Cosplay is cringe!
As Senpai of the cosplay world, I can definitely attest to that. But is it really? Cosplay may be cringey and that’s how we like it sometimes. After all, we are Weebs and we embrace our weirdnesses! There will be good moments and there will be bad ones as well. (If you’re interested in learning about the cosplay community as a whole, click here to check out my post about it).
But first, let’s answer the question…
Cosplay is cringe? Why are cosplayers so cringe?
If you’re on the outside looking in, you might think that cosplay is a strange hobby, with cosplayers being even stranger! Like any other hobby, the cosplay community is far from a perfect place, and there will be those who make the community look bad. But in reality, cosplay is a wonderful and fun hobby to be part of. And a lot of the things you may find strange or weird, that will definitely not be the case once you’ve been doing this hobby for a while. There’s a method to our madness!
I feel there’s no point in me talking about why cosplay is cringe; just go on some of the websites and you’ll find tons of instances where that may be the case.
But with that said, I wanted to make an article showcasing some of my weird cosplay is cringe moments I’ve had.
Here are 10 of them:
1. Worst Hotel Roommate ever
Of all the cosplay is cringe stories I personally have to share, this by far was my worst experience. I plan to make an entire post about this. But to summarize, me and my friend decided to let a mutual stay in our hotel room for a cosplay convention weekend, and it was the worst decision we made. This roommate did a lot of terrible things, such as inviting his friends over at 7 in the morning to use our washroom, put on their cosplay on while making a lot of noise in the process.
The craziest thing was that after when my friend and I came back to the hotel room on Saturday night, there was a guy sitting in our bed, screaming that we “shot him in California.” Yes, I’m not joking. Who knows what the heck he was on, but it was just a terrible experience and ruined my convention weekend.
This bad roommate is a great example of when cosplay is cringe. But I personally learned the hard way that having one bad roommate can ruin your entire weekend. So my suggestion is to be VERY picky about who you let stay in your hotel. Even if it means spending more money, better to have no roommates and have the hotel room for yourself, than to have 1 roommate who can make your convention a terrible experience.
2. Deep fake cosplay photos
This experience has nothing to do with pornography. But it does relate to impersonation! So if you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know that I feature a lot of awesome cosplayers and their photos.
When I decided to update one of my cosplay articles to feature new characters, I asked a few cosplayers their permission to share their photo. Naturally, everything was fine.
Until one of my readers informed me that one of the cosplayer photos was fake, and that I was using someone else’s photos!
What? How could that be?
Well what happened was that this “fake” cosplayer was photoshopping their face onto a different cosplayer body. They were taking famous cosplayers and using their body and putting their own face on them!
I couldn’t believe it myself. How could someone go that far to impersonate a different person? That is definitely a cosplay is cringe moment!
Not only that, I was fooled myself. Normally I’m good at spotting fake or stolen cosplay photos. But I was fooled that time, as I never experienced anyone going that far with Photoshop!
3. The Raptors make the NBA Finals for the first time!…and that’s a bad thing?
You know, sometimes I find Weebs interesting people. I suppose they can be excited about one thing, but totally apathetic about another. Take winning the NBA basketball championship for example.
So if you don’t know, I’m a huge Toronto Raptors fan! They’re an NBA team which at that point, didn’t see much success with winning, let alone making it past the second round in the playoffs.
But in 2019, they finally turned it around when they traded for Kawhi Leonard. It was going really well in the playoffs for them.
On the weekend of Anime North, the Toronto Raptors won Game 6 of the semifinals, which meant they were going to the NBA Finals for the first time in their history! This was insane and oh so exciting not just for me, but for the whole city.
So it’s Saturday night at Anime North during the rave. I’m all excited that my Raptors made the Finals. When I arrive to the rave, I see someone wearing a Raptors jersey.
Immediately I went up to him with all my excitement and yelled, “LET’S GOOO RAPTORS!!!” And put my hand up to receive a high-five from my fellow Raptors fan.
What followed was super disappointing.
Not only was he not excited AT ALL about the Raptors making it to the Finals. He gave the most inauthentic high five to me, as if I was forcing him to do it.
In my mind I was like, “What the fuck?! The Raptors just made the Finals and you’re sad? Take off that fucking jersey!”
I couldn’t believe what just happened. Had it been a normie or even your typical Torontonian, they would have been jumping up for joy. Toronto sports teams doesn’t have the best luck when it comes to winning. So when it happens, it’s a big deal.
What a cosplay is cringe moment for me!
Fortunately, this must have been a one-off situation, as my friends showed me lots of videos of people celebrating at home and at the bars/restaurants beside Anime North.
Or was it only that one unthusiastic person?
4. The Raptors WIN the NBA Championship! But even more apathy
Fast forward a few weeks later, me and my friends are at YetiCon. Not only did the Raptors make it to the Finals, THEY ACTUALLY WON THE NBA CHAMPIONSHIP! Holy shit! This was the biggest win for Canada in forever, and definitely for Toronto in a long time.
On Saturday night of the con, me and my friend were still hyped about the Raptors winning the championship. And my friend is mainly a hockey fan.
While walking to the rave, we both chant out loud, “Let’s go Raptors!”
Then one of the attendees at YetiCon walks up to us and says…”That was 2 days ago.” (That the Raptors won the championship)
Me and my friend were floored.
WTF?
For the first time in franchise history, our city wins a championship…and your response is… that was 2 days ago?
WOW!
Sometimes the people in the community can be super lame and buzzkill. I’m not sure if it’s a Weeb thing or just in the Greater Toronto Area. But when I go to cons in America, they’re way more hype and excited. Heck, everyone was singing along to Bohemian Rhapsody when I was at Anime Central.
Like if my fellow congoers wants a hi five, I’m giving him one for sure!
I will say that I’ve experienced a lot of buzzkill moments while attending cons in Toronto, and they involved attendees. Don’t really want to get into it much, but I can say it happens mostly when I’m in Toronto.
So my advice is that if you plan on attending a convention in Toronto or surrounding area, be prepared for some buzzkill moments! It’s okay. As the love cliché goes; it’s not you, it’s them.
Cosplay is cringe.
5. Filthy ravers!
For the most part, I’ve always enjoyed raves because they’re a lot of fun and also good people. But that wasn’t the case at one convention when I went to.
So during a rave, I was resting on a bean bag after raving for a while. All of a sudden, this dude comes up to me and tries to dry hump me in my face! I was like WTF is going on! I was pretty mad and ready to engage. And he had no sympathy or remorse with what he tried to do.
After getting ready to defend myself, he just suddenly ran away. I was pretty confused but agitated as well.
I can see why a lot of cosplayers I know avoid raves. Sometimes you get people acting very odd at these dance parties, with no explanation for their behavior.
Like I say, cosplay is cringe in moments like this.
6. “ONLY over $50!”
Not only can cosplayers be the cringe, but conventions as well! Yes, I’ve had quite a few cons where I experienced some cringe moments with them.
One of them happened while I was inquiring about single day admissions. This convention was happening all weekend, but I could only attend on the Sunday.
So I asked on the convention’s Facebook page, if there were any single day admissions available.
The answer I got was so hilarious! The person said…
“Only over $50! Still a good price, even if it’s only for one day!”
Basically, the convention staff said I can only buy a weekend pass to attend for one day. And that the weekend pass is a good deal because it’s only over $50!
I don’t know if the staff member was trolling me, or just really bad at advertising. Is “Only over $50 supposed to sound cheap?
That definitely to me was a cosplay is cringe moment. And the reason why I didn’t attend the convention.
7. Crappy attendees
I’ve hosted several cosplay events over the years and for the most part, I’ve had amazing people attend my events. However, there are times when you get some terrible people at cosplay events. Whether it’s their own personality, or they just want to cause trouble, there can be some bad people.
This one moment still sticks in my mind.
So I was hosting an event at a really cool bar. Everything was going pretty good. Until one of the staff members at the bar comes up to me and says he’s going to shut down the event.
Whoa!
I was wondering what the heck happened. And why he wanted to shut my event down.
So he told me that someone came into the bar and snuck in their own alcoholic drinks. For those who don’t know, that’s a horrible thing to do. It’s like bringing outside food to a restaurant, which is a big no-no!
Not only that, these dirtbag attendees left their smuggled alcoholic drinks on the table they were sitting at.
Like if you wanted to make yourself look like a piece of s***, this was a damn good way to do it.
Sadly these people left before we could find out who do it. I apologized to the staff member for that happening. But he understood it wasn’t my fault.
Definitely a cosplay is cringe moment. Maybe next time I’ll need to bag checks before entering.
8. Cattle con!
MOOOOOO!
Here’s another cosplay is cringe involving a convention. This was at a small but popular convention that was mostly hated for the time they existed.
Me and my friend used to call this convention “Cattle Con,” because that’s literally what the convention organizers did! Even though the convention building was the largest in the city, they either only purchased a tiny portion of the building, or decided it was fun to squeeze a bunch of Weebs together in a tiny portion of space. The convention was jam packed, but only because they cordoned off the con space with their velvet ropes. They confined us together like cattle.
It was sooo bad. Not only that, there was a very rude security guard asking to see badges every 5 minutes. No joke. He was literally walking back and forth along cattle convention, always asking to see badges. We showed our badge to him several times. I get the idea to stop lobbyconners (if you want to learn more lobbyconning, click here). But when it comes at the expense of convention experience, then you’re doing something wrong. Not like convention experience was a priority anyway for the organizers, since they herded us like cattle anyway. It was painfully obvious it was all about maximizing profit, given the small con space and overzealous enforcement of badges.
While this convention is still around today, thankfully the original organizers were bought out by another company that’s much better. Ironically, this company hardly checks for badges; they only check outside the dealer’s room. And even more ironic, is that the lobbyconners take up all the convention space in the unpaid areas now!
Definitely a cosplay is cringe moment that eventually worked out in the end!
9. 4chan guy knocking on our door
Out of all my stories here, this is probably the closest to a horror story that could have been.
So me and my friends are having a small hotel party at a convention. Just chilling, playing video games, eating and having a few drinks. Everything was good.
And then someone knocked on our door. Me and my friend decided to check who it was, because we weren’t expecting anyone.
So we answer the door and it was some random stranger, saying “4chan” invited him over. As if they gave the hotel room number on where to go, and apparently our room was the number he found.
We insisted that there was no public party we were hosting and that he got the wrong room. But the guy would not leave! He insisted that our room was the party room because he saw some people in the room, and that we were lying to him.
At that point, we realized he wasn’t going to leave. So we had to forcibly shut the door on him. We were pretty scared because he might have forced his way into our room. And who knows what he might have done if he got in.
We almost were going to call hotel security. But fortunately, he eventually left. Thank goodness. We were just weirded out by the experience.
Lesson learned: It reminded me that even though cosplay conventions are generally safe, you still have to take precautions, especially at night. If you see someone at your hotel door, don’t open it. And if they insist on coming on, put the extra lock in and call hotel security or even the police.
With that said, of all the years I’ve attended conventions, most of the time they are family-friendly events that are very safe. So for the most part, you have nothing to worry about!
10. Fight in the convention elevator?
If you’ve been attending cosplay conventions in North America for a while, you might know that checking out at a hotel on the Sunday can be chaotic. Because if you’re staying at a large convention hotel, even getting on the elevator can be disastrously long.
And that’s what happened with me and my friends. We waited more than half an hour just to get on the elevator in our hotel, because everyone was checking out at the same time. We considered just walking down, but we were staying at least 40 stories high at a convention hotel with our luggage with us, so there was no way we’d consider walking down with all our luggage on us.
So we decided to do this; go up! Yes, in order to get on the elevator, we had to hop on one that was going up, in order to go down. And the moment we did this, we were actually able to get on with our stuff. Barely.
Now here’s where things get interesting.
We shared an elevator with a woman with her dog, so that dog was taking a lot of space. No problem so far.
We get to the next floor, and there’s a woman and her boyfriend. Let’s call this woman Ronda, because she looked exactly like Ronda Rousey!
The woman with the dog told Ronda and her BF not to come into the elevator, because her dog is claustrophobic. Not only did Ronda come into the elevator anyway, they jumped into it!
Man, the woman with the dog was super pissed. So when we get to the top floor, which is the floor that dog lady was getting off, the dog lady gave a nice shove to Ronda before she got off.
Holy crap, that set Ronda off!
When the door closed, Ronda starting screaming about how she wanted to kick dog lady’s ass and punch her in the face! When we were on the top floor, she demanded to stop on the floor again that dog lady got off. Her boyfriend had to restrain and calm her down.
Ronda actually did press the floor to Dog Lady’s floor. But when we got there, she barely calmed down and decided to stay in the elevator.
It was funny because by the time we finally got to the main floor to checkout, everyone was in good spirits that we finally made it out of the hotel! Even Ronda herself was happy. She started shaking hands with everyone in the elevator and introducing herself.
Me and my buddy were loving every minute of it. But I jokingly said to my other friend that I love her country. She just facepalms and says, “Get me out of here!”
But all jokes aside, I learned a few things from crazy hotel checkout experience.
Lesson learned: From now on, if I stay at a convention with a long elevator queue, I will try to put my luggage in my car the night before. That way, we have the option to walk down the stairs with no luggage on us. Or at the very least, we can have a better chance at fitting in the elevator with little to no bags on us.
And those are some of my cosplay is cringe stories I have to share!
I’m sure I’ll have more in the future for sure. But for now, I’d love to hear some of yours in the comments below.
My name is Roger Senpai. I’m a cosplayer that’s been in the community for well over a decade now. I’ve traveled all over the world to Anime and Comic conventions and hosted my own cosplay events. Now I’m writing articles for new and experienced cosplayers like you to help inspire, save you money and improve your cosplays!
