this thread is helping me relieve a personal crisis I had at holomat 2023. Maybe people really are less friendly now? I went there to get some gifts for my wife and her sister's birthday but I also expected the old con experience I'd have in like 2014 or some shit. It never mattered that I was alone because I could always chat up strangers at the bar, often times ones that were unrelated to the con. For example my wife brought me to a MLP convention I had no interest in so I ended up spending the evening shooting shit with an elderly german woman there for her daughters and a maintenance guy that just got off his shift at the hotel. Typically at anime cons I end up chatting a bunch of different people up and get invited to room parties and shit.

not at 2023 holomat. Everyone felt so unapproachable. Like I was getting iced out of even looking at a stranger's direction. Even at the bar people were sequestered into their cliques. I just chalked it up to my social skills getting rusty post pandemic but I had a minor freakout about the extroverted part of my personality being blunted somehow, maybe with age. like I stopped being this person that could make a total stranger smile no problem. Not going to say it's all the atmosphere changing, there were some people that felt friendly but I was to shy to even say hi and read the vibe from there.