About

MAGCON (Meet and Greet Convention) was a planned tour event featuring a group of teenage comedians and musicians on the video-sharing site Vine. After touring for six months, the organizer announced in April 2014 that the remainder of the tour schedule had to be cancelled as a result of the group's disbandment, prompting hundreds of thousands of fans to lament the breakup of the Vine supergroup on Twitter.

History

MAGCON^[1] was created by Bart Bordelon^[2] in September 2013, after he met and became friendly with a young Vine star. In addition to a way for Viners to meet with their fans, the Con was started as a way to support an Anti-Bullying Campaign. As of April 2014, the tour has made stops in eight US cities: Houston, Dallas, Orlando, Washington DC, Nashville, Bay Area, Chicago, and San Diego. The tour began by stoping in Houston, Texas on September 28, 2013. Tickets are grouped into three tiers of admission: general admission, priority admission, and VIP Experience. General admission allows ticket holders to enter the Main Event Room to watch Viners perform and purchase merchandise, but does not allow them to meet the Viners. Priority admission allows ticket holders all the privileges of general admission and a meet and greet with the Viners, if there's time. VIP Experience allows ticket holders to have a guaranteed meet and greet, one MAGCON Signature T-Shirt, and a general admission ticket for the opposite day.

Members

The tour group is made up of 12 Vine stars, both comedians and musicians.

Notable Development

The Tour

Between September 2013 and March 2014, the tour made stops in eight US cities: Houston, Dallas, Orlando, Washington DC, Nashville, Bay Area, Chicago, and San Diego, during which the members continued to update their Vine feeds with videos from the events (shown below).

Tour stops featured photo opportunities with the Viners for fans, a dance party featuring DJ Mahogany LOX, performances by the musician Viners that sometimes gave the opportunity for fans to come on stage, and the opportunity for fans to buy merchandise.

Notable Development

Breakup

On April 17th, 2014, a few member of the MAGCON announced the tour would be disbanding. Carter Reynolds tweeted that he would miss his fellow Viners, saying:

Other MAGCON members tweeted about the tour disbanding, included Jack Johnson^[17].

Fan Reactions

That same day, fans began using the hashtag #cutformagcon^[15], a call to post self harm photos (often staged) similar to #cuttingforbieber. In less than 24 hours, the hashtag was tweeted out over 20,000 times. Other related trending hashtags included #RIPMagcon^[16], which was tweeted out over 66,000 times, and #Magcon^[20], which jumped from approximately 52,000 mentions on April 16th to more than 731,000 mentions on the morning of April 18th.

Nash Grier's Response

Also on April 18th, Nash Grier^[19] posted a video to his YouTube channel titled “MAGCON ENDING!?” (shown below). In the video, Grier explains that because his management team, which consists of his father and two family friends, could not reach an agreement with the director of MAGCON, the tour under that name would be disbanding, though he still plans on touring with his fellow Viners because of his desire to spend time with them and to meet his fans. He ended the video with a long list of assurances that the group would still be creating content together while Bob Marley’s “Everything is Going to be Alright,” played in the background.

Search Interest

The keyword "MAGCON" was ranked the fifth most searched term on Google on April 18th.

External References