Wednesday - November 3, 2004:

The success of webcomics on the internet has several things going against it. I've run into a couple, head on today. Both have to do with stubborn niches.

Thanks to Joey Manley, I once read an article declaring that in order to be successful working on the internet, you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. (Found it - a link to the article, "Slouching Towards Authorship" was posted by Joey Manley in his blog.) The article speaks specifically to comfort with technology on the internet, the theory being that a person who is content or comfortable with the technology they know is doomed because their skills are destined to become obsolete, quickly. The warnings are equally important for the webcomic world and even the broader art world. Many jobs, particularly the high paying ones involve a similar need for adaptability and there's the problem. For most people doing webcomics, their work on the internet is no job and so they're not necessarily interested or willing to be flexible or considerate.

In short, I ran into an inflexible, inconsiderate, and territorial moderator today who treated me, a newbie to a site, with offhanded disrespect. I'm less worried about me and my ego than with what that means for the webcomic world. Scott McCloud once told someone I know to stick around the internet for two years and people will know you and your work. What happens when the work is of the small-minded sort though? I always thought the internet would regulate itself and in a sense it does. I found a couple comments on the board in question wondering why there are so many visitors but so few posts on the board in question. I now know why. In those two years, an entrenched individual can collect power as well as clicks, a false and fleeting power to be sure, but power nonetheless. Their excercise of that power can hurt this little niche of the internet. Fortunately, I don't think there are many of these people out there, but, in my opinion, there's at least one too many. Please try not to be one. I know, after running into one, I'm going to try like hell to reach out, bite my tongue and and try to help not hurt.

In other news, by the time this gets posted, I hope the election is over. I fear it will end in litigation and Supreme Court intervention though. it's 5:30 EST now. we're on the edge of change. How long will we have to teeter? My prediction: Kerry will squeek this one out thanks to the youth vote. The Senate looks like it'll stay in Republican hands, but Kerry's 30 years might just mean a functional relationship between Republicans and Democrats, the executive and the legislative. We can hope.
 
-Bob Stevenson