Meet the YouTube Star Responsible for This Year’s Festival Scam

Tana Mongeau drastically oversold the event, resulting in thousands of angry, dissatisfied fans.

Tana Mongeau
Tana Mongeau walks onstage at the 4th Annual Beautycon Festival Los Angeles at the Los Angeles Convention Center on July 9, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. (Tasia Wells/Getty Images for Beautycon)
Getty Images for Beautycon

Thousands of YouTube fans headed to Anaheim, California, on June 22 for TanaCon, a first-time convention started by YouTube personality Tana Mongeau. But instead of getting what they were promised, like selfies with online video stars, most fans only ended up with sunburn and gift bags filled with Mongeau-branded “TanaCondoms.” Police were ultimately called to the hotel where the event was being held after angry YouTube fans started climbing on hotel furniture. But The Daily Beast writes that TanaCon was probably failed from the start.

Mongeau claims that 15,000 unregistered people overwhelmed the venue, which she said has a capacity of 5,000. But the Garden Grove Police Department disputes this, saying the venue could only hold 1,150 people, which raises questions about why Mongeau and the convention’s organizer, Good Times Entertainment, had sold or given away tickets to nearly 4,000 more people than the venue can hold. The police also contradict Mongeau’s story about how many people showed up. In a clip filmed by one of Good Times chief Michael Weist’s associates, Mongeau and Weist can be seen and heard rapidly changing their claims about ticket sales way before the many problems became evident.

“We could drop it to 3,000 if we wanted to, instead of 5,200,” Weist says in the clip, according to The Daily Beast. 

“We could, but are we gonna?” Mongeau responds, later adding that “people love to be oppressed outside” in lines.

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