Discover Top Posts Tagged with #mcc2014

The moments in life in which you feel comfortable, and dare I say a little proud of oneself, are usually few and far between. Nevertheless, this is one of those moments. Accepting the Global Generation Award from the Millennium Campus Network. #notquiteflawlessbutcloseenough Note: I'll post the images from my recent travels this week, now that I am feeling better.

#mcc2014 #mbadika #netia mccray

Hey! A lot of people have been vaguely talking about some things having gone wrong on the first day of Misha's appearance at ComicCon Russia and he even told the audience on the second day to stop apologizing. Since you posted about it too, I thought I'd ask you what this is all about, because I honestly don't even know the least bit what happened! I'm sorry if this is too sensitive a subject, I'm just really curious.

I wasn't there obviously but I followed it in realtime on Twitter and tumblr (what better way to spend a weekend?). It seems like Misha had a wonderful time in Moscow, and the fans turned up by the thousands to see him. Yes, specifically him, because he was the headline star of the first ever Moscow Comic Con. There was a game convention going on simultaneously at the same venue, and the organizers (out of incompetence and/or greed) made a number of mistakes. They apparently sold as many tickets as they could without regard for how many people the venue could actually hold. They flubbed up the distribution of wristbands for autographs and photo ops. There was no age limit, so young children were present. And they held Misha's panel in a large concert-type hall with no seating, and with inadequate crowd control measures. When Misha came on stage for his Saturday panel, a number of fans were over-excited and there was some crowd pushing (and I think some heat exhaustion as well). Some people were pushed to the floor and a few got hurt, though no serious injuries have been confirmed afaik. Organizers and Misha tried to calm the crowd from the stage, but to no avail, so Misha, extremely worried that people were getting injured, left the stage 15 minutes into his 45-minute panel. Because the situation was quite dangerous and people would not calm down as long as he was there.

Tags like #WereSorryMisha immediately began to appear on Twitter. Where Misha-related tags trended in Russia the entire weekend, by the way. He is HUGE in Russia and I'm glad he got to see that for himself. He even commented in his Sunday panel that he knew there were a lot of fans in Russia, but he had no idea it was this many!

Fortunately he had a panel scheduled for Sunday as well, and that one went a lot better. He started that one by reassuring the audience "Everyone is saying We're so sorry, yesterday was so awful... No, yesterday was amazing. We're having a great time, we're so happy to be here!"

Some people accused the fans at the con of behaving badly. Personally I put the blame on the organizers. Crowd pushing is a phenomenon where a person can be literally crushed to death at one end of a large crowded space, while people at the other end have no inkling that they are causing this by lighly pushing against the people in front of them. The pushing travels through the crowd like a sound wave and gets magnified, and when it reaches an immovable barrier, the poor people closest to it get crushed and suffocated against it. It's the organizers' responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen. The people in the crowd are pretty helpless to stop it.

#misha collins #mcc2014 #mishamania in moscow #anyone with more information is welcome to add to this #Anonymous