A negative comment about a party at Arisia

[xiphias]

Far as I'm concerned, you can EITHER have an invite-only party OR you can advertise your party.

But it's FUCKING RUDE to advertise your invite-only party.

Don't mind invite-only parties. Don't even mind invite-only parties who, apparently, were going around handing out invites only to women who were dressed slutty. Heck, if someone took that to the extreme, and walked around the con handing out slips of paper which said, "You're sexy. Come to my room at 11 pm," that wouldn't bother me. And if he or she got people to show up, more power to him or her.

DO mind people who do that and also put posters up in the stairwells advertising their party. It's fucking RUDE to do that, then set up a velvet rope outside, and do the "club" thing. Dunno about you, but I go to cons to get away from that kind of dynamic.

Yes, I'm pissed off at not being pretty enough to get into that party.

Comments

[quietann.livejournal.com]

yep and yep. Plus, if a party's serving alcohol, it *can't* be open-invite, it can't be advertised with posters, etc. The Arisia policies on this are pretty clear. Closed parties can invite/exclude whoever they want to based on whatever criteria.

This year, the con staff were so busy fighting other fires that this one party didn't get shut down.

[dda.livejournal.com]

I certainly don't recall any con policy about which parties can and cannot be advertised. You'll note that there was no room number given on that poster, too.

Of course, I wasn't the party czar, but I don't think it should have been shut down, either.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

It wasn't, that I know of, nor do I think it should have been.

[liscarey.livejournal.com]

They didn't necessarily need to be shut down. It likely would have been far more useful to point out the posters vs. closed problem, and encourage them to a)pull down the posters and be clearer in their at-the-door message to people being turned away, and b)Don't Do It That Way Again Next Year.

It sounds like the party hosts are thinking about b) now anyway, as a result of the discussion here and on Lis's blog. Which, in turn, suggests that, had anyone from the concom been able to do this early on, on the evening of the party, it would have gotten as useful a response as was practical to implement at that point. (I.e., they may not have been able to get all the posters, and they couldn't cause them to be unseen by the people who'd already seen them, but substantially reducing the number of posters and the opportunity to see them would have reduced the number of people who went looking for this "open" party, only to discover the restrictions at the door.)