Also it seems the demographics of conventions have changed a lot. 30 years ago the majority of con growers were at least in their mid to late 20’s. Many were older.
Nowadays, a larger and larger number of con growers are under 20, and the old guard is thinning out. So there’s just less of us. And the young folks that are coming in grew up with everything being short form. Most of their social discourse takes place in a paragraph or less. Not specifically because they chose this, but because that was just what was available to them. We’re all to some degree a product of the environments that we grew up in.