An Unofficial 'Star Wars' Convention in England Was Incredibly Depressing

People are really mad at a Star Wars convention in Manchester, England, which, frankly, is brilliant. If you do not enjoy grown adults being furious at corporate accounts because they didn't get to meet Greedo in a warehouse one Saturday then sorry, you have insufficient joy in your heart. So look at this, from the Facebook page for three-day fan-created unofficial Star Wars convention "For the Love of the Force," and let your soul sing high notes from a roof above the city. Look at the state of these:

The main complains seem to be about the VIP tickets—that fans paid £60+ [€80+] to meet Greedo, eat a bleak pie, get a photo with an actor, and go to an Ewok village that only had two huts in it, and then when they went outside threatening-looking children had stolen their hubcaps, a heartwarming Manchester tradition—but fundamentally they are mad that Star Wars isn't real. "Only complaint was paying £9 [€12,40] for a wookie burger," is, bang-for-buck, one of the greatest Yelp review-esque complaints ever committed to the yawning abyss of a Facebook comments section. It says: The day was magical, but the burger was too expensive. It says: The plywood Millenium Falcon was convincing enough to make me forget—at least for one brief instance—the trudging futility of my life, but that disbelief was suspended when I had to break a tenner just for a burger with salsa on it.

I think we are all adult enough to admit now that: Going out and doing things is extremely bad. Making extravagant plans to do things are always doomed to make that thing a failure. But there is a rare beauty in grown adults being surprised by this fact, as if they have never been disappointed before in their lives. Yelp restaurant reviews and TripAdvisor screeds about hotel breakfasts. Dot-atting a train company on Twitter complaining that the 0858 was not only late, but full. The glorious annual tradition of parents taking their children to an all-in out-of-town Winter Wonderland and being disappointed that carnies dressed as elves charged them $9 [€12,40] for a picture with Santa and the reindeer were just donkeys with sticks tied to them. Anyone who books tickets for the first day of any Secret Cinema event. What do you truly expect from a £75 [€103] all-in Star Wars experience? Do you expect to have a go on a functioning jetpack? Do you expect to go into space? Do you think the Force is real?

We love complaining about things because we all have such arrogance that we expect perfection: when we go to a warehouse in Manchester and pay kids with their hair shaven off due to lice a fiver to not fuck with the the Citroen, we somehow literally expect to walk into Naboo and have R2-D2 greet us with a hologram when, instead, it's just seasonal-work actors in off-brand Jedi outfits and full Manc accents saying "EY UP THERE'S A RIGHT MITHER UP IN'T ENDOR GET THA SEN DOWN THERE WI' ONE OF THEM SLIGHTLY BATTERED PROP LIGHTSABERS." Once you pass the age of about 12, nothing is ever magical again, and every attempt to chase it is just going to leave you poorer, hollowly disappointed, and more furious. Anyway: life is hard and Star Wars is not real. Anything above $8 is fundamentally too much for a Wookie burger.

Follow Joel Golby on Twitter.