So here’s the question: If you DON’T wear a costume at Anime North… does that make you not fit in?
Anime North (if you don’t know already) is this crazy convention where roughly half the people at the con wear some sort of costume. A lot of the con actually isn’t about Anime though it is nerdy in some way, e.g. LARP (live-action role playing), video/PC games, board/card games, Marvel/DC characters, etc. etc. The whole neighbourhood is flooded with people in cosplay. It’s a crazy nerdfest. Last year AN coincided with a conference for the Conservative Party (?of Ontario?) so there was a weird juxtaposition of cosplayers and people really into politics. And perhaps there was a very minor amount of nerd discrimination as one of the hotels was trying to keep the hallways clear of AN attendees so that it wouldn’t interfere as much with the political convention attendees. Like they wanted to tone down the nerdy party atmosphere in the place. So in that sense, cosplaying is obviously not seen as a mainstream thing and very slightly frowned upon (or somebody at the hotel thought that the politics people, some of whom are actually as young as the AN attendees, would prefer less of a nerd mob).
On the other hand, if you don’t wear a costume at AN then it’s like you aren’t as serious about being nerdy as everybody else. And because you aren’t as nerdy as everybody else, you are slightly less cool than everybody else. (Even though everybody at AN is friendly and nobody cares about popularity or any of that nonsense.)
If you have an opinion on this topic, feel free to post a comment.
And oh yeah, it’s awkward Youtube embed time. This is how you get banned from AN (a kid gets fake beaten up at 4:20, and they instigate a MMAesque fight at 5:07):
