For the last five years, Libertarian author Robert Kroese has been running an alternative convention (BasedCon) to the mainstream industry-run cons such as WorldCon, with the intention of making it an alternative. Unfortunately, Based Con, the convention has turned into much the same liberal gatekeeping as those conventions, as the convention banned me after Kroese could not handle my calling modern woke D&D “Satanic” (rightfully in my opinion), and proceeded to cancel me over my journalism calling out problems in the gaming industry.
There’s much more to the reason robkroese went full-cancel that has to do with his personal ego with the convention rather than anything I’ve done, which is why his continued actions have been beyond absurd, and it’s been a debate of whether Fandom Pulse should address this matter at all.
I’m chosing to for two reasons: 1. Fandom Pulse provides the best comprehensive coverage of conventions with bad behaviors, and this is no different despite my being the focus of the story, 2. because at the convention, Kroese is taking the stage dedicating an entire panel to personally attacking me, which I’ve never heard of a convention doing in the history of cons, making this an incredibly exceptional situation. Despite saying there’s no panel, what is giving a 20-minute talk from a stage of a convention if not a panel?
Below is the history of what transpired and why this is simply a mockery of the name “BasedCon.”
As mentioned before, BasedCon has been happening in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for the last five years. I’d been watching online as it’s gone on, usually garnering a meager 50-100 people in attendance, so nothing overly big nor necessarily worth travel expenses to head to Michigan for in a professional manner.
It started out as a decent thing, with several really amazing authors who don’t generally get invitations as guests, something Fandom Pulse would certainly be celebrating and promoting hard if the purveyor didn’t engage in such bad behavior.
I noticed a problem a couple of years back, as the convention was a few years into existence, and yet I’d keep getting messages from attendees asking why I wasn’t there, to which I’d have to reply that I wasn’t invited. It was odd, though an attendee who was closer to Kroese once I asked about it told me Kroese was afraid I’d “upstage him,” given I have a charismatic YouTube presence and following. He also used the exact words that it would become “JDA Con.”
I found that to be silly yet flattering, as I would have been very supportive, and likely a decent draw for the convention. However, I didn’t see much of a reason to pursue the matter as the convention was fairly small, and my regular readership audience is much larger for daily videos and articles. If it had been somewhere closer, like Nevada or California, I may have been more active in simply showing up.
However, apparently, the lack of invites meant a soft ban if I did buy a ticket. I was never talked to by Kroese, never alerted about this, but the convention organizer and sci-fi author, it turns out, had been seething with jealousy for a long time about me, and it was about to bubble to the surface.
Robert Kroese is a hardcore Libertarian. Washed out of traditional publishing, he made a modest impression on Amazon and Kickstarter after building a following for his Libertarian politics on X. His writing is very solid, with a penchant for humor in science fiction, and he’s always given off a sense that he feels he deserves to be more popular than he is.
His online presence was mostly built on the quote “gotcha” tweet, where he would take a situation and then lambast the person or opinion in a tweet for attention. While it’s fun watching him do it to those on the left, he just as often targets those on the right, as he’s trying to present himself as a centrist who’s more measured, like many Libertarians do.
Kroese has also developed a reputation for fighting other authors online. As this situation developed, several authors who don’t want to be involved in drama messaged me about how they’ve been targeted by him in the past as he initiates pile-ons with his audience, sometimes over nonsensical items. One author detailed how they were piled on because they had critical things to say about Amazon’s business model, and Kroese jumped in to become outraged on behalf of the evil mega-corporation, escalating to the point he burned bridges.
While I’d seen evidence Kroese would quote-tweet me several times to try to “gotcha” my principled right-wing and Christian takes on the culture, I mostly didn’t engage back as I understood he was merely drama farming for his brand. I try my hardest not to “swing right” even though the Libertarians go mask off quite often, so that they will do anything they can to put a wrench in true right-wing cultural efforts.
My following, however, grew tremendously over the last year on multiple platforms, and Kroese began to increase the frequency with which he’d try to go at me. It was tacky, but it escalated when I was intense in my coverage of modern woke Dungeons & Dragons and how they were destroying the role-playing game. I went viral on Substack, YouTube, and X for my coverage, which you can find on my various platforms.
I posited something about the culture that the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s was overblown by the media, and a tipping point made for the culture and media to turn on Christians and mock Christianity as an attempt to get Christians out of the cultural space. This was intentional, as if you look back at culture, most of the lasting works in Western Civilization are overtly Christian-oriented, and it began to change in the 1960s with the drugs, sex, and rock ‘n roll libertarianism. It’s easily traceable to the decline of our culture overall to wokeism, and this seemed to be a key cultural watershed.
I went viral with a tweet on this, which garnered millions of views, prompting Kroese to throw a fit, as he had done in the past. This was not one I bothered to respond to him over, but later, as I showed the irony that modern D&D actually has become Satanic, is when he really lost his mind.
This is an indication of the quote tweet style that Kroese uses to stir up drama and attack people to build his brand. It’s very clear as I show that woke D&D is encouraging “Pride,” a deadly sin, and yet Kroese seems to have some intentional misreading of the tweet to personally attack me on the topic. Modern D&D is Satanic and run by Satanic weirdos from the Pacific Northwest, who, ironically, would cancel Robert Kroese in an instant for not being pure-left enough for them. But that doesn’t matter to him; he wants to show that I’m somehow “bad” because my online presence is growing, and it bothers him for some reason.
I had had enough at this juncture and pointed out that he’s attacking a right-wing author on behalf of a woke megacorporation, Hasbro. I point out that a guy running “Based Con” attacking someone for being “too based” is beyond ironic. This seems to set him off as he has no response other than to swear at me.
I don’t have the tweets regarding the other person who seemed to realize Kroese was in the wrong, but one can see how hostile Kroese gets to anyone who doesn’t validate his opinion. At this point, it becomes clear that Kroese not only builds his brand from online drama attacking the right, but he’s dopamine addicted to the point where it’s got him unhinged online.
But it gets wilder. I decided the best course of action would be to attend BasedCon and go face-to-face. Since Kroese blocked me, I couldn’t make my points, so I announced my attendance as a professional journalist from my Fandom Pulse account. If he wants a debate on modern D&D, I’m happy to provide receipts as they’re documented here. One can see that he simply swears at me again.
One author asks about a ticket, posing a good point, and this is where Kroese goes crazy, saying that he’ll assault me if I show up to the convention.
While he has not made a formal ban of me or communicated such with me at all at this point, I decided Paolinelli made a good point, so I opted to purchase a ticket so I can prove I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is. Since the convention primarily is composed of friends of mine, I didn’t worry too much about Kroese’s threat against me, figuringthat, from the period of January to September, the guy would cool down. He did not.
BasedCon came, and I knew that the convention had banned me and was going on, so I made sure folk were aware of it on X, as many of my friends still were asking if I was going to be attending without knowing about the situation. I posted that I’d purchased a ticket, and I did not see a refund; I did not see that Kroese took my money. This apparently was in error, as I did not get any notification of any refund, no message from Kroese on the topic, and didn’t see anything on my card statement. Apparently, Kroese made this refund before it was even charged, so it was a small error on my part, which I have apologized for in public already, trying to take the high road as I pride myself on being morally correct and accurate in all I do. It seems the adult, correct way to act.
This was also at the urging of an author who was attending the convention and was trying to broker peace. He was going to try to get Kroese to dial down and suggested I offer that olive branch first. I was certain it wouldn’t do any good, given I’ve seen the unhinged behavior of people like Kroese before, but I did the right thing regardless.
Kroese, meanwhile, has spent the entire weekend of his convention seething about me online. It’s bizarre, as one would think a convention runner would be too busy for such things, but it’s another doubling-down situation where it would be simple to just apologize and put it behind him, but pride appears far more important to him than having his convention truly represent being “based.”
He’s continued his pattern of trying to rile up his audience, making a bizarre point that I didn’t “spend enough” on my ticket. I’ll note, this is a complete fabrication as I was not told I was not allowed to attend and have received no communication from Kroese on the matter. He might ramble about “playing victim,” but as shown above, Kroese was aggressor, and I am legitimately his target here despite his emotional framing.
He also then attacked someone who pointed out the irony and hypocrisy of calling it “BasedCon” under these conditions:
His response is again completely off the rails, and he doubled down acting like my purchasing a ticket and him refunding me was the issue, rather than him deciding he would ban me from the convention over woke D&D, again fabricating what was going on.
The behavior continued over the weekend in bizarre fashion that is just a bit on the tragic/sad side more than anything else.
Referring to me as a “diminutive troublemaker” when I run the most successful site in science fiction and fantasy, calling out the woke and promoting the based, is ironic again, but it still wasn’t something I was going to devote a Fandom Pulse article to.
However, now that the convention held a whole panel on me (or, as Kroese has said this morning, a 20-minute speech on me), it seems the record needs to be set straight, and it should be addressed.
Another attendee there told me the contents of the panel where Kroese says he framed it as a “misunderstanding” over “Satanic Panic in D&D.” If it was a simple misunderstanding, why did he need to ban and launch online about this? It seems an apology would be more warranted than ever if it’s over his misunderstanding.
The attendee says there was a discussion over dinner about it with several other attendees who seem saddened by the situation, which is what I’ve also heard from the majority of the people at BasedCon. It seems most would prefer that I had just been there, and we could have all enjoyed right-leaning science fiction and fantasy together.
Now the record’s set straight, and I do hope Kroese comes to his senses and apologizes. He’s irreparably hurt the brand of his “BasedCon” by continuing to double down on this, and it would be very nice to have something in culture that wouldn’t act like the gatekeeping left, but apparently, we need someone else with a more stable mentality to step up.
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Lolbertarians are such cringe homos.
There's no such thing as a "Libertarian", merely childish libertines