Today In Looking For Something To Write About

San Diego Comic-Con was this past weekend. It's the biggest convention around. Like all conventions, it has a TON of dedicated fans who go to buy merchandise and dress up and meet other fans. And, I assume, it's a perfect place for doing those things.

But this article from the AV Club discusses whether or not it should be covered by the media as it has increasingly been over the last five years or so.

I'm not trying to argue myself out of a job or anything, but I do wonder if the amount of ink spilled on Comic-Con is truly necessary. This is an event created to specifically keep people from saying, "Oh, hey, maybe this won't be good, huh?" Aside from all of the big, obvious problems - the long lines, the inability to stop thinking like a small convention when this is one of the biggest conventions out there, the ridiculously overpriced concessions, the fact that the whole thing may move to Anaheim, LA, or Vegas - no one really talks about whether news organizations should even be sending people like me to cover this stuff. Comic-Con started out for the fans, and then Hollywood got involved and tried to make all of the attendees fans of everything it could possibly get them to consume. And now, the event is such a big deal within the entertainment media that it sometimes seems as though the studios are using it to sneak a virus out to the public at large, just another bit of marketing in the long march toward a big opening weekend, but a form of marketing that we haven't yet built up a resistance to, like billboards or TV commercials.

Conventions are supposed to be for fans first and foremost, but also give them a way to meet their idols. An anime convention might have a voice actor come speak, for example. But this writer argues that the big companies go to Comic-Con with the purpose of promotion, and their influence is becoming so huge that we're starting to forget that this is for the fans. Of course, a fan should love seeing the actors there, and sneak previews of movies/shows are undeniably cool. But are they still as cool when you know that you're just being shown this sneak preview for marketing purposes?

Something to think about...Read the rest of the article, which includes a little coverage of panels, here.