powflip

Recently back from a trip to the Pacific north west.

Recently we've seen the passing of comic artist Ed Piskor. I don't want to make this about him, but rather I want to address the people, still living, who harassed and hounded him. As for Ed himself, let me say this: I have no reason to doubt any of the allegations made about him. I am not taking his side, I am not defending any of his actions. His family, fans, victims and friends have my sympathies. I even feel badly for his abusers who likely didn't really understand what they were doing. But it was this unfortunate event which triggered old memories and anxieties in me, and which made it abundantly clear that far too many people are willing to engage in, or defend emotional abuse, and even celebrate and promote it. And I felt sick. And I felt let down by the comics community at large.

In my own case, years ago, I was working for a kickstarter funded project called FXT. It was, I believed, a wonderful opportunity for me to engage in comics on a professional level. It was essentially my doorway into comics as a career path. I was getting to write and illustrate a serialized comic work, and I was in the company of many skilled artists whom I respected and who I believed shared a mutual respect. Then something odd started to happen. One artist in particular began to reply to posts I made on tumblr. Not with compliments. Nor with an intent to promote our work on the project for mutual benefit. But with criticisms. Then they upped things, now they were openly asking their friends and followers what they thought about the things I posted or reblogged, or even just things that my friends posted and which I had no involvement in creating. Eventually they seized on a post by a friend that talked about (in essence as I don't remember the specific wording, I can no longer find the specific post) about how cool it was that a woman was drawing and writing Dorohedoro. I didn't even write the post, but for some reason my reblog of it was in turn being reblogged and people who were friends of this artist were making comments about how I was sexist and transphobic for it (their reasoning for claiming so was never actually explained in any of these posts). Then they began going through my post archive and reblogging, with added criticisms, anything they found suspect. They were telling mutual followers to unfollow me, and so on.

At the time I was in a particularly bad place mentally. I had just lost my job, lost my girlfriend of two years, had to sell my car, had to drop out of college, and had to move back in with my mom (where I was subjected to further abuse from her alcoholic sociopath ex-husband). And then as soon as the harassment on tumblr started, my editor, my contact at FXT, who had been so excited for the project, so supportive and helpful in getting the ball rolling, basically cut all communication with me. Her communications became terse, and infrequent. Comics was, it seemed at the time, my only way forward. My last chance out. And suddenly it was over. All the other artists hated me. My editor wouldn't speak to me. People were making veiled threats about how comics is a small circle and "everybody talks" - with the implication everybody would avoid working with me in the future. I thought about death every day. I thought about it a lot. And I thought about it a lot for years. My friend who made the original post about Dorohedoro being an awesome comic, she stopped talking to me too. I can't really blame her, but the emotional load was great.

Here I was, online to have fun and make connections, to find a way out of the general mess of my life at the time, and then getting back-stabbed by somebody I thought was friendly to me, and for what? I never could figure out the reason, except I suppose that I was an outsider to the group working on FXT. Even after this, this artist continued to target me. They no longer interacted directly. For example, I made a post about how well done the sound effects were in One Punch Man. So they made a post about how badly done the sound effects were in One Punch Man. And on and on. I never could figure out their motivation, but the constant nitpicking of everything I did wore me out, and gradually I just lost my will to engage with the comics community. It had been made clear that I wasn't welcome, and I wouldn't be welcome. Even if I didn't interact with that particular clique, they would still be watching, mocking and criticizing. Other comic artists told me that this artist was even talking shit about me at conventions. I didn't have money to go to conventions. I had nothing. There was no conceivable way for me to combat this, there was no way to fight back, there was no way to be heard. The door was slammed in my face, and that was that. There was a power imbalance and they leveraged it at every opportunity. I didn't have the resources, monetary, or social, to gain equal footing in this space. And the thing is, all the people abusing me had no idea. They probably thought they were being funny, and it wasn't really a big deal to me. And if it was a big deal, so what? They were good guys and I was a nobody.

This experience fundamentally changed me. I felt committed to comics, but everything started to turn into a slog. I stopped sending pitches. I gave up on my webcomic (after 200+ pages). I no longer went to any conventions that weren't local (why save up money to spend time with people who probably hate you?). But the worst thing was, any time somebody was friendly to me, I felt great anxiety. I was constantly paranoid that people were just being friendly so they could pull the rug out from under me later. Was this person actually friendly? Or was it a trick? I probably lost out on a lot of relationships because I no longer had trust in the comics community. In retrospect, this is horrifying. I didn't know at the time that I was suffering from trauma, and that this was tainting and perverting my otherwise totally normal interactions with others. I was hurt, and I was hurt badly, but I didn't know just how badly, how deep, how all-encompassing that hurt was.

When the news broke that Piskor was dead. The reaction from the comics community at large was basically revolting to me. There was little reflection. No soul seeking. No asking how this could have happened. One of his long time critics, within just a few hours of his death, posted a rambling, self-centered, narcissistic rant about how he was really the victim, and how Piskor had denied all of us justice by dying. Zero self-awareness, a completely monstrous lack of human empathy, and people basically cheered this guy for being the hugest fucking asshole a person could be in that moment.

"LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME!!!!"

And the crowd cheered him. I don't know if the guy is malicious, or just really monumentally stupid and self absorbed, but that's neither here nor there. What got me sick, was the reaction to what he wrote. People were telling this narcissistic jackass that he was completely right. After doing so much damage, needlessly, pointlessly, and without a hint of empathy or self reflection, he was getting thousands of likes. Piskor was the bad guy, he himself was abusive. So any, and all reactions, no matter how destructive or unhelpful were apparently not only justified, but worth celebrating in the wake of his death. And I realized, comics is fucked. The people in comics are fucked. This whole scene is super fucked.

When I was younger, less thoughtful, and less empathetic, I used to join in on the dog piles. After all, calling somebody out is the right thing to do, isn't it? You're right, they're wrong, and you posting about how you're right and they're wrong is how you show how right you are, and how wrong they are. Righteous, right? When I got a little older and a little less stupid, I stopped doing this. After all, if hundreds of other people are already saying it, then what even is the point to me just saying the same thing again? People feel compelled to join the dog pile because they think it demonstrates how good they are. But dog piling doesn't bring justice to anybody. It doesn't solve any problem. It's just posturing. It's masturbatory. Some people dog pile out of peer pressure. They'll attack somebody they don't know, for something that doesn't effect them. They don't seek resolution, they don't seek understanding. We even see people getting threats for NOT engaging in the dog pile - again straight up psychological violence.

"You're not attacking this guy? You're a terrible person and we're not friends and I'm going to tell people to unfollow you".

Emotional manipulation committed in broad daylight without the slightest hint of guilt.

A perfect example of how pointless and stupid this dog pile mentality can be was, again perpetrated on me by twitter users a couple years ago. I tweeted that I didn't see the point in adding another like to tweets that already had several thousands of likes. It just seems kinda pointless. For several days this tweet went entirely uncommented on. Then a couple of popular artist picked it up and for reasons that are still baffling to me, took it as an insult. So of course they directed their hundreds of thousands of followers to harass me. I got thousands of hate tweets, and even some threats, for expressing an opinion that targeted nobody. Nobody was named, nobody was harmed by my tweet. This went on for days. For days, just totally unhinged tweets about how much of a shithead I was. And when I said people were overreacting, that was just more proof of how much of an asshole I was being. So I fully know just how stupid and petty these harassment campaigns can be. And I fully know how malicious the popular accounts that stoke them are. I bring this instance up basically to give an idea to those who've never been on the receiving end of this kind of harassment just how pointless this kind of thing can be. Drama invented out of nothing. Harassment for no purpose. And thousands still went along with it, with no apparent thoughts or questions about why they should get so mad over nothing, or what they were trying to accomplish by harassing me. Somebody told them to be mad, so they got mad. Somebody told them to attack, so they attacked.

Social media doesn't reward those who think before they act. They reward those who shout loudest, soonest. The first time I fully understood this was also because of something I witnessed on tumblr. A social worker (who wasn't even on tumblr) was accused of being a stalker and assaulting trans people. The post was made by somebody who didn't know the social worker, or any of the alleged victims. Yet they still posted the story, this person's name and where they worked, and told people the story about what this person allegedly did. The accusation was reblogged tens of thousands of times. The apology for posting the accusation, when others who knew the social worker personally chimed in, got about 1/4 as many views. Being correct doesn't get views. Being thoughtful doesn't get clicks. Damage is done easily, repairing it is near impossible.

I post all this not because I want revenge or "justice" but because I want people to act with a little human empathy. To act with a little thought. To ask questions first, and give their opinions after they know what the fuck they are talking about instead of before. I want people to look at what people are posting, and to spot malicious intent, and to be wary of interested motives. I want people to ask themselves if their actions help anybody. Do I need to post this? Do I need to post this now? Am I helping anybody or am I just doing this for my own ego? I want people to reach out to victims of abuse, I want people to offer help to the abused.

I'd like if people would check in on their friends, coworkers, etc. and offer support when they're being targeted with abuse. Dog piling is never, ever, done to help people. It does not help, it cannot help. It is always self-serving, and it is always destructive. And the people who defend it, likewise are self-serving and destructive. People need to stop cheering the assholes, the narcissists, who promote harassment campaigns. We owe it to everybody to do better. We owe it to our community to be less toxic.

concept art