Furry Convention Drama - Because you can't have a couple thousand dog fucking enthusiasts under the same roof without shit hitting the fan

[Pinball 2000]

I was in the CCFC Chat as all this shit happened and know of quite a few vendors personally who attended and HOLY SHIT. It was a mess. I'll recap a few things I do remember and this is going through their halfassed "Feedback Chat" that some admins left and I still have access to. I'll work on screenshotting the best bits and uploading them here soon.

Spoiler: LONG LIST OF SHIT

1. CCFC Owed 5k to the hotel on one of the first few days, publicly announced it and was begging for donations. Oble (Dealers Den Head) Went around asking for donations from the sellers of up to half of what they sold total. She proceeded to do this for the rest of the con weekend.
2. Oble wandered around the dealers den with no shoes or socks, completely barefoot, bragging about her sales to all the other vendors and harassing them for donations for CCFC.
3. CCFC had so many GOHs their first year even the staff didnt know all of them. Twilightsaint made an announcement on their instagram days before the con and was never announced prior. Con staff claim that they wanted to do a "surprise" GOH.
4. Supposedly someone actually paid the 5k debt (Which was actually way higher than just 5k but the staff needed the 5k immediately to even continue the con) the con had, not just restructured the hotel's contract. My bets on TwilightSaint but I can't say.. Even the former staff I spoke to at the time wasnt allowed to say due to contract or some shit.
5. CCFC staff defended their GOH list stating it would bring in more attendees. Which it obviously didnt.
6. Con was born out of no where with only a year to plan everything. It was all rushed.
7. Con staff RAZETH claims that all first year cons are in debt. Attendees and staff of other cons state otherwise.
8. Schedules were changed at random, including displayed as every panel starting and ending at 4:30 am for most the first day. Staff couldn't answer any questions related to that.
9. Staff Member Tripp made a statement that the overlapping event had armed guards that would shoot if needed.
10. Some attendees asked for refunds before the event and weren't being paid back at all.
11. Staff member Loveless releases confidential information.
12. Planned Con in mere months. Supposedly a tweet stating they were looking at hotels and a week-month later had a contract.
13. Bad dates. Same time as MAGfest. Locals had no idea about this convention. Staff invited people off Howlr to attend. Lol.
14. Staff application forms made on jotform and were very vague.
15. Mascot of CCFC (Bean) Is literally someones fursona. Nitro claims that Bean is "Not officially a mascot"
16. Oble didn't care about the dealer list and let known scammers vend. She has a beware on her and etsy reviews are shit. Put herself right by the doors to increase her foot traffic and shit talk other vendors.
17. Some Staff members were supposedly alt-right. No evidence of such but local groups banned them. Staff Member Sharky was banned for "unprofessional conduct on duty"... Supposedly a dick sucking contest and drinking on the clock.
18. According to Tripp, no staff meetings were held, or they were at random.
19. Oble is only allowed to leave staff if she signs a confidentiality contract. In other words, she can release personal information of all vendors and still be on staff because she didnt step down and sign their contract. Sounds like something youd have them sign... before being staff.. dont you think?
20. According to Abzu, Oble has credit card info, addresses, names, tax forms and other sensitive info about every dealer. They have a history with Oble and don't trust her to keep it quiet. She also tried to sell her crap to other vendors.
21. Odin wolf, public murrsuiter, is GOH. Even the staff didnt want to announce him. Odin joins the Feedback chat and gives the "Its not fair. I did that so long ago. Ive fought against people seeing me as that for so long now. Waah" speech. Everyone was over his shit.
22. No one had any idea about parking. 6 different things were pinned and told to attendees and everyone was confused all weekend.

And the chat was closed soon after that. Open for about 3 days total before closed. I'll go through and screencap when I have spare time.

If you still have access to the telegram chat, there's a feature from the desktop app that allows you to export an entire chat, including the media. It might be worth making a copy of it just in case.




EDIT: One of the (former) CCFC staff caught wind of the thread:


I believe Tripp handled social media and promotion for CCFC. I'm giving thought to reaching out and seeing what he has to say. Is there anything we'd like to ask him that wasn't already brought up by me or LurkerDog?

 

[Greywolf]

I thought that disgusting hotel thing was 2018?
View attachment 1292049
Archive

Someone posted this earlier in here I think but yeah holy fuck. What a wreck.

Edit: Oh, here's a couple more tweets for the trashfire
View attachment 1292064
View attachment 1292065
Archive

Funny thing is, shite hotels are kind of a thing for furry cons. ConFuzzled's certainly had its share, the Hinckley Island had mould growing on the window frames, a bunch wouldn't open.
Their venue before was the Britannia Country House in Manchester. If you know UK hotel chains, Britannia is all I need to say! Place was a tip. Carpet was *done*, holes in the wall covered with paintings, ceiling tiles falling on people... most of that hotel's takings are from renting it to the justice dept as a bail hostel.

Diaperfurs on constaff is a hell of a trope, geez I've worked a bunch and all but one had a huge number of pants-shitters in the top levels of the org chart. You can't say shit about it or you're forced out or called "intolerant".

I think nowadays even furries realize that fracturing an existing convention is a bad idea. So a lot of them just "go with it" for the sake of just being convention staff at all at the end of the day. I don't get the allure (I wouldn't volunteer to be staff in any convention, much less a furry one) but these guys seem to get a kick out of it. Maybe they get some perks we're not aware of.

Usually the goal is to get into an oversubscribed con by staffing a different con. NFC, EF and CFZ all have reciprocal agreements for eath other's staff. Get a staff or crew badge for one, you get to register for the other too well in advance of the great unwashed furfaggery. Power level but if you don't want to piss away an evening hitting F5...

I think we would have heard a lot of drama about conventions using funds to buy art to their staff members (particularly directors and whatnot) instead of investing everything into the con itself if that was the case.

Nah they buy fursuits instead.

orig: https://twitter.com/furison/status/688326970711666688
arc: http://archive.md/fYhJA

this con needs jesus, y'all:

orig: https://twitter.com/CFzLive/status/1132570604132028416
arc: http://archive.md/T81MI

CFzlive is gold for cfz drama. Hell it's their own account... Con hashtags are good for a sperg spelunk too. #CFz2012, #CFz2013, you get the idea.

 

[D.Va]

Their venue before was the Britannia Country House in Manchester. If you know UK hotel chains, Britannia is all I need to say! Place was a tip. Carpet was *done*, holes in the wall covered with paintings, ceiling tiles falling on people... most of that hotel's takings are from renting it to the justice dept as a bail hostel.

Yeah that sounds like the Britannia chain alright. All their hotels are old 19th/early 20th century builds they spend as little as possible maintaining

I don't think it's been brought up in this thread, but there are several rumours of nepotism between CFz and EF when it comes to hotel bookings. I remember last year, EF's second/third tier hotel rooms were mysteriously sold out a couple days before hotel registration opened (it supposedly went to all the EF/CFz con staff).

 

[LurkerDog]

If you still have access to the telegram chat, there's a feature from the desktop app that allows you to export an entire chat, including the media. It might be worth making a copy of it just in case.




EDIT: One of the (former) CCFC staff caught wind of the thread:
View attachment 1309189

I believe Tripp handled social media and promotion for CCFC. I'm giving thought to reaching out and seeing what he has to say. Is there anything we'd like to ask him that wasn't already brought up by me or LurkerDog?

I'll export it immediately. I dont think there is anything we haven't covered, but may be a good idea to reach out? He may have more insight. As I remember in that "feedback" chat, he was banned from the local meets and/or the convention.

 

[Greywolf]

I don't think it's been brought up in this thread, but there are several rumours of nepotism between CFz and EF when it comes to hotel bookings. I remember last year, EF's second/third tier hotel rooms were mysteriously sold out a couple days before hotel registration opened (it supposedly went to all the EF/CFz con staff).

That'd be funny. EF and CFz used to share security staff. There was a big bustup and the "EuroConSecurity" project went boom in a big way. The staff sharing pretty much ended. TaniDaReal, Cheetah et al haven't been seen at ConFuzzled since 2014, maybe 2015.

If there's nepotism going on, it's pretty one sided.

The reciprocal agreement is between CFz, EF and NFC -- if all the NFC and CFz staff went, that'd eat up a lot of EF's room block.

 

[Pinball 2000]

Since Tripp showed interest in talking about the drama behind CCFC, I decided to reach out to him. After some back and forth conversation, Tripp was willing to introduce me to a few other people who were familiar with the event. This culminated in a discord call where they agreed to answer any questions that were brought up, so I asked them about every point that me and LurkerDog previously posted in the thread.

The chat consisted of four people altogether:
-Me
-Tripp, who handled social media and promotion for CCFC.
-Lifty, who was the original social media/promotion for CCFC. He’s done similar work for numerous conventions, most notably BronyCon. Ended up quitting around December 2019 and being replaced by Tripp.
-Sylox, who attended the event and was familiar with several of the staff. Also roomed with Sharky, the staff member who was later banned from CCFC.

Needless to say, it was a two-hour call of some of the most entertaining drama I've heard in years. I’m going to summarize it via multiple spoilers below because there’s a lot of fucking drama around the event, as well as Nitro, the CCFC's chairman.

Spoiler: CCFC Pre-planning (or lack of it)

-CCFC was founded by Nitro, a furry who apparently has an iffy reputation among the local furs. His only prior experience with conventions was working at a furry event in Ohio. Several people allege he stole $4,000 in donations from them but I don’t have any concrete evidence of this.
-Nitro handled all of the social media himself from when it was first announced in March 2019, up until August when Lifty was brought on.
-Lifty claims he got involved because he was friends with Nitro at the time and had done similar work in the past. He just finished up his remaining work for the final Bronycon shortly being offered the CCFC position.
-Nitro organized this entire event with less than 9 months of prep work from the original conception.
-They chose the same weekend as MAGfest because it was the only 4-day weekend the hotel didn’t have booked for another event within the next few months.
-Lifty claims that while he had access to the CCFC twitter, Nitro was spamming the DMs of literally every moderately popular furry he could think of asking if they’d like to be guests of honor. No seriously, he DM’d like 50+ furries a day for a week straight. That’s how they recruited every single one of their guests.
-None of the staff had any idea Nitro continued to invite guests of honor well after announcing the guests. He claimed “surprise” guests would draw in more attendees, even after the other staff told him that was fucking stupid.
-None of the staff has known that Uncle Kage was even invited until Nitro announced it as a “surprise guest”. When invited, Kage basically said, “why the hell not, I got nothing better to do that weekend anyways”.
-Lifty protested Odin Wolf being prominently featured in advertisements for CCFC due to Odin making murrsuiting videos in the past and that would reflect poorly on the con, but Nitro didn’t seem to care and gave the same “he used to do it but he doesn’t do it anymore so don’t judge him” argument Odin later made in the feedback chat.
-Nitro also used the shared CCFC twitter to follow a shitload of murrsuiters and AD accounts and yelled at Lifty when he unfollowed most of them and told Nitro how unprofessional that looked.
-Lifty finally quit early December (about a month before CCFC) after being fed up with Nitro constantly making decisions without consulting the rest of the staff.
-Tripp claims that Nitro was so desperate to hang out with other furs that he literally drove two hours to Tripp’s place after briefly chatting with him online once. While they were hanging out, Lifty calls Nitro and announces he’s quitting, argues with Nitro for a bit, and within a moment of the call ending, Nitro asks Tripp “hey do you want this position that just opened up?”
-Tripp admits he really only accepted because Nitro was his (kind-of) friend and he thought it would be a good hands-on experience for a future job (he’s currently in college)
-The online staff applications were really vague and Nitro never advertised the positions he was looking for. He also accepted volunteer applications with the exact same form and nobody was able to figure out what people were applying for.
-Nitro had this idea where every year of the convention, there’d be two mascots; some teal deer character I can’t remember the name of offhand, and a second brand new one that would only be used for that year. For 2020, he picked Bean and literally used convention money to commission a full fursuit of Bean for someone else to wear at the con. No suit of the teal deer is known to exist (or even be commissioned), and the guy who wore the Bean suit was told he gets to keep it since it won’t be used for 2021.
-Nitro has repeatedly claimed that Bean is "not officially a mascot" despite the character featuring prominently on CCFC 2020 merchandise.
-Nitro invited random furries he hooked up with on Howlr (Furry Tinder) to CCFC. No idea how many actually took him up on the offer but even his staff told him that idea was fucking stupid.

Spoiler: Convention time!

-The total number of staff they physically had at the hotel to run the entire event? Exactly 15 people. Tripp said pretty much everyone was overworked.
-The previous event at the hotel involved several state politicians. Tripp confirms he was asked to warn people not to suit until the event was over as armed guards were present and they didn’t want to risk someone getting hurt.
-CCFC was originally advertised as a 4-day event (Thursday to Sunday), but the overlapping political event caused all the Thursday events to be rescheduled (with the exception of the dance). Someone changed the schedule last minute to try to put the events back in, but fucked up royally and caused every Friday event on the hotel’s schedules to be listed at 4:30 am. No idea what events actually happened (if any). Several of discussion panels still happened, albeit without a host because the planned ones never showed up.
-CCFC had owed roughly $15K to the hotel that was supposed to be paid prior to the event. Nitro ignored this debt until hours before the con started, and was somehow able to convince the hotel to not shut down the event by scrambling with $5K with the promise the remaining would be paid post-con. Nitro literally got some random fursuiter to run around with a bucket soliciting donations.
-Those same furries would later be running around with buckets collecting money for The ALS Association (CCFC’s charity), raising confusion as to where the money went.
-Nitro repeatedly pressured Tripp to donate money from his personal savings to save the con, claiming it would make Tripp the “savior” for CCFC. Even after they hit the $5K goal. Tripp claims it was money that was set aside for school.
-The $5K was eventually obtained sometime on Thursday evening and the con is allowed to continue. Most of the con-goers had no knowledge that any of this was going on other than the buckets.
-The numerous claims brought up about Oble (Dealers Den head) being unprofessional, asking dealers for donations to keep the con running, prancing around barefoot, loudly shit-talking others, running her own booth in the den, and just being a difficult person? All true. Tripp had to field tons of complaints regarding her behavior at the event. Nitro refused to do anything about it or talk to her.
-Tripp confirms that none of the staff are publicly alt-right. He and Lifty also went into detail about Sharky’s CCFC ban; he was the head of security and was drinking heavily on the job, and while drinking he ignored a call for someone having a medical emergency (which was fortunately resolved by an EMT furry who happened to be there before it got worse).
-Tripp confirms that next to no staff meetings were held.
-The claim that Sharky started a “dick sucking contest”? Also true. He put up a sign on the front of the Con Ops doors saying something like “Dick sucking contest inquire within” while drunk as shit in Con Ops. Nitro made one of the only non-moronic decisions of CCFC by banning him over this.
-At some point, Loveless (staff) posted some confidential information in the feedback chat. Nitro claims it’s not a big deal as Loveless never signed any sort of non-disclosure. Tripp reveals the NONE of the staff were asked to sign any sort of non-disclosure of any kind, meaning that they could freely talk or share almost anything about the con. This includes Oble, who may or may not still have access to personal information from most of the dealers.
-Tripp’s birthday happened during CCFC, so during the guest of honor dinner, someone brought him cake and Oble, apropos of nothing, grabbed a chunk of it and smashed it in Tripp’s face. Several people commented on how insanely inappropriate it was for Oble to do that at a formal dinner event with someone she barely knew, but she didn’t care.

Spoiler: Post-CCFC

-The final number of people who attended was alleged to be around 380-400 people. Nitro claims that was his minimum goal. Yay?
-Tripp alleges that most of the staff were stuck paying for their rooms (they were supposed to be comped) and at least one guest of honor wasn’t compensated.
-People who pre-paid for a badge but ultimately didn’t attend were never refunded.
-Nitro immediately stepped down from his chairman position (making himself president) and announced that the new chairman was a DJ who played at one of the dances. About two days later, the DJ steps down as chairman and leaves, specifically noting the “toxic work environment”. Tripp claimed it was because of an argument regarding Sharky’s CCFC ban and Sharky was extremely adamant about coming back (Sharky was still allowed access to staff discussions for some reason).
-Most American conventions are labeled as a 501 nonprofit organization, but Lifty can’t find any evidence that CCFC was registered as one, let alone registered as anything.
-None of the staff can verify how much money was raised for the charity (suspected around $2K-3K) and nobody can find any evidence that anything was donated to the ALS foundation (CCFC’s supposed charity).
-Nitro still has a ton of unsold CCFC merch and the merch website has been in a perpetual “50% off flash sale” mode for the last 3 months. Nitro has since gained a reputation for constantly shilling the sale merch store in random furry telegram chats.
-One small positive; nearly all of the feedback from the convention attendees was very positive. Most of the people who weren’t involved with any of the staff or volunteers said they had a good time. A surprising number of kids attended it as their first furcon and said it was a good experience.
-The hotel was eventually paid back the outstanding amount, and Nitro expressed interest in doing a 2021 event. He signed a multi-year contract with the hotel, but it’s unknown if the hotel will be keen on letting them return.

Spoiler: #BlameNitro and closing summary

Nitro’s attempt at deflecting any criticism over himself or how poorly CCFC was planned is by claiming that “Blaming Nitro” is a meme. So if anything goes wrong, you totally should blame him, you guys! He even went so far as to get #BlameNitro merchandise made in time for CCFC (that nobody bought, lol). He had 200 “commemorative” ribbons made for two dollars each, and as of this writing, all 200 are still in stock on the CCFC merch page.

All three people I talked with have since cut ties completely with Nitro, and they all state that Nitro is the textbook definition of a clout-chaser. He’s constantly trying to align himself with furries more popular than him and offering expensive gifts or guests of honor spots to anyone who he thinks he can use for his benefit. He allegedly told Tripp that he hopes people will see CCFC as “his” convention in a way that people associate Kage with Anthrocon or Dragoneer with FA.
If any furries in or near Pennsylvania are reading this, do yourself a favor and stay as far away from Nitro as possible. Associating with Nitro or CCFC is entirely at the risk of your personal reputation and bank account.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

Funny thing is, shite hotels are kind of a thing for furry cons. ConFuzzled's certainly had its share, the Hinckley Island had mould growing on the window frames, a bunch wouldn't open.
Their venue before was the Britannia Country House in Manchester. If you know UK hotel chains, Britannia is all I need to say! Place was a tip. Carpet was *done*, holes in the wall covered with paintings, ceiling tiles falling on people... most of that hotel's takings are from renting it to the justice dept as a bail hostel.

Diaperfurs on constaff is a hell of a trope, geez I've worked a bunch and all but one had a huge number of pants-shitters in the top levels of the org chart. You can't say shit about it or you're forced out or called "intolerant".



Usually the goal is to get into an oversubscribed con by staffing a different con. NFC, EF and CFZ all have reciprocal agreements for eath other's staff. Get a staff or crew badge for one, you get to register for the other too well in advance of the great unwashed furfaggery. Power level but if you don't want to piss away an evening hitting F5...



Nah they buy fursuits instead.

View attachment 1309242
orig: https://twitter.com/furison/status/688326970711666688
arc: http://archive.md/fYhJA

this con needs jesus, y'all:

View attachment 1309244
orig: https://twitter.com/CFzLive/status/1132570604132028416
arc: http://archive.md/T81MI

CFzlive is gold for cfz drama. Hell it's their own account... Con hashtags are good for a sperg spelunk too. #CFz2012, #CFz2013, you get the idea.

Imagine being such a shitty edge lord that you throw a Bible out of a window.

 

[OccamsShaveClub]

Having been acquainted with Nitro for a mercifully short amount of time, absolutely none of what I'm reading about him surprises me at all. I met him through a friend of mine who, at the time, was close to him and was living with him. Shortly after that, he commissioned a local friend of mine for artwork which never got paid for, despite numerous messages which basically boiled down to "you'll get your damn money, just finish my sketch and send it to me". The local friend whom I mentioned was the one who was asked to design Bean (there wasn't much "design" involved since she wasn't able to give any input about the colors that were used), and from my understanding, she was lead to believe that Bean would be the only official mascot for the con, and nothing was brought up about having another official mascot until after the design was finalized.

Not much I can add other than a commission Nitro never paid for and bad design choices, but through the friend who introduced me to Nitro and my other friend who was involved in designing the would-be mascot, I did get to see just enough of the inner workings of the con to know that it was going to be a clusterfuck. I'm honestly surprised that it happened at all.

 

[Greywolf]

Imagine being such a shitty edge lord that you throw a Bible out of a window.

You assume they're trying to be edge lords... more often they're barely 18 and drunk on cheap beer and peer pressure.

Most of the people who weren’t involved with any of the staff or volunteers said they had a good time.

Literally the success barometer for con staff here. We fucked up but nobody noticed.

 

[LurkerDog]

Since Tripp showed interest in talking about the drama behind CCFC, I decided to reach out to him. After some back and forth conversation, Tripp was willing to introduce me to a few other people who were familiar with the event. This culminated in a discord call where they agreed to answer any questions that were brought up, so I asked them about every point that me and LurkerDog previously posted in the thread.

The chat consisted of four people altogether:
-Me
-Tripp, who handled social media and promotion for CCFC.
-Lifty, who was the original social media/promotion for CCFC. He’s done similar work for numerous conventions, most notably BronyCon. Ended up quitting around October 2019 and being replaced by Tripp.
-Sylox, who attended the event and was familiar with several of the staff. Also roomed with Sharky, the staff member who was later banned from CCFC.

Needless to say, it was a two-hour call of some of the most entertaining drama I've heard in years. I’m going to summarize it via multiple spoilers below because there’s a lot of fucking drama around the event, as well as Nitro, the CCFC's chairman.

Spoiler: CCFC Pre-planning (or lack of it)

-CCFC was founded by Nitro, a furry who apparently has an iffy reputation among the local furs. His only prior experience with conventions was working at a furry event in Ohio. Several people allege he stole $4,000 in donations from them but I don’t have any concrete evidence of this.
-Lifty was brought on around March 2019, which is also around the time all the social media accounts were made for the convention. He claims it was mostly because he was friends with Nitro at the time and had done similar work in the past.
-Nitro organized this entire event with less than 9 months of prep work from the original conception.
-They chose the same weekend as MAGfest because it was the only 4-day weekend the hotel didn’t have booked for another event within the next few months.
-Lifty claims that while he had access to the CCFC twitter, Nitro was spamming the DMs of literally every moderately popular furry he could think of asking if they’d like to be guests of honor. No seriously, he DM’d like 50+ furries a day for a week straight. That’s how they recruited every single one of their guests.
-None of the staff had any idea Nitro continued to invite guests of honor well after announcing the guests. He claimed “surprise” guests would draw in more attendees, even after the other staff told him that was fucking stupid.
-None of the staff has known that Uncle Kage was even invited until Nitro announced it as a “surprise guest”. When invited, Kage basically said, “why the hell not, I got nothing better to do that weekend anyways”.
-Lifty protested Odin Wolf being prominently featured in advertisements for CCFC due to Odin making murrsuiting videos in the past and that would reflect poorly on the con, but Nitro didn’t seem to care and gave the same “he used to do it but he doesn’t do it anymore so don’t judge him” argument Odin later made in the feedback chat.
-Nitro also used the shared CCFC twitter to follow a shitload of murrsuiters and AD accounts and yelled at Lifty when he unfollowed most of them and told Nitro how unprofessional that looked.
-Lifty finally quit around October after being fed up with Nitro constantly making decisions without consulting the rest of the staff.
-Tripp claims that Nitro was so desperate to hang out with other furs that he literally drove two hours to Tripp’s place after briefly chatting with him online once. While they were hanging out, Lifty calls Nitro and announces he’s quitting, argues with Nitro for a bit, and within a moment of the call ending, Nitro asks Tripp “hey do you want this position that just opened up?”
-Tripp admits he really only accepted because Nitro was his (kind-of) friend and he thought it would be a good hands-on experience for a future job (he’s currently in college)
-The online staff applications were really vague and Nitro never advertised the positions he was looking for. He also accepted volunteer applications with the exact same form and nobody was able to figure out what people were applying for.
-Nitro had this idea where every year of the convention, there’d be two mascots; some teal deer character I can’t remember the name of offhand, and a second brand new one that would only be used for that year. For 2020, he picked Bean and literally used convention money to commission a full fursuit of Bean for someone else to wear at the con. No suit of the teal deer is known to exist (or even be commissioned), and the guy who wore the Bean suit was told he gets to keep it since it won’t be used for 2021.
-Nitro has repeatedly claimed that Bean is "not officially a mascot" despite the character featuring prominently on CCFC 2020 merchandise.
-Nitro invited random furries he hooked up with on Howlr (Furry Tinder) to CCFC. No idea how many actually took him up on the offer but even his staff told him that idea was fucking stupid.

Spoiler: Convention time!

-The total number of staff they physically had at the hotel to run the entire event? Exactly 15 people. Tripp said pretty much everyone was overworked.
-The previous event at the hotel involved several state politicians. Tripp confirms he was asked to warn people not to suit until the event was over as armed guards were present and they didn’t want to risk someone getting hurt.
-CCFC was originally advertised as a 4-day event (Thursday to Sunday), but the overlapping political event caused all the Thursday events to be rescheduled (with the exception of the dance). Someone changed the schedule last minute to try to put the events back in, but fucked up royally and caused every Friday event on the hotel’s schedules to be listed at 4:30 am. No idea what events actually happened (if any). Several of discussion panels still happened, albeit without a host because the planned ones never showed up.
-CCFC had owed roughly $15K to the hotel that was supposed to be paid prior to the event. Nitro ignored this debt until hours before the con started, and was somehow able to convince the hotel to not shut down the event by scrambling with $5K with the promise the remaining would be paid post-con. Nitro literally got some random fursuiter to run around with a bucket soliciting donations.
-Those same furries would later be running around with buckets collecting money for The ALS Association (CCFC’s charity), raising confusion as to where the money went.
-Nitro repeatedly pressured Tripp to donate money from his personal savings to save the con, claiming it would make Tripp the “savior” for CCFC. Even after they hit the $5K goal. Tripp claims it was money that was set aside for school.
-The $5K was eventually obtained sometime on Thursday evening and the con is allowed to continue. Most of the con-goers had no knowledge that any of this was going on other than the buckets.
-The numerous claims brought up about Oble (Dealers Den head) being unprofessional, asking dealers for donations to keep the con running, prancing around barefoot, loudly shit-talking others, running her own booth in the den, and just being a difficult person? All true. Tripp had to field tons of complaints regarding her behavior at the event. Nitro refused to do anything about it or talk to her.
-Tripp confirms that none of the staff are publicly alt-right. He and Lifty also went into detail about Sharky’s CCFC ban; he was the head of security and was drinking heavily on the job, and while drinking he ignored a call for someone having a medical emergency (which was fortunately resolved by an EMT furry who happened to be there before it got worse).
-Tripp confirms that next to no staff meetings were held.
-The claim that Sharky started a “dick sucking contest”? Also true. He put up a sign on the front of the Con Ops doors saying something like “Dick sucking contest inquire within” while drunk as shit in Con Ops. Nitro made one of the only non-moronic decisions of CCFC by banning him over this.
-At some point, Loveless (staff) posted some confidential information in the feedback chat. Nitro claims it’s not a big deal as Loveless never signed any sort of non-disclosure. Tripp reveals the NONE of the staff were asked to sign any sort of non-disclosure of any kind, meaning that they could freely talk or share almost anything about the con. This includes Oble, who may or may not still have access to personal information from most of the dealers.
-Tripp’s birthday happened during CCFC, so during the guest of honor dinner, someone brought him cake and Oble, apropos of nothing, grabbed a chunk of it and smashed it in Tripp’s face. Several people commented on how insanely inappropriate it was for Oble to do that at a formal dinner event with someone she barely knew, but she didn’t care.

Spoiler: Post-CCFC

-The final number of people who attended was alleged to be around 380-400 people. Nitro claims that was his minimum goal. Yay?
-Tripp alleges that most of the staff were stuck paying for their rooms (they were supposed to be comped) and at least one guest of honor wasn’t compensated.
-People who pre-paid for a badge but ultimately didn’t attend were never refunded.
-Nitro immediately stepped down from his chairman position (making himself president) and announced that the new chairman was a DJ who played at one of the dances. About two days later, the DJ steps down as chairman and leaves, specifically noting the “toxic work environment”. Tripp claimed it was because of an argument regarding Sharky’s CCFC ban and Sharky was extremely adamant about coming back (Sharky was still allowed access to staff discussions for some reason).
-Most American conventions are labeled as a 501 nonprofit organization, but Lifty can’t find any evidence that CCFC was registered as one, let alone registered as anything.
-None of the staff can verify how much money was raised for the charity (suspected around $2K-3K) and nobody can find any evidence that anything was donated to the ALS foundation (CCFC’s supposed charity).
-Nitro still has a ton of unsold CCFC merch and the merch website has been in a perpetual “50% off flash sale” mode for the last 3 months. Nitro has since gained a reputation for constantly shilling the sale merch store in random furry telegram chats.
-One small positive; nearly all of the feedback from the convention attendees was very positive. Most of the people who weren’t involved with any of the staff or volunteers said they had a good time. A surprising number of kids attended it as their first furcon and said it was a good experience.
-The hotel was eventually paid back the outstanding amount, and Nitro expressed interest in doing a 2021 event. He signed a multi-year contract with the hotel, but it’s unknown if the hotel will be keen on letting them return.

Spoiler: #BlameNitro and closing summary

Nitro’s attempt at deflecting any criticism over himself or how poorly CCFC was planned is by claiming that “Blaming Nitro” is a meme. So if anything goes wrong, you totally should blame him, you guys! He even went so far as to get #BlameNitro merchandise made in time for CCFC (that nobody bought, lol). He had 200 “commemorative” ribbons made for two dollars each, and as of this writing, all 200 are still in stock on the CCFC merch page.
View attachment 1311288
All three people I talked with have since cut ties completely with Nitro, and they all state that Nitro is the textbook definition of a clout-chaser. He’s constantly trying to align himself with furries more popular than him and offering expensive gifts or guests of honor spots to anyone who he thinks he can use for his benefit. He allegedly told Tripp that he hopes people will see CCFC as “his” convention in a way that people associate Kage with Anthrocon or Dragoneer with FA.
If any furries in or near Pennsylvania are reading this, do yourself a favor and stay as far away from Nitro as possible. Associating with Nitro or CCFC is entirely at the risk of your personal reputation and bank account.

A lot of this was in the Feedback chat, let me attach that below. But man this is even funnier. Fuckin Nitro. Hopefully the attached works, if it doesn't my apologies. I haven't uploaded shit here before.

 

[billydero]

Funny thing is, shite hotels are kind of a thing for furry cons. ConFuzzled's certainly had its share, the Hinckley Island had mould growing on the window frames, a bunch wouldn't open.
Their venue before was the Britannia Country House in Manchester. If you know UK hotel chains, Britannia is all I need to say! Place was a tip. Carpet was *done*, holes in the wall covered with paintings, ceiling tiles falling on people... most of that hotel's takings are from renting it to the justice dept as a bail hostel.

Diaperfurs on constaff is a hell of a trope, geez I've worked a bunch and all but one had a huge number of pants-shitters in the top levels of the org chart. You can't say shit about it or you're forced out or called "intolerant".



Usually the goal is to get into an oversubscribed con by staffing a different con. NFC, EF and CFZ all have reciprocal agreements for eath other's staff. Get a staff or crew badge for one, you get to register for the other too well in advance of the great unwashed furfaggery. Power level but if you don't want to piss away an evening hitting F5...



Nah they buy fursuits instead.

View attachment 1309242
orig: https://twitter.com/furison/status/688326970711666688
arc: http://archive.md/fYhJA

this con needs jesus, y'all:

View attachment 1309244
orig: https://twitter.com/CFzLive/status/1132570604132028416
arc: http://archive.md/T81MI

CFzlive is gold for cfz drama. Hell it's their own account... Con hashtags are good for a sperg spelunk too. #CFz2012, #CFz2013, you get the idea.

Considering how either squalid, or just cheap most of the furry residences I’ve seen are, you would think that they would be perfectly at home in a shitty hotel. Perhaps they are.

Seriously, I am having the biggest laugh over CCFC. Given that convention fail, crash and burn is common and well documented, you would think these guys would be better prepared and would look to other examples to know how not to fuck it up.

These being furries, though, learning from past mistakes isn’t one of their characteristics.

 

[Randomcatgirl]

A lot of this was in the Feedback chat, let me attach that below. But man this is even funnier. Fuckin Nitro. Hopefully the attached works, if it doesn't my apologies. I haven't uploaded shit here before.

put that whole chat export foldr into a zip file so it has the other stuff that supports it like pictures and formats

 

[Wheezy Asthmatic]

It's like if Dashcon and Tanacon had a baby with Down Syndrome.

EDIT: The more I thought about the dealer's room situation at this con the more actually mad I got, so I'll take all the hats you got. The person in charge of the dealer's room shouldn't have been allowed to set up their own booth in the first place. Anyone with 5 minutes of retail experience could tell you that's a blatant conflict of interest. But then there's all the other shit she pulled. Just imagine being a dealer there. You get there and only 400 people showed up. Half showed up broke and most of the other half are probably going to be either broke or close to broke by Saturday afternoon. Good luck making back the money you spent just to be there, let alone making any profit. Then the person who's supposed to be making sure everything in the dealer's room is running smoothly not only has her own booth, but set up hers at the entrance, so not only is she getting the most people walking by her, but she's probably shit talking you to try to steal customers from you. Then she has the NERVE to go around bragging about how much she's selling after going around the dealer's room and harassing everyone to give up HALF THE MONEY THEY'RE PULLING IN to keep the con running. And on top of that YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT because the people running the con had the absolutely galaxy brained idea of letting your personal information be handled by someone they knew was the kind of petty asshole who would DOX YOU for trying to start shit with them.

FUCK

Just read this. What in the actual fuck? How come that person doesn't have a thread here? If they're that retarded at a one-off event, they're bound to have a history of being exceptional outside of it

 

[omori]

Can’t remember the name of the group but I recall a party group (“something” crue/crew) got into hot water some 5-6 years ago for pushing the furniture in the hotel room they were staying in into the balcony to make room for shenanigans and completely ruined it when it rained. I wanna say this was BLFC.

 

[Sneed's Feed And Seed]

Can’t remember the name of the group but I recall a party group (“something” crue/crew) got into hot water some 5-6 years ago for pushing the furniture in the hotel room they were staying in into the balcony to make room for shenanigans and completely ruined it when it rained. I wanna say this was BLFC.

It's either Adventure or Awoo. Both suffix "Cru", spelled as such.

 

[omori]

It's either Adventure or Awoo. Both suffix "Cru", spelled as such.

Thanks for jogging my memory! Found this in the prawst thread.

 

[Greywolf]

Seriously, I am having the biggest laugh over CCFC. Given that convention fail, crash and burn is common and well documented, you would think these guys would be better prepared and would look to other examples to know how not to fuck it up.

These being furries, though, learning from past mistakes isn’t one of their characteristics.

Keep an eye on JFTW if you like con failure. Their starting line in 2015 was "we're better than Confuzzled".
Don't get me wrong, they're the only UK con with decent food, but they're run like CCFC and have a ton of drama. Far more than you'd expect for a 200 fuzzball con in Filton, a place in the orbit of Bristol which is famous only for being the home of Thales Defence and Qinetiq. Their Holiday Inn is very much used to high-rollers in the defence industry turning up and is priced to match...

- Most of their attendees are staff, or staff-plus-ones. There's a running joke about all the rooms at Eurofurence going to staff... well at JFTW it's actually provably true. Except they've never sold out their room block.

- The former chairman was forced out in 2017. The new chair filled the staff with their mates and wanted to be The Most Exceptional Furrie In Durr Land by running a con.

- Former chairman (who up to that point was on good terms with the con) was at the con in 2017 and made a huge charity donation in the auction (he's easily good for it). The new chairman has a huge public grudge match with former-chair and their partner and cancels all of their bids. The bidding dropped from over £1000 to £100. The bidsheet was in a public area of the con, so everyone saw the crossed-out bids, the ex-chair's name and badge number, and the chairman's initials next to the strike. I hear it was being discussed openly on the con floor.

Pro tip, fucking up the charity collection is a great way to get furries to hate you.

- Attendance peaked in 2017 (the ex chair's last year) at 317. In 2018 it crashed to 203. They crept back to 233 in 2019, and just managed to squeak to 211 this year before the COVID cancellation (https://jftw.org/whos-coming/ -- http://archive.md/LicFx)

- 2018 again. The last dance was quiet (more like dead) because everyone was socializing in the bar. So the DJ spat his dummy out and threatened to walk. The exceptional con chair storms into the bar and demands the projector be turned off and everyone go to the dance.
Did everyone go to the dance? Nah, they went to their rooms to pack.

- Right now JFTW's £17,000 in the hole (see https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09668582/filing-history), in an expensive venue next to a bunch of defence companies. With the aforementioned Very Much Loaded sugardaddy ex chairman out of the picture, they've been racking up debt like a gambling addict in Las Vegas.

- Not con staff related but still funny. 4AM fire alarm. Guy called Silver Gunn gets pissed off that his GF dumped him (he's worth a thread in himself). So he stalks his ex-GF and her new BF, sticks a glass to their bedroom door. Gets on the radar of con sec for that. The last night of the con, he does the same stunt with the glass and overhears the two of them fucking each other stupid. Exceptionality alert, he pulls the fire alarm. Then pulls another, which trips the alarm in the whole hotel. The icing on the cake is, he was happy to tell the story to anyone who asked -- and was even happy about it.

Guy was banned from JFTW and Scotiacon for five years. For Peak Exceptional, ConFuzzled only gave him a one-year ban. Furcation didn't even bother. Seems even fucking with safety equipment won't get the UK crew to agree.


ConFuzzled managed to at least scrape together a 70% refund (plus a full refund from the hotel) post COVID. JFTW told folks that if they wanted a refund, they'd have to sell their ticket to a friend: https://jftw.org/covid19/ (http://archive.md/1lzeP)

Needless to say this has been the talk of all 50 of their non-staff attendees. A lot of people who paid by card are talking privately about charging back through their banks. But hey, furs are talking about doing that to Confuzzled so....

Can’t remember the name of the group but I recall a party group (“something” crue/crew) got into hot water some 5-6 years ago for pushing the furniture in the hotel room they were staying in into the balcony to make room for shenanigans and completely ruined it when it rained. I wanna say this was BLFC.

Prawst's drama gang, Adventurecru.

Of which the UK "CFZ Party Cru" was a feeble copy which turned into a bad troll group and eventually imploded. At least Prawst is funny to watch.

 

[Leonard Helplessness]

- Not con staff related but still funny. 4AM fire alarm. Guy called Silver Gunn gets pissed off that his GF dumped him (he's worth a thread in himself). So he stalks his ex-GF and her new BF, sticks a glass to their bedroom door. Gets on the radar of con sec for that. The last night of the con, he does the same stunt with the glass and overhears the two of them fucking each other stupid. Exceptionality alert, he pulls the fire alarm. Then pulls another, which trips the alarm in the whole hotel. The icing on the cake is, he was happy to tell the story to anyone who asked -- and was even happy about it.

He eavesdropped on his ex to see if she was fucking, and when he heard her fucking, he became so angry that he pulled fire alarms until the entire hotel was evacuated?

Dude's going to fucking kill someone.

 

[D.Va]

The UK is a terrible venue for furry cons in the first place. CFz is using the largest hotel they can find which actually has convention space, and it's an aging Hilton in the middle of nowhere. The NEC gouge the fuck out of anyone who goes to their restaurants, because there's literally nothing else around unless you take transport.

It might as well be hosted in London where there's more shit to do. There would be less poor people, but that generally means less gross people so it's basically a win-win.

 

[Greywolf]

The UK is a terrible venue for furry cons in the first place. CFz is using the largest hotel they can find which actually has convention space, and it's an aging Hilton in the middle of nowhere. The NEC gouge the fuck out of anyone who goes to their restaurants, because there's literally nothing else around unless you take transport.

It might as well be hosted in London where there's more shit to do. There would be less poor people, but that generally means less gross people so it's basically a win-win.

That hotel's the largest UK conference centre hotel outside of London. You're right about there being more to do in London and it'd be a better experience for attendees in nearly every way except price.

Confuzzled's staff have a pathological hatred of the idea of moving the con anywhere near London though. The staff and directors are convinced (and have been for years) that moving to London would kill the con. People wouldn't pay for it etc (hell, I'd buy a day ticket for shits and giggles). Many staff have threatened to resign if it ever did. The bitching and infighting over it contributed to two years of senior people leaving and vowing never to come back.

It's more likely to save the con. That Hilton is falling to pieces, the overflow hotel (a Crowne Plaza) is in much better shape. Hilton are milking it for as much profit as possible before it falls down or gets shut down. CFz ran with only one working elevator last year, and several panel rooms flooded. A move to London would be a huge improvement just because you can't get away with shit like that as a hotel there. It's a key marketplace to the point where most Travelodges have on-site restaurants.

CFz has no shortage of disgruntled ex staff, the trick is getting them to talk.

Furblefox would be a good one. And Tryst, Rizzorat, Nall and crew. All have had issues with the way the con's run and been very shouty about it on the Twitters.