TanaCon

Overview

TanaCon was a convention launched by YouTuber Tana Mongeau as an alternative to the YouTube conference VidCon in late June 2018. After an unexpected amount of attendees arrived, the event was abruptly canceled due to safety concerns.

Background

On April 2nd, 2018, Mongeau released a vlog in which she announced she would not be attending VidCon, retelling various negative experiences at the conference. Additionally, Mongeau announced she would be hosting her own "meet-and-greet" during the same time as VidCon (shown below).

On June 4th, the social media analytics site SocialBlade^[2] published an article about the convention, noting that YouTubers Shane Dawson, Ricky Dillon, Elijah Nathaniel and Bella Thorne would be attending as special guests.

Developments

Shut Down

On June 22nd, the event was shut down after an unexpected amount of attendees arrived, vastly outnumbering the venue's maximum capacity. That day, Twitter user @cacasmiddlename^[1] tweeted a thread listing various criticizing about the event, claiming that it was poorly organized and sold tickets based on misleading information.

Meanwhile, the DramaAlert YouTube channel uploaded an interview with Mongeau about the shut down (shown below).

The following day, YouTuber Shook uploaded a video titled "Tanacon? More like disastercon" (shown below, left). On June 24th, YouTuber PewDiePie released a video about the event titled "TanaCon Got Cancelled," which gained more than 3.4 million views and 29,400 comments within 24 hours (shown below, right).

Shane Dawson Vlogs

On June 28th, Shane Dawson released a video titled "The Truth About Tanacon," in which he discussed the history of the convention (shown below, left). The following day, a second video about the event was released, titled "The Truth About Tana Mongeau" (shown below, right).

On July 2nd, 2018, Dawson released the final video in the series titled "The Real Truth About Tanacon" (shown below). Over the next week, the videos accumulated upwards of 10.6 million, 9.7 million and 7.1 million views respectively.

In the series, Dawson and Mongeau accuse 21-year-old entrepreneur Michael Weist of failing to organize the convention properly. Additionally, Dawson claims that all the revenues from ticket sales for the event were being held by the ticketing startup Veeps and that Weist is responsible for compensating attendees.

Search Interest

External References