While I can understand stuff about glomp me signs....I had a friend, many of whom you have seen around. He goes around in a white t-shirt with the words "Hug Me" on it. Now because he wrote on it with a marker, instead of oh say...BUYING ONE from the dealer's room with a "Hug Me Logo" thing...he was unable to have it. I mean this guy gets over 600 hugs, and I have NEVER seen him bother ANYONE. I believe that is when you start taking things a bit too far. Hell last year I had my Ryo-Ohki plush holding up a hug sign, and nobody bothered me. There was maybe a few times people didn't want hugs, and I respected that. I told a Staff member later, and he never even told me that doing such a thing was against the rules.
I saw a lot less freely given hugs, as well as glomps. I can understand especially with glomps, but c'mon. Have a little consideration for the people who do.
I also find it reprehensible that just because you have to have an official "Hug Me" T-shirt/Logo in order to wear a Hug Me t-shirt..that's just GREEDY and MEAN
This was actually covered at the meeting. This actually applies directly to my first post in this thread. It's not taking things too far. Idiots ruined it for the people that are respectable about it... it's as simple as that. I've been going to cons for over a decade. Signs didn't start up until around 2000-2001. I had no problem with them to be honest. Sure I thought the people carrying them around were quite pathetic, but that was it, no actual qualm. Now fast forward 4 years... After being hugged randomly dozens of times by people I did not know, and was rather repulsed by (their smell, their looks, and more)... Having guys follow my girlfriend around for about 10 minutes with a sign shoved in their face that says "HUG ME!" or something to that extent, having to wait 10 minutes to get through a hallway because someone with a sign gathered 20 people for a group hug in the center of a hallway, I realized it was an issue beyond just "letting people have fun".
The rule logically makes sense, and prevents a lot of things from happening to people that don't want it happening to them. There is no reason you can't hug people, there's no reason you can't glomp people, you just can't hold up a sign advertizing/soliciting it. Not to sound like an old jaded man, but why would you give out hugs to complete random strangers that you do not know, just because they're holding a sign? If you were walking around on the street and a guy was holding a "hug me" sign... would you hug him? Frankly, a con isn't much different, you can't really trust people just because they "LOLOLOL LIKE ANIMU".
Anyways, more things about my past you didn't need to know. I used to take people's wallets at UCLA just for fun. I'd promptly give it back to them and I did clear it with campus police as "a training excersize for a class". It was experimental theory about people and their awareness.
You guys don't realize how easy it is to steal from someone you're hugging. You apply pressure to their hip, and you can easilly steal a guys wallet without him realizing it, since (if you have any kind of dexterity at all) the feeling of his wallet being removed from the back pocket is exactly the same as the pressure from the sides of their waist.
Hmmm... maybe I should do this at fanime.