Thread by @NMamatas

One more one more thing: It is not at all unusual for panels at Worldcon to include people who have no idea what they're talking about, so it's not like there is a lot of careful consideration involved.

I've been on panels with people who:

a. suggested that new writers contact a patent lawyer to read contracts
b. wondered aloud if invisible ink wasn't "a kind of magical realism"
c. declared on a "What Came Out This Year" panel that they'd "read nothing new at all this year."

Also people who:

d. followed up on a comment about Heinlein's Rules of Writing with "Well, here are MY rules" and then repeated Heinlein's Rules verbatim
e. ran off the panel on experimental literature but stayed in the audience to talk about group sex with her "water brothers"

also people:
f. who repeatedly misnamed comic book writer Simon Furman (Transformers) as Mark Fuhrman (racist police officer on OJ Simpson Case)
g. declared that Lovecraft was both an anti-racist egalitarian (everyone gets eaten by Cthulhu) and a lifelong resident of Maine

further:
h. declared, in 2010, that publishing fiction online is stupid because you can't then buy extra copies of the magazine to re-sell out of your knapsack at conventions
i. declared Thomas Ligotti (first published in 1981) as a member of the New Weird (formulated 2001)

also
j. announced in 2001 that bookstores and publishing as an industry would be dead by 2010 "because of PDFs"
k. announced that other panelists need not speak since it was already obvious what they were going to say, so he'd just make his points and respond to their critiques

and
l. insisted that every story in the genre of mystery is exactly the same
m. insisted that there was a burgeoning commercial snuff film industry

Further:
n. said of televised professional wrestling, "It's so violent. I have to sit there and try to pretend it's not real in order to watch a match."
o. Asked, petulantly "Why should a theory have to explain or predict anything?"

Not to mention:

p. insisting that the United States won the Vietnam War
q. repeatedly referred to "furries" as "fuzzies"
r. described rearranging the shelves in a bookstore to keep science fiction from "escaping" into other sections

Digging deep now (I should say these are panels generally, only some from Worldcons)

s. announcing that her favorite horror writer was "Jack the Ripper"
t. launching into a lengthy description of magic armor a PC wore in a D&D game/ when prodded for the point said "Don't know!"

Can I do the whole alphabet? YES!
u. pronounced manga, a supposed favorite form of his, with a soft g, and when asked for a favorite, said "The Animatrix" (not a manga).
v. critiqued the RPG Vampire: The Masquerade because it "got auras wrong. I know—I see auras."

w. explaining that if "you're not Stephen King" you can't expect an advance for a novel
x. standing up during a panel on Japanese SF to point to her shirt and shout "RODAN!!" (at least the shirt did have an image of Rodan on it, but that's the level we're talking about here)

And

y. suggested to a best-selling author also on the panel that she should "look into lulu.com because you get to keep more of your money that way"

FINALLY:

z. turned to me, gave me a weird once over, and said "Asimov used to walk up to pretty girls and ask to kiss their belly-buttons at this con. You could probably get away with it too."