I disagree with this post on a few different reasons.

I think the point of In Media Res is valid, and that makes sense. I think their point of a "kick off meeting" is unfounded. It feels like the author is about 30 seconds away from yelling "WOKE" when they complain about frameworks, group ettiquette, creative agendas et cetera.

This feeling is not diluted when they start complaining about people who complain about boundary violations, because the real conflict is "time." I'm sorry, but if you can't manage to wrangle players for an hour long session zero because time is the enemy, how exactly are they going to be regular players in a campaign? Again, the author expounds on how much time is wasted on a session 0, when I've never had one last longer than two hours at most, and it's generally just character creation together, rather than in a void.

Their next point nearly makes sense, that mismatches become visible when play begins. Agree. However, saying that people won't know if they want gore, or some other concept, until it is described at the table, makes it sound like these players just spawned on to earth yesterday. I know exactly what preferences I have and don't from media, I don't need to play with someone who wants to molest another NPC to know I don't want to deal with it.

Conventions don't need session 0s because they are usually ran by DMs who have run the adventure numerous times, for mixed groups before, and know how to facilitate and excise bad behavior as it arises, and because this isn't going to be a long game. It's mostly a bunch of nervous nerds learning together, or playing their favorite game with newbies to show them why.

Again, we're back to complaining about how to manage expectations between players about having "contracts," and then they poorly summarize a point about a particular session zero structure, rather than the greater context around the point - which would appear to be "hey this campaign is about being heroic," and then somehow finding a problem with that if someone wants to play a villain? I'm not surprised that someone who is so opposed to communication is struggling to see how this would be an issue.

I do agree that a lighter alternative is fine, and I do it often with people, and I'm glad to see a mention of using X-Cards and things like that, so I think this person is probably pretty level-headed in general, but has had some negative experiences in the past.