MAGFest 19

I didn't go.

Staff members were given the option to defer their badge to 2023, I took that option.

Even if the option hadn't existed, I still wouldn't have gone.  Between the completely toxic response I got when I raised a question about their covid policy, and general weariness about it getting worse in the winter anyway, I still would have stayed home.

The covid policy seemed extremely specific in spots, to the point of being police state-like.  My question had to do with why copies of vaccine cards weren't being accepted as proof of vaccination.  My Vaccination Station™ advised me to make a copy and keep the original in a safe place, so requiring people to bring the originals seemed a bit odd.  The reaction I got was "OMG WHY DONT YOU WANT TO PROVE YOU'RE VACCINATED", "Do you not carry your driver's license and credit/debit card with you as well?", and "You can get the original damaged and destroyed all you want because you can just get a replacement!".

To knock those down one by one:

1. I never said I didn't want to provide proof of vaccination, I simply disagreed with copies being considered invalid for proof.  Way to read between the lines.
2. Driver's licenses and credit/debit cards are designed to be carried with you everywhere you go.  They're sized properly to fit in a wallet, and they're made out of a durable plastic.  To contrast, the vaccine cards are simply made out of slightly thicker paper which damages easily, and aren't sized to fit in a wallet.  One response included the Social Security card in that, which I didn't even deem worthy of a response because you aren't supposed to carry those with you.  You're supposed to keep them in a safe place, just like the vaccine card.
3. I value my possessions; I take care of my shit.  It follows that I don't subscribe to this culture of "because replacements exist it's okay to damage or destroy the original".  People were suggesting that I order some 3D-printed "holder" for it from one or another website, but that seems overkill when I'm only going to need to present it once and then it goes back in my pile of belongings in my hotel room for the rest of the weekend.

One contributing factor I didn't bring up: An alternate form of proof was a QR code, supplied by your state.  When this covid policy was released, the "great" state of Virginia wasn't offering QR codes.  I looked up my info and all I was able to get was a PDF.  A week or so later, QR codes were added.

Even outside of that, the mask policy was ridiculous.  It was incredibly specific about types of masks that were and were not permitted; in combination with the proof of vaccination policy it just made me feel like no matter what I brought with me, they'd find some nit-picky reason to turn me away at the door.  The covid policy was now fully anxiety-inducing, so I refrained from going.

The kicker: at the bottom of it was the line "don't give us sass", suggesting you'd be banned if you did.  No definition of "sass" was provided, so all I can assume is that it would be creatively interpreted to mean whatever they needed it to mean, which would most likely be "don't disagree with us".  MAGFest is run by SJWs these days and SJWs don't tolerate any form of dissent (while claiming to be anti-fascist lol), so... it fits.

If the situation has improved before 2023 and they don't find this post and ban me, I'll think about going to MAGFest 20.

Also, calculating the MAGFest number from the year is now year - 2003.  A while ago they naïvely traded one form of sequential numbering for another while declaring that "sequential numbering is confusing", which makes no goddamn sense to me.