BasedCon 5
The Art of Just Doing Things
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 in the early 2000s where a presenter from Google had a jab at George W. Bush every other slide. Earlier, the elite consensus of the tech bros leaned libertarian in political mindset, with Google waving the banner with its commitment to unbiased search algorithms. That didn’t last. Elite circles quickly transformed into a radically different and hostile worldview, and consensus morphed into radical progressivism over the course of a decade. Soon the new generation of elites, along with their fanatical online henchmen, were making their demands on the mostly apolitical fans attending.
This reached a crescendo in GamerGate, when gaming media ripped away the mask of fair play and objectivity. Like so many conflicts in history, it started with a woman whoring around for favors and a butthurt guy. Soon sitting on the stands was not an option, and sides had to be taken. Countless young men who “just wanted to play video games” found themselves in the middle of a culture war. Games, once an innocuous medium, were politicized into an existential struggle.
There were many casualties. Tree of Woe , whom I had the honor of chatting with, got cancelled from the gaming magazine he founded, The Escapist. Countless others found themselves fired or blacklisted for taking the wrong side. While “nerd” culture had a wide selection of opinions, the power brokers, whether it be gaming or books, were in lockstep. Fan conventions soon had increasingly unhinged speech policies, deranged topics for panel discussions, and an air of paranoia. Everyone mandated celebrating the cultural zeitgeists and would ruthlessly expunge any whiff of dissent.
It soon reached total institutional capture as “chosen” authors and producers came from an increasingly narrow line of people with the acceptable race and opinion. This led to the “Sad Puppies” and “Rabid Puppies”, spearheaded by Vox Day, who gamed a voting system to get better writers nominated for awards.
There are many more details of these dark times, and I admit to not being a scholar on the conflict, but many meme war veterans who became Donald Trump’s best soldiers have fond memories of this raucous time. As years passed, the progressive zeitgeist seemed to emerge victorious. Draconian speech policies were universal in the convention space and counter-insurgencies were successfully repelled. It seemed the dissenters had run out of steam.
In 2021, the Covid panic was winding down but still a terrifying reality for the true believers. In this air of stifling cultural homogeneity, independent science fiction writer robkroese tried his own hand at creating a convention that went against all mandated popular norms, forming it as a poke in the eye to the busybodies and scolds who ruined the fun.
“In internet parlance, “based” means something like “in touch with reality.” Based behavior is the opposite of social justice activism, which is about meaningless virtue signaling and beating up strawmen. Some based beliefs include:
Men cannot give birth
Guns don’t kill people; people kill people
A fetus is a human being
Socialism has failed everywhere it’s been tried
Discriminating against white people is racism
BasedCon isn’t about pushing any particular ideology, but honest conversations have to start with a shared understanding of reality. If you think people with a certain skin color can’t be racist or you expect people to use made-up pronouns when talking about you, you may want to do a reality check before coming to BasedCon.“
While it was (justifiably) mocked for saying it was non-ideological while making ideological statements, the message was clear. We can have our own spaces too.
The first BasedCon was a small gathering that gathered significant online attention, including from detractors. He made the meeting place secret and took other security measures in order to limit trouble. There was some online pushback but given the small number of participants and the fact many radicals were still cooped up in their homes, it came and passed without incident, a moderate success.
Subsequent years were not as fortunate, as legendary developer John Carmack planned to attend a subsequent BasedCon, causing a wave of controversy. This was no longer a niche and inconsequential conference. It had recruited one of the minor tech elites, and outrage turned up to 11. Carmack made a statement to the mob, but stood strong and refused to cancel.
It’s amazing that just two years ago the stranglehold on social life was this strong, especially given that when it emerged again last weekend, it was now just like any other conference. There were no online protests, no cancelation campaigns, no doxing. The only drama came from a silly internecine spat on the right. The group of about 100 attendees spent the weekend listening to panels and lectures, chatting with colleagues, selling books, and playing board games. It was a quiet, cozy affair. To someone who didn’t live through that before-times, it would be hard to fathom that such a small gathering of sci-fi and fantasy fans once had an entire online rage-mob upon them.
While BasedCon began as a rebellion, the institutions they rebelled against have lost much of their dominance. They no longer have the power to destroy opponents like they used to, and are coming to terms with their dramatic loss of social capital as all the prestigious awards that had status have turned into jokes. Society has fractured into so many niche topics that it’s impossible to gatekeep them all. The woke is not being put away, but they are frantically trying, and failing, to patch all the leaks as masses of fans leave for greener pastures.
The most tiresome portion of it was lamenting woke culture on a couple of panels. It felt worn out. There’s too much talent outside of old media to even worry about them anymore. We had a guy from mainstream comic conglomerates chatting, as well as another making his own batch of superhero comics with the same level of professionalism as the big studios. There are countless comic writers on our side doing exceptional work while the major comics studios are getting crushed by Manga. The writers in the space are also steadily gaining skill and reputation.
I had an enthralling conversation with Hans G. Schantz about his alternative history of science, along with many of his ideas to make quantum ideas more accessible to a large audience. Cool stuff. We had Fencing Bear at Prayer , a medieval scholar, doing deep dives into connections between mythological tales and real history in Beowulf. A popular author updated the common narrative of the Cuban Missile Crisis based on new declassified documents. The speaker, Blaine Pardoe, was cast out of the BattleTech universe, so wrote his own mecha world.
Every lecture was fantastic, and I hope subsequent BasedCons have more such content.
Many of the sharpest people around left the progressive plantation, and no one can stop them anymore, so how is the woke mob relevant? The pay might not be as lucrative, and the public prestige might not reach the previous scale, but the ecosystem is large enough that one can make a living.
The “woke” have piles of money to burn in creating subpar products for mass audiences, but they no longer exist as tastemakers. There’s no understanding of the material they inherited that can resonate with fans anymore. Who needs Star Wars, Marvel Comics, or other old franchises anymore? They can even throw the cultural vandalism known as “The Rings of Power” on Amazon for all we care. Let them light their money on fire. Are they even worthy of attention anymore? Do we need another rage-bait video from youtube e-celebs about it? Will that help us grow?
The best part of attending is chatting with people who have a true passion for their work, most of which is only tangentially political. This was not a grift or a job, but a vocation. They were in it for the love of the game. This is the most hopeful part of what I saw. The scene is slowly becoming a positive identity unto itself and less contingent on its enemies. Instead of the constant worries and fears over what the woke is doing now, how to fight the woke, or proving to others you are the most “based” person around, true passion projects are forming pointing towards a unique positive vision as opposed to a rearguard defense against malignant forces.
Not that cultural ascendancy is inevitable. Fandoms regularly host orders of magnitude more guests than BasedCon, and the suffocating codes and gatekeeping are still in place. There’s also the tragic reality of a non-existent patronage network, with billionaires willing to light money on fire making yet another “God is Not Dead” sequel or astroturfed political podcast but blanching at anyone who shows real artistic merit. I’m confident that with enough proofs of concept like BasedCon, small as it is, it will signal there is an audience for something new and talent to support it.
Remaining small is fine too. Nothing needs to be a mass, multi-million-dollar production. You don’t need corporate sponsors and thousands of guests to host a conference. You don’t need a summer blockbuster budget to film a movie. You don’t need a New York publishing firm to make it as an author. Sure, there are plenty of non-art related things you need to learn, like logistics, marketing, budgeting, and others, but every person who breaks through and has success extends the ecosystem and builds awareness for new creators to thrive. There will be plenty of cringeworthy efforts too, but that’s part of discovery.
It’s clear that the great walls that corralled the masses are gone. It's an open country now, the lands abandoned or mismanaged by those who didn’t know how to cultivate, grow, and maintain. We can make something new. Sure, it’s not likely to have the same cultural impact starting out, but it doesn’t need to. Small steps are a success, and no one person or group has to bear the entire burden of building what’s coming next.
Unfortunately, I only attended the Saturday morning and afternoon sessions, having to bust it back across the state to coach my son’s Little League game, but I saw enough. It was a great time. Here’s to another thousand BasedCons blooming. You can just do things.
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Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for attending!
I am thinking I need to go to this in person.