I always wanted to attend BasedCon. As a lifelong Michigander, former resident of Grand Rapids, and sci-fi enthusiast, I was always curious to see what sorts of dissident minds existed in this sphere. I was familiar with some faces on the panels, especially Substack, and was curious what they would be like in person. While not a fandom connoisseur, only going to a few over a decade ago, I've gotten harrowing glimpses through social media of how far they’ve fallen. This year I made it happen and got a ticket.
For the last decade, fantasy and sci-fi conventions have been inundated with increasingly suffocating codes of conduct that make anyone with opinions outside the progressive consensus a target for huge social blowback. Authors got banned, fans ostracized, and the core mission of many conferences became secondary to the cultural zeitgeist.
To those outside the scene, it seems like it just happened overnight, but this isn’t a recent phenomenon. I remember attending a Linux convention …
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