I find myself asking similar questions when these stories come up. Even after accounting for alcohol (they could force breathalyser tests at badge-pickup time t

I find myself asking similar questions when these stories come up. Even after accounting for alcohol (they could force breathalyser tests at badge-pickup time to reduce drunks inside...), it just doesn't fit very well. I suspect it's incorrect to think that the offenders are often socially inept. In this universe, being an "[anything] geek" is OK now. Programming and techie-ness in general are "cool". While it has resulted in less bullying for the nerds, the tradeoff is that techies and the like no longer fit into a small range of human personalities, which conveniently explains why the more mono-personality conventions of old were more respectful. The personalities now more closely represent society as a whole, which is filled with ravenous, over-confident, and over-sexed pickup machines. Indeed, the types of behaviors reported sound a lot more like the work of college fraternity bros than any of the privacy-loving/shy/asexual/low-libido/antisocial/"socially inept"/functionally-autistic/egalitarian nerds (who rarely go to conventions (let alone the after-parties) in the first place because crowds!) that were previously what made up a great percentage of the tech population.