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Mar 2023

Man, I didn't think it'd happen but it did. First on a couple random places in reddit (basically it was "oh, you're the person who draws x comic!") and then it got almost weird, where someone actually found my discord and started bombarding me with messages about the comic out of the blue. And I keep my discord pretty personal so that was... I have no idea how they got it, lol.

I kind of have been a little panicked/distressed over it. I keep my pen name separate from everything else about me, but now I feel paranoid about my online presence in things outside the comic. Anyone else ever experience this sort of thing?

How do you handle it?

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    Mar '23
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    Apr '23
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Your particular experience has not happened to me. It has happened in RL but it was just hawkward since I didn't remember the person lol.

As for online I keep everything separate. Discord is also separate. I have a private discord and a pen name discord. Nothing mixes. Personal life doesn't mix with worker life. I haven't told any of my friends what I work in nor that I write. They basically know nothing lol.

That being said you probably slipped up on the discord thing. In one social media or in 1 post from the past you probably wrote something related to your pen name. It could have been a pretty old post or a pretty old comic related to a different name.

On the internet if you don't create everything from scratch and if you tell 1 person (even your partner) then your secret is out. Everyone knows it.

I recently found out the discord of another author with a different pen name in one old account they forgot they had. I asked them for advice though.

Point is you probably left a trail of crumbs somewhere.

Ah damn, you're probably right. I mean it's just one person but uh... they've been pretty.... weird...

It's been really weird. I haven't really been responding to them but they've been dead set on trying to talk to me.

I guess it's time to abandon that discord name, lol. I almost never use it (I literally only use discord to talk to old friends once in a blue moon) so it's easy enough to change. It was just a weird and unsettling situation.

I got you I am a paranoid person so I even created an alt email.

I am aware that once I tag my artist, on lets say instagram, I may get recognized on an alt social media account. But that is a risk I am willing to take.

I will act as if I don't know what they are talking about. Talking in another language and never confirming I am Katzalcoatl. I even plan to wear a mask if I ever sign anything.

Best thing you can do in those cases is just feign ignorance or change your name in discord/block the user.

Agreed. Would be nice to get recognized but only on the accounts you intended.
A personal account like what happened to @candiedcotton... now that's another story. It is creepy. But hey maybe they compared cotton's art and found out that discord. It can happen. It is just creepy when it does.

Haha, you sound like me. Yeah, privacy is a big deal IMO. I don't even like tiktok or facebook or any of that for the same reason. I just use tiktok for my comic stuff. Same with instagram and basically anything.

But I think feigning ignorance is the best bet. I haven't actually said a word to the discord person, was just hoping they'd sort of disappear. It's been about a week of it though, lol.

My work isn't big by any means, so I really didn't think something like that would happen.

Oh, that story about discord is... Unnerving :grimacing: Hope they weren't rude!
Not sure how I would react aside of being a bit shocked, but I guess it would be fine if they weren't aggressive, I don't mind talking to people who approach me online unless I have to do all the talking for some reason (you know how some people write to you trying to talk/make friends and then don't... talk? I find it so weird).

I only got a couple of recognitions on Reddit maybe, I posted some fanart pieces outside of usual r/webtoons last year and couple of people were "hey, you're the artist of H, I recognize the style" which made me squeal a bit xD

Outside literally. It's always nice if you've attending a con and there come some people who tell you they've been following your art for many years. I do appreciate such people the most who keep with me for many years and still do enjoy my stuff. It's a different sensation when you feel like your cheeks turn red when people tell you directly face to face :slight_smile:

Yeah that's totally different. I was genuinely stoked being recognized on reddit (I posted a random little panel on an art subreddit because I liked it and a couple people were like, "Oh you're the author of that!") and it was humbling. But the discord thing was absolutely different. Basically they sent this massive wall of text about how they liked how I drew bodies, perved all over the characters, and then... it got into this weird thing where they asking personal stuff about if I was self-inserting as one of the characters and if I looked like them... very very weird. I'm sure you can imagine how weird it got.

Yeaaah. I have been debating blocking them or ignoring. If I block them I'm concerned they'll realize it's an 'active' account and just make a new one to bother me, so I've basically just been pretending it's a dead account.

Now that's a wholesome story. The squeal made me laugh.
Same don't mind answering dms and stuff but on the account I intended for it.

If I ever got on a situation were they found my RL social media I would be like.

"No Hablo English." :sweat_smile:

And @candiedcotton do you also check if you didn't accidentally like/reacted to a video/image on social media being paranoid people from work might research you? 🤣🤣🤣:sweat_smile:🤣:sweat_smile::sweat_smile:🤣 i have like 3 different lifes. Work, Writer, and friends. Hopefully, I will be able to bring work and writer into one. Gotta work hard for that plus have a certain amount of luck.

I get really worried about work stuff for sure. The industry I work in is immensely toxic and full of a bunch of douchebags who think they're 'alpha' males, and to be frank, if my sexuality became known it'd unquestionably cause harm to getting jobs. It's stupid but it's true. Given the content of my webcomic it'd be a massive risk. So yeah, lol, definitely keep work identity stuff completely isolated from anything else. We're pretty much the same in that regard.

That discord thing sounds scary D:

I didn't have a situation like yours, but once I had my work recognized where I didn't expect it at all. I was talking with another artist, we were talking about hobbies and I said I used to make fandubs of vocaloid songs. It turned out she used to listen to them, there was this big 'IT WAS YOU???' moment and she said she even had one of my songs as a ringtone ; w; it felt very nice because by that time I had already stopped recording as I thought my covers were really bad and no one would listen to them.
(...I still think they were bad tho)

Also, I always get surprised when my real life friends tell me that they've read my comics. I never expect it because usually those are ones who just found the link somewhere (...and the ones to whom I actually sent the link almost never read it so...)

You should ask them how they got your discord name. Seems like a fair question to me :grimacing:

Luckily I've only experienced positive things when I got recognized somewhere else, phew.

I have a tiktok account under a different username and there were multiple times where I got comments like "Oh, i know this comic" or "Oh you made that comic!". They were flattering because, you know, tiktok is just so random. The way I handled them was just by saying thank you :laughing:

Oof, didn't expect a creepy experience like that when clicking on this thread :sweat_02:

But yeah, generally I'd love it if someone outside the comic circles I frequent recognized my stuff in a non-creepy way XD Unless it's family, I guess. I'm a bit scared of my family reading my comic, considering some of the subject matter I plan to write about :'D