Nerd & Tie Network
Convention News

Many Angry With ColossalCon East After Controversial Social Media Posts Surface (Updated)

Trae Dorn

Pennsylvania based ColossalCon East may be coming up in a few weeks, but not everyone is excited. Recently a number of offensive statements made by members of ColossalCon East’s staff, including their cosplay head Chris Gary, surfaced on social media. Many tweets like the one below have been circulating, featuring screenshots of staffer’s saying things that (needless to say) most people wouldn’t want their convention associated with.

The convention responded to the outrage by removing Gary from his role, and has now placed someone else in charge of cosplay. This was announced in their Cosplay Facebook Group and the official ColossalCon twitter account.

Here’s the thing though, while removing Gary was a positive step, most people don’t remotely see it as enough. The reason for this is simple: he is far from the only member of ColossalCon East’s staff who has made bizarre, problematic statements publicly. One of those is ColossalCon East convention head Donnell Sinclair.

This is not the first time that ColossalCon has been the center of controversy. Outside of ColossalCon East, its sister con in Ohio raised controversy earlier this year when one of its staff said that panels on diversity would be more appropriate for ‘DashCon.’ Additionally, back in 2017, they filed a trademark complaint against Colossus Con, forcing the other event to change their name.

We reached out to ColossalCon East while writing this story, but they have not yet responded. This article will be updated if they do.

Updated (8/28): While ColossalCon East still has not responded to our request for comment, yesterday afternoon convention head Donnell Sinclair announced his resignation on Twitter.

Trae Dorn

Trae Dorn has been staffing conventions for over twenty-five years. They also wrote and drew the now completed webcomic UnCONventional, and produce the podcasts BS-Free Witchcraft, On This Day With Trae, Stormwood & Associates, The Meatgrinder, and The Nerd & Tie Podcast. This leads many to ask how the heck they have the time to get it all done. Trae says they have the time because they “do it all quite poorly.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *