TANACON Tana Mongeau’s counter-event to last weekend’s Vidcon, became a total
disaster, after 20,000 hopeful attendees became an unruly mob. Welcome back to
What's Trending, I'm Shira Lazar be sure to like this video and subscribe for more social media
news daily TANACON took place at
a Marriott in Garden Grove California
literally down the street from where
VidCon was happening at the Anaheim
Convention Center to give you a sense of
things VidCon is like the comic-con of
YouTube where all the digital stars and
their fans come together, but back to
TANACON it became pretty clear very
quickly that they were not ready or
prepared to host an event of this
magnitude. Moments before this gathering
of YouTube fans turned wild, fans at
TANACON say an angry mob grabbed
tickets and rushed the lobby of this
garden grove Marriott, where Tana Mongeau
held her own event competing with VidCon.
Apparently 20,000 people showed up for
the event after ticket sales were capped
at only 5,000, but even if only the
people with tickets had shown up it's
questionable if things would have still
ran smoothly @RainbowpupsSF who got
inside TANACON tweeted for everyone
outside the reason the line is not
moving is literally because there is not
enough room inside it's just one hall.
She also said there was no food inside
and only three vendors. People waiting
outside had a tough time as well, that's
because it was 84 degrees outside and
there was no shade or water provided.
According to Marriott the largest
capacity space in the hotel fits about
1,000 people, so it's unclear how Tana
con plan to fit in the 5,000 ticket
holders let alone the 20,000 who showed
up. As the event grew more disorganized
and security was unable to wrangle the
crowd the fire marshal ultimately shut
the whole thing down and everyone was
ordered to leave.
Eventually actress Bella Thorne and Tana
Mongeau came outside to try and meet
disappointed fans. Starting at 9:00 a.m.
on Friday morning @Cacasmiddlename
on Twitter began detailing all of the
major drama at TANACON. Among the many
complaints, paid attendees were not
guaranteed to meet any creators which
was one of the main draws of TANACON
over VidCon some of the feature creators
had been accused of sexual abuse and
that the entire thing was basically a
single hallway with not nearly enough
room for everyone coming. After all this
unfolded Tana Mongeau took to Twitter with
a long thread detailing how it all went
so wrong.
she wrote "My intentions with tannic on
were incredibly pure and 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 and took it as far as speaking
with several people very high up at
Marriott." She called it a bump in the
road that she takes full responsibility
for and that she'll be issuing refunds
to people out of her own pocket
now it's worth going back to look at
why TANACON was initiated in the first
place
Tana Mongeau known for her story times had
not enjoyed herself but previous
vidcon's and explained in an 80 minute
video in April that she wasn't going to
be attending this year because of a
series of grievances, most notably that
they refused to consider her a featured
creator. [Tana]: "I don't care that 500 people
were upstairs waiting to listen to you
talk at that panel you're not a featured
creator in my event and you need to get
the gap and I'm not gonna lie
immediately my heartbreak turns into
anger and frustration." [Shira]: Hey Tana I know
how that feels, been there.. it's true, I
mean one year I'm featured, one year I'm
moderating, one year I'm invited by a
sponsor, I don't know, but I still go and
I love VidCon and the VlogBrothers
now Viacom... hire me
so since VidCon just leaves people out
and does have a lot of politics around
it, she decided screw it, I can do it
better.
The idea behind TANACON was to give
fans a convention that's cheaper than
VidCon with better access to creators,
and we totally believe that Tana was
genuine in her effort to make TANACON a legit event, but the amount of
ticketed individuals that couldn't get
in who probably drove and flew a ton of
miles to get there shows how hard it is
to put together an event like this.
Despite TANACON being readily compared to
the even more disastrous fire festival,
Tana has defended the event saying that
she did pretty much everything she
wanted to do inside the hotels doors. [Tana]: "I did
pretty much everything that I was
supposed to do today and I just want to
let you guys know as well, like, people
always make room to speculate and say a
bunch of stuff, but I want you to know
that today TANACON was everything
inside that I said it was going to be."
[Shira]: That explanation probably isn't really gonna sit
well for the people who paid $65 for VIP
tickets for an event they couldn't even
get into. Fellow YouTube star and
comedian Shane Dawson give his thoughts
about TANACON which he was scheduled
to attend, and how he plans to make it up
to fans. [Shane]: "Anybody else who came to TANACON
that's from LA, I'm gonna do a free
meet-up for them, and then I'm gonna
hopefully do on my next book to where I'm
gonna meet up with everybody around the
country, and, but that doesn't fix it, like
that doesn't, like doesn't help, like does
it help? I don't know... Doesn't take away
the fact that they were, like literally
scammed." [Shira]: Meghan Tonjes, friend of what's
trending, and a veteran of VidCon and
about a dozen other creator events
chimed in on Twitter - she wrote "let's
drop his narrative of teenager only had
a month to plan a con and is doing her
best. It was a month of planning to be
shady on VidCon weekend takes any con
at least a year with a team to create
any of these events.
it wasn't gonna go well meeting people
in an inclusivity and direct access? All
amazing. But, the audiences are just too
big and too active to not have structure.
Not everyone can meet everyone safely
and 9-hour meet and greets are beyond
exhausting for creators. It would have
been more impactful for TANACON to be
well-run safe, and thought-out than a
semi failed **** you pop up."
I'll give Tana credit, I think it's
awesome to be able to see something that
might not be working for you and just do
it yourself, I'm all about that, but I
think it's once again as I mentioned
easier to complain about these things
than to like just do them yourself and I
think you realize how hard it is when
you actually try to create something
like this as Tana realized. So in many
ways, it was a huge failure for
the fans but I think for her as a public
persona and as a star, I guess all press
is good press and that's how she built
her brand, so I mean I think she's gonna
continue moving onwards and upwards from
here and hopefully she learned her
lesson and can create a better event and
experience from this in the future so do
you think about all the drama around
TANACON, and how should she make it up
to her fans? let us know in the comments
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