Highlights from BronyCon 2019: Xidnaf's a Brony?! · 3:36am Dec 9th, 2019
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Highlights from BronyCon 2019: Xidnaf’s a Brony?!
In which son_of_heaven176 runs across a YouTuber he didn’t expect to find at BronyCon.
Friday, August 2, 2019: The Second Day of the Final BronyCon
After the nap at the hotel, I got something to eat, then headed for the Hall of the Moon. The Con Chair History Discussion was set to begin at 5:30 PM.
As I waited in the sponsor line, I noticed the person next to me—or, more precisely, his nametag. It read “Xidnaf.”
Could he possibly be that Xidnaf? I wondered.
I asked him a question, and the second I heard that high, nasal voice, I knew it. I had indeed run across that Xidnaf.
Xidnaf, for those of you who do not know, is a YouTuber who talks a lot about language and linguistics. One of the videos of his that sticks out in my memory was his video on the Thai language (which eventually found its way to yet another language nerd, Nativlang). During a collab on conlang creation that he made with worldbuilding nerd Artifexian, the video used pictures of Pinkie Pie and Cranky Doodle Donkey. However, I never made the connection that Xidnaf was a brony!
Of course, running across another YouTuber who also happened to be a brony meant that a picture was needed ASAP. And so I took the picture and Tweeted that I had indeed run across the Xidnaf:
Yes, I used a smiley to cover my face. I didn’t bring my laptop with me to BronyCon, so it isn’t as if I could use the usual cover-my-face-with-the-avatar trick.
The doors opened, and we filed in. The panel was just as advertised: previous BronyCon convention chairs were present, from the very first convention chair to the one from BronyCon 2018. Of course, I had heard before that the original BronyCon was in NYC, but I had no idea that the original BroNYCon (as it would be known in those early years) was basically just a meetup! Yet from that meetup all those years ago came the biggest brony convention in the US—the Brony Con.
The panel was quite informative, and I liked hearing the anecdotes about the trials and tribulations that took place behind the scenes, from the original meetup, to the formation of the non-profit that holds the BronyCon name, to even the various moves that eventually brought BronyCon to Baltimore. I love knowing about the history of stuff I care about, and this panel wasn’t a bad use of my time.
But after the panel was over, I had to head back to the hotel room. I needed to change into my formal wear, as the next item on the agenda was the Grand Galloping Gala.
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