination hug and running tackle), kisses, sex, oral sex, anal sex, gay sex, and free pocky (a Japanese snack, consisting of a hard-pretzel like stick dipped in chocolate and other associated candy goodness). There was even the squeaky-breasted glomp-Ninja, who had some kind of squeek toy hidden in her shirt that squeeked when she glomped you.
You’ve heard of a Guantlet before? This had become the Glomplet.
And I had decided something. All of these signs requesting various sexual favors indicated to me one thing. Ladies and gentlemen, we have burried the needle on the geek loneliness meter this year. This is the worst I’ve ever seen it.
Even at an anime con, where I usually assume I’m around people of like mind and attitude, I am still forced to fall back on my old axiom:
You people scare me.
More later.
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