The last WorldCon I went to, I made out with a beautiful rocket scientist who bought me six drinks and we had a fabulous time.
I keep starting to write a thread about how making cons safer means giving up on some fantasies but I don't think fantasy is the problem. Reality is.
I keep starting to write a thread about how making cons safer means giving up on some fantasies but I don't think fantasy is the problem. Reality is.
Because the reality of something like that is, you have to put in work. You have to check in, and not in a super eager, "just to dot the i's" by saying the right words like they're a magical formula.
The reality is you can't get an experience like that - not with any reliable level of safety and not without a lot of collateral damage along the way - by an aggressive shot gun or machine gun approach, by shouting come-ons and loudly interrogating strangers about their habits.
At the risk of sounding like a dril tweet or a meme with a picture of a man pointing at his forehead, people spend time "getting to yes" when they could be spending time "getting to know".
A substantial number of people who have laughed at and dunked on and rolled their eyes at Trump's "testing leads to more cases" this week have also, in their lives, made the decision to *not* check in, to *not* ask permission, to *not* find out a prospective partner's limits...
...out of a feeling that not knowing those things for sure gives them more breathing space, more room to operate. Out of a belief that it's better to ask forgiveness than permission. Out of a sense that it's more romantic and sexy to be "spontaneous".
And it's not about shyness or awkwardness, because the same kinds of people who will shout "Do you like cock?" or pull someone towards them while declaring an intention to urinate on them are among the people who will choose to keep their target's mind a sealed black box.
And some of this stuff is deliberate predatory tactics and some of it is just bad habits instilled by the same society that shapes those predators
If you're not normally predatory, ordinary con Fear Of Missing Out interacting with your fantasies can lead you to bad places.
If you're not normally predatory, ordinary con Fear Of Missing Out interacting with your fantasies can lead you to bad places.
Because you don't want to miss your shot at something amazing. You don't want to miss your shot, so you feel like you've got to shoot your shot. And you can't spend the whole weekend getting to know someone to the exclusion of looking for a clear shot, because what if you miss?
The answer to all of this is that another person isn't "your shot" and even if they are not Confirmed For Smash then you've ~*wasted*~ time making a cool new friend whose company you enjoy.
