#literally wish i didnt see so many complaints about people being upset that go in the fashion “why do you watch it if you hate it”

[pendragora]

Our fandom whines about the lack of nuance and critical thinking, but then fails to comprehend the complexity of human emotion when it comes to seeing something you like being ruined or executed poorly

[thegeminisage]

wow it is star trek update time. last night we watched ds9's "blood oath" and tng's "journey's end," which is one of the strongest quality ricochets we've had yet.

blood oath (ds9):

okay, so the summary said "three klingon legends" but what i didn't realize is that they were all REAL KLINGONS FROM THE ORIGINAL SERIES

i have to pain this picture for you, whoever is reading this. the three klingons in this episode appeared in "errand or mercy" "the trouble with tribbles" and "day of the dove." like, they really came back to reprise their roles almost 30 years later. i'm going to paste a picture but uhtw 60s blackface

now, if you're a tos viewer, you may recognize that fella in the middle as also having played the titular squire of gothos in. "squire of gothos." now, as an episode, i find "squire of gothos" to be pretty mid, but there is one specific scene that really did something for me. to me? it did something TO me. what it did to me was send me off the fucking deep end, i wish i could convey the depths of my madness with human words

(still screenshot grabbed from this infinitely more amazing gifset, give it up for @maulthots for enabling me, no literally please go through her gif tag and reblog her gifs)

anyway, before my good and wonderful friend so kindly made this gifset for me, i did maybe sit in front of my pc and replay the clip upwards of [mumble] times a day because i was very, very unwell. when i watched this scene for the very first time what happened to me in that single instant was the bone-deep realization that james t kirk (tos and aos) ate fascists on tarsus iv, probably, and he'd fucking do it again because nobody tastes better than a fascist! i wrote an entire fanfic about it, sorry for the spoilers.

what does squire of gothos and tarsus iv have to do with ds9? well first of all every star trek episode is secretly about tarsus iv so jot that down

but secondly, i've watched this clip so many times i have to hide my face when this man shows up in trouble with tribbles. now, i'm not so good with faces, but i KNOW THAT VOICE. but i know him AS the squire of gothos. i frequently forget entirely that he also plays a klingon, so i didn't recognize his name. so when i heard the squire of gothos's voice come out of a random klingon's mouth in ds9 my immediate kneejerk reaction was "no i am hearing things that can't be--" BUT IT WAS. i PAUSED the episode so i could look iy up, realized that the guy in the drunk tank was kor or "do you have a tongue you will be taught to use it" fame, and then to my eternal glee, kang shows up next

i remembered reading once that kang came back later and i was like ??? no one comes back later on tos BUT HE DID! I JUST HAD TO WAIT FOR IT!!!!! mystery finally solved...........

once i recognized them this episode was a blast. absolutely loving these 100 year old klingons getting ready for a rip roaring rampage of supercentenarian revenge. i was VERY sad that they died at the end but at least presumably they all died together (didnt see the last one go down but im just assuming he lived long enough to eat the albino's heart and then die)

(the albino is a really funny concept by the way like he's not even albino he's just a white klingon)

other notable things about this episode: firstly, quark hiding behind odo at the beginning. classic. secondly, dax actually being a good fighter ?!?!?! and finally, a true passing of the bechdel test where dax asked kira some alarming and upsetting questions about killing people and kira immediately took her aside and MADE her talk. i love. Women. and also women who murder people. i support womens wrongs.

i even love that the ONE time sisko doesn't back up one of his people it's for a good reason (doesn't want the 27yo reincarnation of his father figure to die on a klingon suicide mission)

10000/10, absolutely stellar ep, zero complaints

journey's end (tng):

oh boy.

just about the coldest bucket of fucking water...

you know, we tried to give this episode the benefit of the doubt actually. we were like "maybe this was progressive in 1994. i mean they ARE saying that moving these guys forcibly would be bad" and i mean like what would we know about what was progressive in 94? we were 5. so we checked and um i don't think anybody liked it in 1994 either

devastating that THIS has to be a wesley episode bc i wanted a better sendoff for my boy. "i had a vision and now i'm leaving starfleet" and yes they said the word vision in the most derogatory way possible. jesus christ

TRAVELER ALIEN RACEFAKING? HE PRETENDED TO BE NATIVE AMERICAN TO GIVE WESLEY THE VISION? and then he was like haha don't you know all that stuff is fake. (picard earlier in this episode "i am sooo respectful of your beliefs")

furthermore when picard was like "oh yeah this guy blames me for the crimes of my colonizer ancestor" girl at no point did he say that. idk if white people should go around accusing other white people of white guilt so i don't say this lightly but jesus christ captain picard can you tone it the fuck down buddy

i came across a gifset today of picard from season 5 (idr the episode) going "starfleet doesn't want officers who blindly follow orders sayign you're just following orders has been used to justify too many tragedies in our history" and then smash cut to this episode where he's like "well i tried but yeah i'm gonna have to move you sowwy :/" like good lord.

anyway it's a bummer these last few eps of tng have been less than great bc ik tng is capable of good episodes and i was hoping this series would go out on a high note. but it's going to end the same way it began with us waiting for something good to happen and throwing popcorn at picard

TONIGHT: ds9's "the maquis part i" and tng's "firstborn." i am Braced. for trouble.

[lovedeluxe92]

okay so i started working at jimmy johns in early febuary of this year. i needed a job rlly bad and money desperately, just something to keep me afloat and to afford food. what i experienced...i was not at all prepared for lmao. i was sexually harassed, verbally harassed, had my hours fucked with, had management and even the owners of the company who could give a fuck less about their employees, had to deal with my fellow coworkers AND managers being on k2 and other drugs, and the final fucking straw which was getting my tip money stolen from me OUT OF THE SAFE BY A MANAGER. i started working as a delivery driver. which was INCREDIBLY stress inducing at first bc i worked at the one right downtown. i had to deal with

i started working as a delivery driver. which was INCREDIBLY stress inducing at first bc i worked at the one right downtown. i had to deal with

traffic, pedestrians NOT LOOKING WHERE THE FUCK THEY WERE GOING DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MANY PPL I ALMOST KILLED CAUSE /THEY/ DID NOT LOOK, we have ‘parking police’ and i legit got about 15-20 tickets during my time there bc that asshole was out for blood and anytime he saw my car, even if i wasnt parked illegally (oh did i mention we had like 3 parking spots all on the street and all with a 2 hour limit (: ) or hadnt been parked in a spot for the full 2 hours. so there was that. 

see when i first started everything was fine. we had good employees who worked hard and did what they had to do. they were all stoners, but whatever i could care less about that. SO. our assistant manager, he was a mess. racist, homophobic, rude, loud. the worst. we would do dabs out in his car (yeah i know but i worked at a fucking jimmy johns) and he would just say the most questionable shit. i remember this one time he saw my phone background was a pic of me and my bf and was like ‘oh you like black guys? what’s your sex like? i bet it’s really good’ and im not gonna go into too much detail here, bc it upset me and its racist,  but he kept going and said some REALLY creepy shit i was like wtf and told him to never speak to me like that again or i would report him for sexual harassment (side note: one time he thought i did report him for sexual harassment and was like “who are you gonna buy weed from now?” LITERALLY ANYONE YOU PIECE OF SHIT.) he would always be like “DAMN THICK’ whenever i would bend over and do everything. I TOLD MY MANAGER AT THE TIME. she  didn’t do anything. AND the owners of the franchise definitely knew bc like...there’s cameras and they can hear everything we say? but no one did fucking anything. and i needed the money bad so i had to stay. of course i told him off constantly. he was white and always saying the n word. just a piece of fucking shit. 

i think the happiest day of my life was when he FINALLY got fired. my manager had to go to another city for a week and help out that jimmy johns bc i guess ALL the employees and managers did a walk out (yeah this happens at all the jimmy johns owned locally in my area i wish i was kidding) and left his inept ass in charge. it took him 5 mins to make sandwiches (FREAKY FAST hello????) he was just a poor manager. but THEN he started using k2 again. and he was a zombie. there was no point of him even being there bc like he would just go to the back of the store and just stand in front of the freezer door staring for like 10-15 mins at a time.i was a driver and didnt know how to make sandwiches yet and this bitch seriously was just standing there cracked out of his mind on k2 in FRONT of customers (and i will say our customers were SO nice at least) takking phone calls slurring his words. it was embarrassing. i rememeber i had 2 customers who had waited almost a HALF HOUR for ONE sandwich bc i was having a panic attack and losing my fucking mind trying to make their sandwiches while he was in his truck getting high and refusing to come in. one of the customers actually gave me a tip and told me i was doing great and the other one was like ‘im so sorry this is happening to you, that guy is  fucked up’. anyway, he passed out on k2 in his truck one night and got the cops called on him and got banned from the property :) i still saw him from time to time and he looked disgusting & miserable and it made me so happy. 

mostly we just had grown ass employees, fucking 30 year olds, just acting like children. always on drugs. i had one coworker pretend to slap my ass and i called him out and he was like ‘it’s a joke im not apologizing’. people would try to take deliveries from me. AND LET ME JUST SAY, not even to fucking brag even slighly but i was the best worker there my entire time there bc regardless of where im working i am giving my 100% every day and no one else there would. but ppl always tried to step over me and did not respect me. we had one coworker who had 3 felonies and one day like 4-5 cops came to our store to tell us to call the cops the next time he showed up for work (surprise surprise he fled bc they took an hour to get to the store despite the fact we were literally like not even 4 blocks from the police station) and he was always high on k2. forever late. day after day no call no show. he had his friend get hired on who would go down to subway and talk shit about subway in his uniform??? lmao and subway called us one day and was like ‘can yall not?’ he also threatened to burn down the store and then my manager (who was always on a power trip if we’re being honest) purposefully withheld his paycheck to fuck with him, because he was fucking with her, so we dealt with him WAY longer than we should have? 

then this one bitch that became manager, SOMEHOW, we were seriously always that desperate for staff and we hire anyone bc the managers are overworked af and just want to take the load off. anyway, SHE was always high on k2 as well. and she would always overshare rlly traumatic personal things from her life to me and all the customers and its like....girl we dont wanna hear that pls try and get some help. she was not currently being abused, i wanna specify. she was talking about things from her past. i sympathized with her but like im a victim of dv too lmao i dont wanna see your bruises without being asked first. and then i remember one day i left my money bag there (i kept my tips in it and had like $37 in there or something) and this bitch who was making MORE MONEY THAN ME seriously fucking went into the safe (we caught her on camera lmao) and stole that money out of my bag and left a few bills to make it seem less suspicious i guess??? lied about it to my face? then quit bc she ‘wasnt gonna sit there and be accused of something i didnt do’ like ok lmao

then to top it all off at one point my old manager just stopped giving a fuck and the store went to shit and we got complaint after complaint and she started being so rude to all of her staff, including myself (and we were like besties so i was devastated) and she cut my hours when she was submitting our work times for the checks because i would clock in early to help out....LIKE SHE ASKED? and it was just everything i said to her...her response was just the most rude and hateful voice and just....it was so rude. i cried every single day after work. she eventually got replaced and then quit 

but then this new manager, whom i loved, was very depressed and just had a lot wrong with him mentally but he was still very....drama starting and attention seeking. he would talk about suicide nonstop 24/7 and not to be callous but it just made me so uncomfortable and triggered me so much? they did overwork him and i will attest and agree to that and he had a lot on his shoulders but he couldve gone to mcdonalds literally any day and gotten a job with better hours, better pay, and better benefits. i kept telling him over and over to leave bc he had so much managerial experience he couldve been hired anywhere! all resteraunts down here are perpetually hiring, especially for managers! i would know bc i was looking for another job lmao. but he’d text me every night saying things like ‘well lets hope i drink myself to death’ ‘suicide is painless’ etc. and it was just......VERY uncomfortable for me, as someone who has attempted suicide and still struggles with ideation from time to time lmao it was just the most triggering environment ever 

like idk how i lasted that long but i worked my ass off, saved up my money, have a good paying job and im trying my best to forget this entire experience (honestly i did have some good times) but i really dont....think i can lmao 

ON A POSTIVE NOTE: we had some of the kindest and most caring customers ive ever had in my life. i was shocked. but the amount of times i had a shitty customer in my entire time there i can count on one hand lmao like....even when they were shitty they were like ‘im sorry i know yall work hard and everything’ like i miss my customers SO MUCH because we actually had relationships with them and shit and ugh god. if the customers were shitty tho i would never have kept this job lmfao 

i stayed at this job simply bc i made enough money for rent and my bills perfectly and it was one of the few jobs where i was paid an hourly wage + tips. and i wanted my next job to be a job in my field. that’s why i stuck around so long, it took some time to do that.

so yeah theres my mess i love anyone who read this and you can have my first born and be the beneficiary to my life insurance when i die

[topicprinter]

Hi all, I recently wrote this post about how Drip screwed over its most loyal customers and I thought perhaps /r/Entrepreneur would get value out of my lessons learned.----If you’re not familiar, Drip is email marketing software that’s pretty heavy on the marketing automation front. I won’t do them the courtesy of a link, so you’ll have to Google them if you want to check it out.They’ve been around since 2012 or so, founded by someone I trusted, but he sold the business to Leadpages a few years ago, and it’s been going downhill ever since.I’ve been using them for years as the backbone of two “side” businesses: IndieHive, which covers this website for freelancers and the related products and services that I sell, and Everleads, a curated lead generation site for freelance designers and developers.In 2016 and 2017, I really dug deep into Drip. I built out dozens of interconnected workflows to carefully shepherd my subscribers through various funnels and sequences with duplicate emails or annoying content that’s not relevant to them. I integrated my web front-end with their APIs so that I could customize the site for subscribers. I wrote bridging scripts to connect it to Mixpanel for analytics, and I used Zapier to hook Drip up to even more services. It was the heart of my entire business, and it was awesome.But throughout 2018, things started to go awry.I kept experiencing glitches in the workflows where people would get stuck on workflow steps that should be instant, like “remove tag”. Or people would end one workflow and start another, but not have any of the data that the first workflow had set. There were honestly dozens of these little glitches, but individually they were minor.Also troubling: deliverability started to slip. Not precipitously, and I can’t prove that it wasn’t just my emails, but I have heard from others that they were having issues with getting their emails into people’s inboxes in 2018.But the most egregious thing for all of this was that support was basically no help at all. I probably opened two dozen support requests in 2018 and I’m not sure they actually resolved a single one. We’d spend hours going back and forth so they could even understand the problem. Then they’d almost always say one of two things:“For a workaround, just insert a number of delays between steps in your workflows so that the system doesn’t get confused!” So all my workflows had little 5 minute delay steps to try and make sure things worked correctly. Which they still didn’t. Wtf.Or they’d just say they need to escalate to the developers and then I’d get an email weeks or months later from some random support engineer letting me know they were still looking into why the most basic functions of their software don’t work right. Awesome.Alarmed by this, I repeatedly researched alternatives throughout 2018, but nothing seemed worth going through the pain of migration and the risk of just having similar issues somewhere else. So I kept resolving to be patient with Drip and hope (pray) that they were hard at work at undoing whatever architectural disaster had led us here.And then…In early January 2019, while I was on a relaxing cruise with my wife for our 15th anniversary, I got an email from Drip:https://ryanwaggoner.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/drip-bullshit-pricing-email-2.pngSo basically: “Hey, we’re raising our prices in 12 days! You can keep your current price if you switch to an annual plan!”And if you read it carefully, there’s something pretty important missing from this email.It doesn’t say what the new pricing is**. Seriously wtf.**So I emailed to ask. They responded the next day (so now I have 11 days) to reveal they were doubling my monthly price.Drip raised my price from $184 / month to $368 / month with 12 days notice.That’s just about the worst way imaginable to treat your oldest and most loyal customers.And it was the last straw for me.Now, to be clear, I completely understand wanting to grow a company in a new direction, or thinking that you need to raise prices to reflect more value.But you don’t do it when your platform is half-broken, you don’t do it with 12 days notice, and you grandfather in existing customers, at least for long enough for them to migrate. Also, you tell them the price when you tell them that prices are rising.It’s hard to imagine how Drip could have been more disrespectful to their customer base than what they did here.So as of last month, I switched all my subscribers to ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign for Everleads and IndieHive, respectively. That’s thousands of dollars that Drip won’t be getting from me. I managed to get both setups completely migrated off just before their billing renewal dates, in one case with literal minutes to spare.It was a pain and required some late nights but it was worth it to deny them another penny.I’m not alone in feeling upset about this. Twitter was ablaze for weeks with people who were angry and bailing for greener, more respectful pastures. I’ve taken a sick joy in watching a lot of people migrate off Drip with much larger lists than mine.I also cancelled Leadpages in favor of Instapage. I was already unhappy with Leadpages, mainly because it feels pretty clunky and dated, they aren’t very responsive to user feedback, and they’re still missing some pretty basic things (like being able to pass form data to the thank you page. Seriously?).Side note: I was going to link to the Leadpages idea portal, but they apparently shut it down. Makes sense, since it was filled with hundreds of good ideas with many, many customer votes that had been ignored for years.Regardless, even if Leadpages was awesome, they own Drip and I won’t give another penny to such an unethical company that treats its customers so poorly.And this migration was a huge pain (which is what they were counting on), partly because of how complex my Drip setups were, but also because ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign are both pretty different from each other and from Drip. On the surface, they all do some of the same things, but once you dig in, things diverge, which made the migration especially painful.Drip is complicated. Stupidly so. In fact, it’s so complicated that there are a number of problems using it:It doesn’t really work. I mean, it does like 99% of the time, but that last 1% means that some of your subscribers are going to have a bad time. And it’s not just that their emails won’t show up. They might just get stuck in a workflow, or skip some emails in a sequence, or get things at the wrong times, or lose data, etc. And since this happens randomly, the number of subscribers who experience it accumulates over time.The customer support reps don’t really know how it works, because it’s too complicated. So you end up spending hours writing up descriptions of the problem and putting together screencasts to show how things don’t seem to be working, and the only response you get is that they’ll have to ask the developers.It encourages you to setup really fancy complex automations which, even if they did work, are way beyond what you actually need. Just imagine: you can do anything! You can track everything! You can have an unlimited number of tags and fields! Track and automate all the things!Your setup can end up being really brittle and deeply tied to the Drip architecture, which is a problem if you want to migrate off. And it’s hard to expand and modify over time without breaking all kinds of things for your subscribers who are in those automations.The setup is hard to document. It’s easy to end up with a large collection of documents and spreadsheets and screencasts to try and explain not only what you did, but why you did it.It’s hard to audit and debug when things go wrong. And things will go wrong. It’s hard to tell exactly what’s happening with your subscribers, where things went off the rails, and how to get it back on track without screwing things up further.In the end, Drip for me felt like a really shitty programming language. Technically possible to do almost anything, but so painful that in the end you wish you hadn’t bothered.By contrast, ConvertKit is simple. And yes, I think it’s too simple in places. I think there are some genuine gaps in the functionality that makes it a little too hard to get done the things you want.But I’m also aware of the fact that I’m coming from Drip and a really convoluted setup, so being forced to simplify is probably a good thing.And ActiveCampaign is not simple, but it’s powerful in a bunch of ways that Drip should have been. Additionally, it has the distinction of actually being, you know, functional. Crazy, I know.Also, ActiveCampaign apparently is more open to feedback than Drip. I posted a Twitter thread listing some things that I like about it and Jason VandeBoom, the founder of ActiveCampaign, setup a call with me to go over some of my feedback. And ActiveCampaign isn’t a tiny company; they have hundreds of employees and are much larger than Drip. It meant a lot to me that Jason would just jump on the phone with a random customer to see how they could improve.Meanwhile Drip’s emails aren’t even signed by an actual person. During this whole debacle, I don’t think anyone from Drip actually responded to anyone’s tweets or complaints. A couple days after the initial announcement when things were blowing up on Twitter, they sent this out another email that was basically "sorry, not sorry"Just like their price increase, all of their corporate communication just screams “We don’t care about you. Go away.”So I did.I’m actually really glad that I dropped Drip, after all that. Partly because of how much better ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign are as tools, but mostly because it taught me a lesson about how you need to be careful when you’re a small company about who you integrate with, because while your interests may align now, that could change at any point.But this rant has gone on long enough, so I’ll save that point for a future post.Disclaimer: just in case Drip decides to sue me (which would be so on-brand for them at this point), ALL the descriptions of Drip’s functionality, failings, and communications is to the best of my recollection and should not be taken as a literal word-for-word account.----Happy to answer any questions about my experience with Drip, ConvertKit, or ActiveCampaign. Would also love to hear anyone else's experiences with any of those (or others you'd recommend in the space of email-based marketing automation).Original post: https://ryanwaggoner.com/drip-pricing-review/

[ionqins]

170525 EXO’rDIUM in NY/NJ fan account

tl;dr: don’t camp out if you want to enjoy the concert.

before i jump into the actual concert day, here’s a summary of the announcement and ticketing extravaganza.

so mymusictaste (mmt) officially announced exo’s “north american” tour in ny and la on feb 9. they also announced that “makers” got to buy their tickets during the presale before the general public and also get 10% off their ticket (1 ticket per maker). “makers” are people who had gone onto mmt’s official site before ~9pm feb 9 (up until about one hour after mmt posted their announcement), made a (free) account, and clicked on the “make” button for exo in ny 2017. 

immediately, there was an uproar from fans- on how the whole makers getting a presale is unfair, on how soon the tickets are going on sale, and on how exo isnt going to nearly as many stops as last year. atlanta fans were especially upset because their city had one of the highest “makers” from last year - which was supposedly what mmt uses to decide which cities to hold concerts in - and mmt skipped atlanta both last year and this year. mmt, of course, stayed mute to all the complaints thrown at them, as they always do.

fast-forward to ticket presale day. my sister and i were ready with our 7 devices on ticketmaster, waiting for a bloodbath and not taking any chances, seeing our exo ticketing experience last year- standing ga ended up being ordered by ticketing number rather than fcfs, something mmt didnt clarify until after the sales. this year, the entire presale ended up being anti-climatic. fans found (supposedly from mmt’s site) that about ~3k fans were “makers” but it seemed like barely a few hundred made any dent on the presales. ga was wide open and the only really popular sections were the closest seated rows.

a few days later, the general sales opened up and the ~10k venue ended up selling about half the seats, a number that didnt really increase drastically after the first day of sales.

and fans blamed the poor ticket sales on mmt’s lack of promotion (but they promoted the same way as they did for last year’s sold-out show) or the concert being on a weekday (but so was bts’s sold out show a month prior) or expensive tix for no fan interaction (again, last year’s show had the same situation) or the presales discouraging non-makers to buy tix (but they literally had to take 30sec and navigate to the ticketing page to realize that presales barely did anything) or exo not going to as many stops as last year (i truly don’t understand how this is an excuse for lack of sales- shouldnt fewer stops mean more packed venues for the existing stops? specifically, northeast coast fans wouldve still had prudential center to fill up).

the real reasons for low sales were: 1- exo’s decreasing popularity in the US- it’s embarassing to see how exo fans refuse to see this fact. fandoms rise and fall, it’s the circle of life and there’s nothing to be ashamed of. exo may have been one of the more popular - if not the most popular - kpop concert act (i say this instead of simply “kpop act” because big bang is still the most popular household name) in the states, but there’s a new lion in town.

2- speaking of lions, bts’s tickets went on sale long before exo’s was, and most fans are younger and wouldnt be able to afford two concerts within a month of each other. but going back to point 1, im gonna go out on a limb here and say that even if these announcements/concerts were chronologically flipped, bts still would have sold out, just as they sold out every single other venue in their entire wings tour. and exo would still have a visible number of emptiness in their concert. the amount of negativity (“exo will never come to the states again”, “american exo fans are terrible”, telling fans to give their tickets away for free if they can’t make it - this was the biggest wtf moment i had during the ticketing experience. how about /you/ buy a $200 ticket and donate it to a fan?) leading up to the concert was appalling. i wish american exo fans start taking these experiences on a positive note and enjoy everything to the fullest while it lasts, instead of acting whiny and immature and blaming the organizers for the fandom’s own lackings. onto the actual concert experience. both my sister and i worked until regular hours the day before the concert, so we left home at around 7pm and drove up to the venue close to 11pm. the line was already at least 15+ tents and about 100 people from what we could see. i dropped my sister off with her sleeping bag and parked/checked in at the hotel we were staying at about a 10 minutes-walk away. i walked back to the venue (definitely sketchy neighborhood, would not rec to walk alone at night if you dont want to be cat-called). i brought a duffle bag and smuggled out a hotel pillow and towel, along with some food, water, a portable charger, and two umbrellas. it was only somewhat chilly (lows of 50s) but the rainy weather forecast was what worried us the most. i camped out for a few hours and then walked back to the hotel around 2am (again, would not rec) since i hadnt bought a sleeping bag and the cold was getting to me. i slept until 4am and then checked on the sis, and then slept again until 7:30am. /aside/ i was supposed to wake up at 6am and switch places with my sister but my phone alarm apparently doesnt go off when it’s in the ultimate power save mode, aka i was a terrible person and had my sister waiting for over an hour out in the cold and rain /end aside/ it had been constantly drizzling all night, with some wind to add to the chill. i took some hotel breakfast to-go and walked back to the venue to see everyone’s pale and lifeless faces. the number of people in front of us had doubled to about 200 overnight so that was just excellent. my sister looked like a wreck so i sent her back to the hotel to get some actual shut-eye while i held the fort. mmt had said they’ll start wristbanding the ga line at 10am, to create a numerical order for when we go in. so my sister comes back at 9:30am and we wait. and wait. and enjoy the torrential downpour of rain that nj so graciously gave us. around 11am some staff comes out and tells us they wont be wristbanding until 1:30pm. so then my sister goes back to the hotel, hoping she could sleep this time. shortly after 12, another staff member comes out and tells us they’ll start wristbanding soon so get your tickets ready. panicking, i call my sister half a dozen times and finally get a sleepy response. she runs back just in time to witness the mess mmt will create with this wristbanding process. now logically, mmt staff should have gone down the line of campers and given out these numerical wristbands in the order that we had already put ourselves in. but did they? of course not, why would mmt ever be logical? so some staff up at the very front of the line yelled for us to stand up and make /another line/ in front of them, about 5 feet away from our original line. as expected, an absolute stampede of fans followed. fans who were behind us ran up in front of us, and fans who were originally in front of us were no longer there if they had temporarily left the line right before for a bathroom or coffee break. the “line” we had made wasn’t exactly a line, either, but more of a hoarde. in my haste i had forgotten my phone at our camping site, but my sister was nice enough to go back and get it while i held our place in this new standing line (my phone was undamaged but our sleeping bag and most of our food was crushed). so mmt made us wait standing in this new line for another hour before they actually began coming down and putting our wristbands on. they then told us that we can leave this line if we want but that putting ourselves in order again will ultimately be up to us and that they “won’t be held accountable” if people cut us or if we can’t get back in the same order. so literally :) what is the point :) of this new line and the wristbands then :) the merch line was supposed to open up at 1pm but since nothing ever happens on time with mmt, we should’ve known. i stood in the wristband line while my sister went to the other side where the merch line was. she comes back around 3:30pm with the lightstick. then i decide to go back to the hotel to drop off our remaining stuff so we could go into the pit with no bags. i also leave our umbrellas, which later turned out to be a mistake. at 4pm i get a text saying that mmt decided us standing in line wasnt enough, they wanted to barricade us so we’d feel like canned fish. the wind is howling by this time, and the temperatures had dropped to what it was the night before. it also started raining again. i walk back and was allowed to jump the barricade once one of the fans we were standing with yelled “sister!” these were the fans who were in line since the night before (with a sprinkling of fans who cut in line earlier that morning), so they meant business when someone requested to get back in line. so here we stand, squished like sardines as the weather gets more chilly and windy. and then it begins to rain, of course. i had left our umbrellas at the hotel so we wouldnt have to carry anything into the pit but that was a grave mistake. we all tried to huddle under the nearest umbrella that we could, but the winds blew the rain every which way so nearly everyone was soaked in the end. someone behind us was nice enough to give us plastic trash bags, which we made holes into to wear like ponchos. it was 5pm, then 6pm, when we could see staff inside spreading out carpets and then standing around. then 6:30 came, one hour before the concert and supposedly the time when doors open. but open they did not. after a few people called the venue, we were notified that there was “production issues” so we won’t be let in until 7pm. some assumed there was a previous event for which they had to clean up, others thought there was something wrong with exo’s stage, itself. many of us, including me, were shivering non-stop by this point. but we didnt have any other choice but to wait. 7pm comes by, and the doors were still shut and the staff inside still in their place. more phone calls later and again we learn that opening the doors is delayed by another half hour to 7:30. aka when the concert should have begun. between 7 and when they finally let us in at around 7:45, there were at least four people who either fainted or had panic attacks and had to be ushered inside (after fans had to continuously bang the windows to get the staff’s attention- and no, we weren’t just impatient to get let in so please come outside smh). 7:45 and we’re inside. i’m still wet and shivering and too cold to take off my jacket and put it over the railing as i had planned. my friend was near the back of the ga line and she barely made it in when the concert began at 8:25, one hour after the advertised time. the concert was a blur, to be honest. this has to be the first time i yawned during a concert, and that, too, several times. most of the fans around me were equally tired. i had gone to the exoluxion concert at the same venue a year prior, and the difference in energy was striking. (with exoluxion, mmt had us lined up by ticket number so there was no camping out needed, no bad weather, and no one-hour delay). exo was fantastic, and despite their jetlag they were giving it their all. they made a few funny mistakes here and there but they just laughed it off and continued. the remixed versions of their older songs were very neat and i loved the upgraded pyrotechnics this year. i stood near the side of the stage where kai (ofc), chen, kyungsoo, and suho showed up the most. not to be biased but kai actually stole the show. being his usual self he gave each dance move his 110% and his smiles were absolute killer. his hair was also glorious, good goly what a mane. overall i did enjoy the concert. exo themselves put out a wonderful show, and sme provided a beautiful stage to watch the glory in. i just wish i had been awake to appreciate the boys more after waiting to see them for so long.