TanaCon

The 2018 TanaCon event was created when Tana Mongeau worked with a convention organization company called "Good Times". It was largely criticized due to the lack of preparation for the event and the lack of space. Hundreds of people, some with the thought that entering would be free, and that anyone would be allowed to enter, swarmed the Marriott Hotel to try to meet a creator and/or attend the event. The crowd extended to the parking lot of the Marriott; the Marriott did not have a capacity suitable enough for a convention with more than 1,000 attendees, as that exceeds the official capacity of the building. This caused the event to be cancelled early the next day. Multiple sources and multiple online videos and documentaries discussing the event were released, and so were attendees' accounts. A police statement addressing the large crowd size from the Garden Grove Police Department, a police department in a nearby town, was released.

The online Shane Dawson documentary concerning the event, which covers multiple people's perspectives of the event and speculates about the event, released in 2018, won a Streamy Award for Documentary in October 2018.

## Background

In one of her videos, she said that she did not want to be hindered on meeting her fans, and that she deserved to be a featured creator. During one event that she was at, she stated that at the end of a panel she was in, she wanted to go to her room. Because she was not a featured creator, she could not go behind the stage and go back into her room, so she had to walk through the crowd, and she was pulled over by security and told that she was "a security and fire hazard".  Because of this, and other incidents, she wanted to make an alternative to VidCon, on the premise that everyone is a featured creator.

* *"I think...all of the rebelled people...and all of the unwanted people...should host a little meet-and-greet in Anaheim, California, on the same days as VidCon. ...I'd love to do it." -* Tana Mongeau on her "Why I Won't Be Attending Vidcon 2018: A Rant" video

Before the event, Devin Corwin made a video about Good Times and talking about his experiences with the company, saying that everything, in his experience, was unorganized, and commenters said that his experiences made Good Times feel "shady". He stated that Good Times supposedly did not pay for his hotel room on a tour, and discussed all the problems and incidents that followed that event.

The event was announced on Twitter. Fans and others praised Tana for creating a convention like it, and people showed their excitement over twitter, and people who were invited, of course, also praised the plan.

## 2018 TanaCon event

### Date

June 22-23, 2018(Not held on June 23, see Status)

### Performers

Potentially 80+ invited, including Shane Dawson, Miranda Sings, Casey Neistat

### Status

Cancelled on June 22

The 2018 TanaCon event took place in Anaheim, California, at the Anaheim Marriott Suites, on June 22, 2018 (planned for June 22-23, 2018), and was cancelled the same day. People complained that the event was supposed to have food and water. No water was supplied and people were reported to have major sunburns-some people passed out because of the heat on that day. Tana estimated that over 15,000 fans showed up, but a Garden Grove police statement said that there were only aprx. 4500-5000 people, at most, waiting at the convention. The Marriott stated that it could hold only up to 1000 people-according to that, about 4000 people were waiting outside. In contrast, Tana states that the Marriott could actually hold up to 3,192 people. There was no permit required for the event.

The "Featured Creator" ticket was free, but was probably changed to one dollar later on. The "Featured Fucking Creator" ticket was $65, and the "General Entry Ticket" was $45. During the event, Tana noted that most of the people that showed up were not ticketed (and not wearing a badge). In the convention, people with the "Featured Fucking Creator" pass received perks, such as a "Fast Pass" to meet specific creators and a gift bag that was apparently worth at least quadruple the ticket price, according to Tana, and the gift bag including, at least for one person, stickers, an Oevo app photo (as an advertisement), a wristband, a shopping guide, and a condom (stylized TanaCondom).

After the event on June 22, the event's duration was supposedly going to be extended and more space was going to be available for attendees the next day, however, when Mongeau held a security meeting and no agreement could be reached, the 2018 TanaCon was cancelled. The group that Tana partnered with, "Good Times", stated "(A)t this point in time there is no way to continue our weekend at TanaCon as is without risking the safety of this up to every single one of you."

### **Response**

   Multiple people criticized the event. The event received widespread media coverage, on the subject of a documentary and comedic videos making fun of the event and the lack of preparedness. "The Verge" said that fans were comparing it to Fyre Fest, and attendees were yelling out "REFUND!" after the event. Multiple YouTube channels recorded and responded to the event, including PewDiePie making a video criticizing the lack of preparedness, and other factors, and Tana interviewed Daniel Keem (Keemstar) of DramaAlert and said that they (Good Times) were looking for a bigger space, however, as mentioned before, it was completely cancelled. Channels started uploading videos of them telling their experiences at TanaCon, and using Tweets and videos as examples and evidence of what was happening on that day.

Tana contemplated on her Twitter:

* *"(M)y heart is shattered & (I'm) trying to pick up the pieces. (T)he sunburns, the money and time spent, people waiting outside, everything is so fucked up and (I) want to talk about it."*

Good Times started issuing refunds to those who got tickets from the event. In their statement on June 24, they said:

* "*The vision of TanaCon is to empower those who aspire to make a change in the entertainment industry. We are extremely proud of Tana and her determination to take a stand and use her voice, and we continue supporting her as she proceeds to pave the way for current and upcoming creators."*

Philip DeFranco stated that (as a personal note) "there are actually multiple people to be angry at; Tana is not the one that I'm most infuriated by."

The makers of the Oevo app, on June 28, said on 2 Tweets on Twitter:

* "*Tana[C}on was a total disaster & a big loss for us. Sorry to everyone that couldn’t meet us & get freebies! The Tana[C]on (Good Times) staff was rude & unorganized. We had little communication. No updates or refunds. We are so sorry for everything & hope you’re safe.*"

* "*(Good Times), we have tired to reach you & have had no response or REFUND for Tanacon. We will get our attorneys to file a lawsuit against your company & CEO (Michael Weist) for the losses incurred & for the people involved. Looks like twitter is the only way to reach you."*

On July 2, after all of *The Truth About TanaCon* was released, they released another statement in response of Weist:

* *"How about starting with refunding the sponsors & all the creators ASAP. As a Sponsor that paid thousands of $ we really don't appreciate being scammed. We have sent emails & messages with no response from you. We're trying not to involve the attorneys"*

On July 30, a month after the events, Tana uploaded a lengthy video documenting the backstory and story of the TanaCon event. Tana states that the capacity of the Marriott could hold up to 3192 people (with that, only ~1000 people would have been waiting outside). She accuses Michael Weist of being irresponsible, "he was 'cheers'ing champagne on a Segway running around...". She also states that the "bank statements that [Weist] sent me were fake" when she was discussing about him saying that he "was going bankrupt" on Shane's documentary.

### Shane Dawson Series

Shane Dawson made a 3-part series about the event, titled "The Truth About TanaCon," which includes Shane and others speculating the amount of people that attended, and questioning the company "Good Times"; the CEO, Michael Weist; and the whole convention itself. Shane was not the only one questioning the event, others compared the amount of people to a stadium with 20,000 people in it to see if the claim that 20,000 people attended was true. Shane noted that there was barely any, if at all, "Featured Creator" passes seen. Shane also felt bad that people went to the convention exclusively to meet him, and he felt that he didn't do a favor and meet them. In the series, Shane asked to interview Tana and the CEO of Good Times. Tana asked, "What do I have to do to...to fix it though with the people that bought tickets?"

Tana criticized Good Times and said that she should have done more research. She said that she was lied to by the CEO of Good Times about venue and capacity sizes, and the CEO got people from the Anaheim Marriott to lie to her about that. She stated that the CEO flew home right after the event and "left all of us here (in Anaheim); without transportation back to LA."

After the third part of the series, it was revealed that Tana had knowledge of the crowd size and the amount of tickets they sold. In the beginning, when Shane shows footage Weist's crew has recorded, and the crew is discussing where the convention will be held and how it will work out, Tana states:

* *"People love to be oppressed [...]"*

The series won a Streamy Award for Documentary in 2018.

#### Michael Weist

Michael Weist started his career as a high school student, according to Shane's documentary.

One time, Bryce Hall tweeted "managers who touch their clients in ways they don’t wanna be touched hide the truth by hacking their twitter accounts." Earlier, his account was compromised, and his email was changed to "ta\*\*\*\*\*@go\*\*\*\*\*.live." Around 4 days before the announcement of the email of the hack, Michael Weist responded with "This past week, there have been several false, defamatory and vile accusations about me made via social media. Although these horrible statements were made by those who I worked closely with over the past two years, legal action must be taken to prevent further harm. I regret the negativity that has ensued, and hope that this will be resolved in the near future." In at least one article, posted a day before he showed the email address of the person who potentially compromised his account, it said it was "false" and "Michael might be pursuing legal action." After the tweet potentially accusing Michael Weist of sexual assault, Bryce said "oops didn't meet to tweet that." However, when asked about it later, if he made something up, he said that "tf would I do that for... why would I make such a cruel thing up?"

All of the accounts of sexual assault are unconfirmed. However, after the TanaCon event, the allegations were brought up again, and Tana responded to one tweet concerning it with "excuse me what." One other tweet alleging this said that "(he) harassed me and almost beat me on (canon) camera ; yelling the names 'slut, pussy, and bitch at me while I'm having a panic attack. he then followed me to an elevator and videoed me on his phone crying. his talents watched him do that and he took them for pizza after."

It seems that Weist actually did proceed with legal action, as a letter tweeted from Good Times saying the dispute was settled has in the headline, "RE: Case NO.: SC 128372".

During Shane Dawson's documentary series about the event, when Shane texted him for an interview, he responded with "I'm so sad. I invested every penny in this, to make this work. I'm gonna lose my house over this."

During Part 2 of Shane Dawson's documentary, Michael stated that he was also making a documentary, he had all the footage, and he thought it was going to be "emotional and awesome," creating suspicions that Good Times could have wanted this to fail to get promotion. Another theory in his series was that they oversold tickets and wanted to make money to try to refund. After the event, multiple people were saying that the whole thing was a scam, and they "scammed people out of their time, their money, ...stole things from people." Weist released his documentary on YouTube on November 5, 2018.

Tana stated that her videographer was filming things for her youtube channel, however, Tana states that the CEO's videographer approached her videographer and said "everything you film is ours. We own it. We will do everything to get it. You can't have any of your footage....its for our documentary..." Tana stated "All of these influencers that Michael manages...like [redacted] and [redacted]...like big, big influencers...came up to me and they were like...'We knew this was going to fail from the beginning.' ...but that they were too afraid of him to tell me before." Tana said that it was still her fault, however.

Shane interviewed Weist on FaceTime and Weist said that the Marriott told him that it would hold ~4,000 people and they were looking for litigation against the Marriott. Shane told him that security was minuscule, and that list of people who RSVP'd for his meet-and-greet was inaccurate, and there wasn't multiple lines, and most of the facts that they provided were lies. Wiest said that he wanted this event to succeed, and spent most or all of his money, and he believed in every possibility that "we could do this," and Tana's vision would be a success. He said that "I was going to lose...everything over this." He said that "this was ruining (his) relationships with people (he) worked with for years." He said that Tana was irresponsible: she was at some other location in perhaps the most important time.

On October 2018, Weist announced on Twitter that he filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection for his company Good Times LLC (the company that hosted the TanaCon event), and stated that he would eventually release a documentary for the events that happened in TanaCon "this week" (the Tweet was posted on October 29). In a reply to one of Tana's tweets, he posted a poster for the TanaCon documentary. A person replied to his tweet and stated their opinion that "You had your chance to tell everything with Shane and instead you sat on your phone and vaped," referring to his actions on *The Truth about TanaCon*. Tana concurred, and stated that "using footage of everyone that [you] have no right to use to try and make people pay for ur streaming platform … is just weird and bad". Weist replied to the tweets, stating that "This (referring to the documentary) will be completely free. People need to see the truth. They need to see the footage."

## Tanacon bag contents

* Peta2 stickers
* Wristband
* Phone grip
* Landyard
* Oveo app photo
* Badge
* Tanacondom

## List of events planned for the 2018 TanaCon event

1. ↑ https://twitter.com/OEVOapp/status/1010657239072292864
2. ↑ https://twitter.com/OEVOapp/status/1012482398787948545
3. ↑ https://twitter.com/OEVOapp/status/1013904120204406789
4. ↑ https://twitter.com/streamys/status/1054550556348317696
5. ↑ https://twitter.com/TheMichaelWeist/status/1024449788807442432
6. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VJHlds0hiE
7. ↑ https://twitter.com/loyaltyshane/status/1056958542656098304
8. ↑ https://twitter.com/tanamongeau/status/1056992130609045504
9. ↑ https://twitter.com/TheMichaelWeist/status/1056993225939017729