Stop treating fandom events like dating mixers.
cw, sexual assault is discussed in this essay.
Looks like I am back on my “certified annoying girl” and “the friend that’s too woke” shit again today! I am very much tired of talking about guys (I never really liked talking about them much to begin with). I have been putting together a zine about friendships I have lost because of guys since the summer, and because I have been working on it so much, this has been on my mind. One of my supporters left a comment on my video saying they were at a convention with a panel titled “How to pick up baddies at an anime convention,” and with the news about Emiru being assaulted at Twitchcon, I got irritated all over again.
Let’s go ahead and start this essay off with a disclaimer that I put in my video “Y’all are making cosplay insufferable,” which I uploaded in February 2025, because I am aware that fandom spaces are full of people who take everything at face value and don’t read.
Disclaimer: Before we get started, because I know a lot of you in this community see everything as black and white here, this is not the piece for you if you are not going to think critically. There are a lot of nuances with aspects of our community, and trust me, no one is trying to ruin the fun by pointing out that we have actual issues here that not only need to be addressed but need solutions, too. If you think this piece is being made to start drama, this piece is not for you. If you are not willing to have a REAL conversation about this community, this piece is not for you.
The famous couple gives people ideas.
I don’t use TikTok, but I am well aware of the phenomenon of couples content. The concept of couple content existed before social media, given how society holds famous people up on pedestals. Back in the 90s, this was very prominent with the relationship between Victoria and David Beckham. He was a famous soccer player, and she was one-fifth of The Spice Girls. Society idolized this relationship and lost its shit whenever new photos of them together surfaced. I constantly listened to my high school classmates talk about DK4L, also known as De’arra and Ken, who built an online following by making their relationship very public. Because of both the Beckhams and DK4L, we began to see numerous people online trying to become famous couples. There was a woman I was friends with many years ago who wanted me to set up a YouTube channel for her and her boyfriend at the time, because they wanted to desperately be a famous couple. As much as people don’t want to admit it, couples in the public eye influence what they want in a relationship, let alone wanting one in the first place.
Couples content gets tons of online attention and does well with nerdy adjacent topics such as anime, gaming, and, of course, cosplay. This has led to a rise in people online talking about wanting a “gamer boyfriend,” “gamer girlfriend,” “cosplay boyfriend,” “cosplay girlfriend,” and so on. From the way people speak about this, it’s not too far off from men who rave about how bad they want a goth girlfriend because they were obsessed with characters like Gwen from Total Drama and The Hex Girls from Scooby Doo and The Witch’s Ghost growing up. I’ll be a bitch for a second and say it: oftentimes, this comes off as fetishizing people when you all do this because you are viewing them as objects on a pedestal rather than actual humans. You all see these people as tropes first and humans second.
The spring 2025 incident.
From my personal experiences dealing with men in cosplay spaces who can’t take a hint that I don’t want to be bothered, the countless stories of feminine-presenting people who have dealt with a creepy male photographer, and the number of feminine-presenting people who have horror stories of dealing with men at these events, it is very clear that there is a problem at hand.
In the spring of 2025, I posted to my Instagram about how people treat comic conventions, anime conventions, gaming tournaments, and cosplay meet-ups as dating mixers, and I got quite a bit of backlash. The backlash was mostly due to all my posts being about male entitlement. Here are some of the responses I’ve gotten and my replies.
Person: So men and women can’t be friends?
Me: Nowhere did I say men and women can’t be friends. I am friends with men in the cosplay community, and I became friends with them because they weren’t making me or other women and feminine-presenting people uneasy. There are plenty of women and femmes in the cosplay community who have male cosplay friends. It’s actually very common to have friends like this because this is a co-ed space.
Person: So men can’t talk to women at conventions?
Me: I did not say that. Men can talk to women at cons as long as they are respectful. I talk to men at cons, they come to my panels and ask for photos, and I have no issue with it (most of the time). I have had plenty of decent experiences with men in this space BECAUSE THEY KNEW HOW TO ACT RIGHT. None of these men were trying to hit on me, ask me out, or anything of that sort.
Person: Men aren’t allowed to make friends? And people wonder why there is a male loneliness epidemic.
Me: First of all, you do know men can be friends with other men in this community, right? No one is stopping you from making friends in general. Women and femmes in this community also don’t “owe” men or anyone friendship. It is not women and femmes’ responsibility to make men in the cosplay community happy. Stop blaming women and femmes for the male loneliness epidemic! Women and femmes don’t owe you shit!
Person: Women make men uncomfortable, too.
Me: Nowhere in that post (or on my platform) have I defended or given excuses to women for being predatory. In that post, I also specifically stated, “Leave people alone.” People is a gender neutral word! ON TOP of the fact that numerous women and feminine-present people have stories about a man at a convention making them uncomfortable. Most of my women and femme-presenting friends in this community have a story. That’s why this post was towards men in these spaces. I have spoken up about women in this community, causing problems before, by the way.
Person: Where are men supposed to go to meet women they know have common interests?
Me: This was already addressed, but I will elaborate on that. If you are going into a non-dating space expecting romance, then you have the wrong intentions for being there. Yes, it’s not really a secret that people want to find love in the cosplay community. Still, there have been too many occasions of cishet men going to places IN GENERAL, specifically because they want to pick up women and femmes there. Respectfully, conventions aren’t dating mixers. And plenty of cons offer dating events, like I said, GO TO THEM if you want to find romance so bad here. Also, women and femmes don’t owe you romance or a hook-up because they like the same things as you.
While the concept of “you should date people who have common interests as you” makes sense, there is so much that falls into this. Most of these events are not dating mixers, and too many people within fandom spaces (for the record, if you attend events like conventions and gaming tournaments, that is a fandom space, stop acting like you don’t engage in fandom because you do) fail to understand that these places are not meant for that. If people come to these events and fall for each other, that’s fine; it happens often. This isn’t about that, though.
It is a terrible idea to join a subculture solely to find a partner. Ask yourself these questions when you enter these communities:
Do you actually enjoy cosplay, or did you start cosplaying as a way to find a partner?
Do you actually like conventions, or did you start going to them because word got around that hot people your age attend them?
Do you actually like photography, or did you get a camera as a way to get attention from women and feminine-presenting people?
The actual fandom dating events.
You know how girls were told, “You’re not going to school to find a boyfriend, you’re going to get your education,” growing up? While that may have been harsh, there was some truth to it. One reason was that too many girls got distracted by boyfriends, which caused them to lose focus, leading to the loss of friends and bad grades. One of my teachers told me that one of her female students’ grades improved after she broke up with her boyfriend. There was nothing wrong with having a boyfriend growing up, but that’s not the reason you went to school in the first place.
Finding a relationship is not the reason you get a job, either. There are tales on top of tales of someone having a crush on someone at work, and shit goes south when one of the people doesn’t reciprocate those feelings. Even worse: the workplace couple breaks up, leaving the coworkers uncomfortable.
Do we have to run that rhetoric back when it comes to subculture now?
Conventions, cosplay meet-ups, gaming tournaments, and so on are events where people with common interests come together. These spaces were not specifically designed for dating.
Events for nerds to meet for the sake of dating purposes exist. At first, I was so-so on these kinds of events (mainly because of my negative perspective on reality dating shows), but I have lightened up on them since I realized the intentions behind them aren’t terrible. I work with a cosplay community that hosts a dating meet-up event, and they make sure everything stays under control. That right there is an event that is specifically set up for dating. Everyone there signed up to be a part of that. It’s similar to Love Island, where the purpose of that series is for the cast members to date each other.
Dating mixers exist for a reason. These are places specifically designed for people looking to be in a relationship, and I don’t judge people for attending them because I get that many have had negative experiences with dating apps. Wanting romance is a natural desire, and my traumatized and unlabeled sexuality ass took a while to understand that.
Personally, I do think we should have more dating mixers for nerdy people, especially for those who aren’t straight. But if we continue to have dating mixers for nerds, we also need to prioritize safety! Creating more dating events doesn’t solve the problem; we also need to ensure no one is harmed at them.
The actual issue.
According to Alaina Demopoulos in The Ongoing Struggle to Prevent Harassment at Comic Cons, “Thomas, who is 30 and lives in Florida, noticed consent was “a huge issue” at conventions starting with her very first one. It began innocently enough. She showed up wearing a Christmas-themed costume that looked so good that a steady stream of people came up asking if she’d take a photo with them. That was all fine, until one man took his turn. The images Thomas took with the fan looked good enough that she wanted them, too. She gave him her number, and asked him to text her pics. Again, all normal — until the man continued texting Thomas and asked her to come to his house. When she blocked his number, he just found her again at the conference. “My friend went off to a panel, and I was walking around by myself, which is a bad idea if you’re basically anyone who’s not a man at a convention,” she tells Allure. Thomas has a tattoo of the Nirvana smiley face album cover on her leg, which the man tried to paw at, asking her if she “actually knew” what the logo meant. It was time, in Thomas’ words, to tell the man to “fuck off.” By then, her friend found her and they went to security to report the harasser, who turned out to be a convention volunteer.” Just because someone has a somewhat common interest as you do not mean they own your attention. If someone is not interested in you, you need to leave them alone and move on.
My (and plenty of others’) problems are with people who specifically come into spaces that are NOT dating spaces, constantly looking for a relationship or a hook-up, is because this behavior often causes issues. I do not fucking care how many people get frustrated with me for my views on this. These communities have too many issues with sexual harassment, sexual assault, bullying, and abuse overall to overlook this phenomenon.
Saying “stop treating conventions like dating mixers” should not be a hot take because of all the horror stories we have about people getting abused, drugged, and stalked at these events. We have enough problems as it is dealing with misogyny in different forms in these spaces, and not wanting to be bothered by a man who came into the event only with the intentions to date and hook up is a valid want. Also, not being able to take a hint that someone doesn’t want you romantically within in-person fandom spaces ain’t it either. Ignorance is not bliss when people in your community are made uncomfortable by those who entered the space with the wrong intentions.
Sources.
https://www.allure.com/story/cosplay-is-not-consent-10-years
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