People act friendly at cons only to put 0 effort into keeping contact and it repeats the next con over and over.
Hello,
Please keep in mind this is just my personal experience, and I don't want this to be a negative post, im genuinely looking for advice on how I could improve my experience or people with similar experiences :3
I'm 24yo, been lurking the fandom since I was a teen.
In the last 3 years I've decided to finally jump in, made a fursona, started going to events in my country and abroad, fursuited, even helped to organise some smaller cons. Basically I tried a little bit of everything the fandom has to offer.
I'm a pretty extroverted person, outside of the fandom I go to clubs/discos pretty often and have a lot of "normie" hobbies, I can say I'm quite the party animal.
What I've started noticing the more I go to cons, is this pattern where I meet someone either by myself or thanks to some other friends, we hang out at the con, maybe get a little intimate (don't look at me like that, it happens sometimes!) and for the whole convention it's all good and fun, then when the event ends nobody tries to keep in touch.
I do my best to text the people I've met a few days after the con to send pictures I've taken of us and thank them for the fun we had as a way to be polite and friendly, but nobody seems to do the same thing ever, literally I've never received it first.
Then I go to the next event, meet the same people, we have fun, and the same happens once the event is over.
I've had people come to my room to talk about some deep personal mental health issues for a couple of hours, then don't text me when they're visiting the city I live in, I've had people wanting to get intimate with me, having deep talks before and after the fact, and then putting in 0 effort to organise or declining last minute a hangout that was organised a week before, I've had a bunch of singular people I've met organise multiple hangouts and never consider inviting me, even if during cons they keep wanting to organise parties and whatnot.
I'm not sure if this is more of a general thing with people or a personal issue, I feel like cons are a great way to meet people, but what's the point of making friends you'll only see a few days a year even if they live 1-2 hours away from you, personally it just discourages me from even trying to make new connections.
Don't get me wrong, I've made a few (3) actual deep friendships through the fandom, but I feel like the majority of people I've met either lack the skills or don't want to put any effort into maintaining friendships.
Personally speaking, I went from "omg I can meet so many people and make so many friends" to what I just described happening so often that I kinda lost my drive for events. These type of "occasional" friendship hurt me mentally because I feel the need of having a real connection with people
Anyone else had a similar experience?