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Except it wasn’t criticism, it was constant daily harassment. Look, I’ve been making comics for the internet for 10 years. I made comics for BuzzFeed for about two years, but people love to focus on those comics for some reason. They were simpler and quicker because I needed to publish at least one thing a day. And I loved it! I learned a lot!

At some point when I was getting really popular, Reddit and Tumblr decided they’d had enough and launched a targeted campaign against me. Tried to doxx me multiple times. Sent death threats. 4Chan threads started popping up for the sole purpose of spreading rumors that I’m a pedophile. All because I was making “lazy” comics and getting a salary for it.

Also, it’s always the same 10 or so comics that got posted as proof of my laziness. I made 1,008 comics at BuzzFeed (I counted). I worked really hard for my extremely mediocre salary.

Artists know other artists. If I'm having trouble with something specific, I can actively say "who do I know that does this really well?" and immediately come up with a shortlist of names belonging to people who I 1)trust to be honest and helpful and provide me with actual solutions to the problem I'm having, 2) know what they're talking about, 3) are at least somewhat familiar with my workload and process and 4) have time for my questions. If my issue is more involved, I will even offer to pay them for their time!

Most artists will not take unsolicited advice from random people on Tumblr or in their comments, and they shouldn't! You have no way of knowing if the person giving you critique has any experience, has any insight into what might work better, has any familiarity with anything about how you work, and so on. You also don't know anything about them personally, so you really can't trust that someone has genuinely good intentions towards you and isn't just fucking with you--that even if you did everything they said they wouldn't just move the goalposts until you finally realised that their goal wasn't to help you improve, it was to waste your time and jerk you around for as long as they could get away with.

Also, you never want to give people who consume your work the idea that they have power over the decisions you make, because then you set yourself up for caving to audience whim in a time and place where collective hate-reading is a thing that people do.

That's not to say that your readers shouldn't call you out if you say something shitty or racist or genuinely harmful, but that is an entirely different situation from constantly being hounded by a group of assholes who are all saying 'you're doing it wrong, do it a different way because I say so, and if you don't I'm going to tell everyone that you just can't take criticism!' Fuck that.

Every time I adjusted my art to fit the needs of some random critic, more would just take it’s place. Nothing I did was EVER good enough, and I eventually ended up burning myself out trying to accommodate everyone. I was getting hundreds upon hundreds of comments a day, and what did I get for listening to the feedback? Branded as “unable to handle criticism” by those whom I missed or didn’t listen to. It didn’t matter that I listened to feedback, because the second I didn’t listen to one person or they felt slighted by me for whatever reason, it was all over 4chan and SomethingAwful and the trolling intensified. It’s physically impossible to listen to hundreds of criticism and adjust our work to them all equally, yet we’re treated like that’s a fundamental aspect of our job.

This doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of why random criticism from online fans is kinda useless. The best type of criticism happens DURING the making of the work, when you still have time to change the art and adjust things easily. Once the work is completed and put out there, it’s not viable to go back and change things because you’re got other projects to work on and you can’t get hung up on what’s been done. There are deadlines to meet after all. But fans can only realistically comment on final works of art. They can’t usually comment on the behind the scenes process and influence the art in any meaningful way.

My longest paying gig was a 2 year stint drawing “the Brentalfloss Comic.” It was weekly, and I got scripts sent to me. I would draw up the comic, send it back, get notes on it, change things, and make adjustments. It was rough, but it worked because I was getting feedback BEFORE I finished making the comic. And it yielded some of the best work I’ve ever done. But when people criticize my work, they conveniently ignore those 378 comics. Strange...

Also, speaking personally here... the best type of feedback I could get is someone telling me what I did RIGHT. Not mindless “praise,” mind you... but what did you LIKE in my art? What did I do that you ENJOYED? I know what I did wrong. I drew it, after all. I don’t need the negative pointed out, because I know eventually I will overcome it. But I need positivity. I need people to tell me why I should keep making the art I do. If all an artist ever gets back is negativity and harsh criticism, they’ll quickly fall into depression and despair because they’ll feel their work is never good enough. So why bother? If every work of art is just going to spur more negativity, why bother making new work?

hi sorry uh. incredible miscommunication on my part lmfao.

>look inside

We need to start commenting under other people's posts about how to properly warn for flashing lights and eyestrain. We need to be emailing and calling companies about their possibly triggering advertisements that could induce seizures. We need to stop tolerating ableism and start speaking up for the more vulnerable.

Also, stop putting epilepsy warnings. That's like saying "warning: schizophrenia" on a post including unreality or "warning: dyslexia" on a post with a typing quirk. First off, the disability mentioned isn't the only group of people that this could trigger. Second, it doesn't truly get the message across and instead makes it worse for those with the disability-- scrolling through the epilepsy tag on Tumblr should get you to view the content of other epileptic people, but no, you just get a bunch of flashing lights and eyestrain, even though you could instead tag for, oh I dunno, flashing lights and eyestrain.

Pronouns

An accent

1. if you feel judged and hurt by others, try sleeping

2. if you feel judgmental and resentful of others, try eating (the classics)

3. if you feel uncomfortable, try showering

4. if you feel directionless and afraid, go sit outside for a bit and maybe then you'll calm down. maybe even a walk if youre feelin crazy