Have any of you ever experienced bullying/harassment on Tapas or the Tapas forums?

I've never had any issues or anything, but I rarely post in the forums. I do linger a lot and read stuff a lot, and have for about a year now.

The bigger issue for me is that there's a real lack of solid conversation, it feels. There's a crap ton of threads circling around showing off, trading views/likes/subs/etc., some critique threads... but rarely more. I also have a lot of issues with the critique threads... I've seen some stuff where someone posts asking for critique and it just gets a ton of compliments or pointers so gentle that you can't really figure out what the critique actually is. And it'll be stuff where the anatomy or whatever is just severely in need of work and education.

There is a lot of fluff here, but at the expense of genuine discourse and support, I feel.

Tapas forums are very chill--especially when you compare it to Tumblr, or Twitter, or Discord type of fury where you basically can't ever share an opinion (for anything. hell you could just say "use reference" and start a war). In the years I've been here I've seen some very juicy threads that were entertaining to read through. Especially when the site changed it's entire layout and format without telling any of it's users beforehand that it was going to do it. It was rad. But since we no longer really have a way to talk/yell directly to the staff through forums it doesn't seem as valuable. They'll announce their activities on twitter/discord nowadays.

As for envy and follower count, I am somewhat blessed that my larger numbers are elsewhere, like my comic here with a few hundred subs does have 4K on WT but no one seems to care (also 4K on WT is like absolutely a vanity number, I can't even unlock ad revenue with it lolol). It does mean that if I share my opinion sometimes it will get completely disregarded because I'm perceived as an inexperienced artist--but I'm used to that on every social media I'm on.

There are issues that have evolved over time, which did draw artists away from Tapas in general, like with how advertising of community comics work, and the pivot towards translated imports, and with a focus on long scroll format updates with a lot of panel counts that are very dismissive of the intense physical burden that would place on disabled artists. Personally I think it's good to be able to talk about those very important business decisions that make some of us wonder if it will be worth it to continue posting here in the years to come, but those conversations can't seem to happen without people thinking it's about dogging on Premium or on whatever the trending genre of the week is. So a lot of those more serious conversations that must and need happen are more on twitter/discords.

The thing is that nearly all of those are just sort of self-serving. And self-serving isn't inherently a bad thing, it's a necessary part of personal development and incredibly important, but notice that most of the discussion threads start with something like "I'm working on x for my story, what do you think about that subject?"

And it isn't to say those conversations aren't interesting, they're just much more lacking than the swath of people fishing for views, subs, and so forth. None of these things are necessarily bad, it just makes it more difficult for genuine discourse.

Hm, I guess it just feels like the most natural thing in the world to me that people take an interest in Topic X when they're thinking of addressing Topic X in their own work. Like, your attention span is finite and if you're writing about X, then X is currently occupying a large part of your brain ... in fact it would be weird if you're like 'oh, but I'm actually super interested in this completely unrelated topic Y right now'! 'Cos as a writer, if you're interested in Topic Y, you'll kind of start thinking about incorporating it into your work in some way, right? XD

(And I think half of the threads I linked didn't actually mention 'I'm working on x for my story', which was completely by coincidence. Maybe I just got lucky XD But that's besides the point, because I will die on the hill of 'there's absolutely nothing wrong with being self-serving, and open self-interest is one of the most genuine forms of human communication there is' :P)

I guess you're right though that just looking at numbers, discussion threads are a minority - I guess I just didn't notice because I've gotten used to skimming past and tuning out stuff I'm not interested in XD

Hm, I'm not waiting to get my time investment back or something like that xD I just genuinely, got like messages for example this person messaged me on facebook and said "Hi, how are you?" and I replied to them and the conversation basically died there cause they replied with one word answers. Even though the conversation never got anywhere, they repeated this over and over, so it was a bit pointless But yes, like, this person was the one initiating the conversation, I didn't expect anything XD I just find it weird and awkward.

I'm capable of following conversations but not when the other person replies with one word answers lol

But yes, since I know it's a struggle to make conversation I try to be more creative with my replies, since I know first hand how impossible it is to reply to one word replies lol

I actually don't really understand what you mean with wanting to get a return on investment with the conversations since well, uh... I adapt to the person I'm talking to (?) I have chatty friends and quieter friends, I also have friends that prefer to listen instead of talking so you just adjust (?) Kinda just accept people for how they are kind of thing.

But on the internet, when you try to engage and everyone ignores you (like on a server on discord) well, how can someone not feel awkward in that situation lol, or like this person that initiated conversations just to not reply more that one words and then not reply at all, haha.

And I dunno, you can put effort in the conversation but a conversation involves two people, so... I'd actually think your words apply to the person I'm referring to lol. I'm well aware I'm a chatty person, it just depends on whether the other party wants to make an effort themselves XD

As for people thinking you're a negative person for disagreeing, well, that's really childish I mean, people won't always agree on things and it's totally fine to disagree, it's called having an opinion and I really respect those who do so in a respectful manner while keeping a firm stance on their thoughts

Sorry if my reply is weird, I didn't really understand what you were trying to say. Was it like to me or was it like speaking of people in general?

Oh whoops, I was just quoting your experience of people saying 'hi' for no reason* and people giving short responses when you try talking to them (which ends with the conversation dying) as evidence that people suck at talking (I've experienced this often myself in deviantART and other places :'D) That comment wasn't addressed to you ^^;

Oh, and now that I've actually read your comment I feel compelled to clarify that no-one has actually accused me of being negative - just that hypothetically, if someone feels like I am (without lashing out at me), I think that's completely understandable since I do talk more about negative things than positive :]

Ah alright, thanks for explaining cause I wasn't sure how to interpret what you were saying

I'm really not sure why there's anything bad about an artist relating a topic to their own work? That seems kind of normal. You wouldn't write an essay without citing examples, and when the topic is an artistic technique, it seems perfectly reasonable to both show how it's used in the work of a famous artist and how you use it in your own work. Like... I can't imagine if I went to a talk by Steven King or read or listened to an interview by Brian Lee O'Malley them talking about writing or comics in a totally abstract way without giving examples from their own work.

It's definitely a little gauche to stick your link at the bottom of a post in a non-promo thread, and yeah, I do get bugged by seeing a thread that's like "Promote yourself by [discussing how you handled a really interesting topic your work!]" because I'm there like "I don't really need to be in promo threads... and being in promo threads when you're in 4 digit subs feels a bit uncomfortable... but also this is a really interesting topic I'd like to talk about!"

The problem with the whole promo situation though, much like the subscriber envy, is hardly something the forums themselves can fix. It's partially a problem with how Tapas' UX/UI design includes a progress bar that sets everyone's "acceptable baseline performance" at 250 subs and reminds them every time they go to their dashboard that they haven't hit it, creating an urgent drive to complete the progress bar even if it's with cheesy and unhelpful methods like sub-for-sub.

...And then it's also partially an issue of people not thinking of popular comics as aspirational. Something I see a lot of on the forums and discord is users proudly proclaiming that they don't read any premium or popular series on Tapas... and then saying people ought to read their comic or novel. It screams "I'm an amateur". No professional would expect much if they pitch their work to a publisher who doesn't publish titles similar to what they want to make, and any professional with sense would look primarily for publishers who have had success publishing works similar to what they want to make. People seem to forget that Tapas IS a publisher, it's just that unlike traditional publishers who will be very picky about who or what they'll take up front based on quality and fitting their niche, Tapas will let anyone at all in, but then only promote works that fit the vibe and are up to their quality standards. So basically promotion is the means of selection rather than entry; community comics are effectively a slush pile, and Tapas will promote ones they feel fit their platform as the equivalent of a publisher putting something in print. But people miss that hidden mechanic. They think that since everyone can post, that therefore everyone has an equal chance of success on the platform, or some people even think everyone deserves an equal chance of success, like as though Tapas is a government distributing grants or something, not a publishing business that curates content for an audience.

...And so you get this weird scenario that's totally unlike comics communities I grew up on. On the Sweatdrop forums, I was keen to learn from people like Emma Viecelli and Sonia Leong, because I wanted to be like them. I wanted to make a really polished small press manga with a nice cover and then print it and put it on a table at MCM Expo like them! I wanted to use proper screentones like them and learn to do fancy text effects like them! I wanted to win national manga competitions and get published by real publishers or do freelance jobs and workshops like them too, but I understood that I had to become as good as they were at making polished looking manga to do it; the competitions and publishing and jobs were like exams to gauge my progress. On Tapas, people want to hit the numbers, but they often don't seem to want to be like the people who have hit the numbers; in fact they're often outright derisive of them.

The upshot is this community where some people feel they're owed the attention of an audience and publisher that likes content they have no interest in providing for, and that craves the success of creators it's wilfully ignorant to the value of, so they just sit there talking about themselves, bemoaning the poor taste of the userbase compared to their own, looking for other people like them for mutual support "against the system" to make their number go up, feeling bitter that the platform and its audience aren't interested in what they're selling, but with no desire to sell something they would want because they don't actually like or even appreciate or respect any of the existing popular content.

Oh yeah, I totally get wanting to be popular, but not wanting to be like the popular comics on the platform you're publishing on. Thing is, if you go down that route, you're better off treating Tapas as just a hosting site; nothing more, nothing less. Reach out to people offsite; think of yourself as an old school webcomic creator with your own website, or an indie game developer. Don't look to Tapas to give you that push, and don't measure your success by Tapas metrics like subs, comments and likes. Get people to discuss your work on Reddit, on Youtube, hell, on 4chan if you're willing to go there. Become a cultural phenomenon.

... now that I think about it, I think I've been trying to emulate indie visual novels like Katawa Shoujo and Doki Doki Literature Club. I guess it is good to look up to something; not just to their success but what they are :o

YES. This is the thing. If you have no comp titles on Tapas and don't match the vibe, it's a solid option as either free hosting while you take the weight of promotion on your own shoulders, OR as a mirror site to find those people who do end up browsing Tapas who fall outside the main audience and making them aware of your stuff and perhaps funnelling them into whatever your larger platform is, like say, your print books or a main site or similar (also the case with a lot of NSFW comics, where the heavily censored Tapas version is partially there as an advert for Patreon access to the uncensored one).
But anyone who can't name three premium Tapas comics they like, or even three comics over 10,000 subs they like probably shouldn't be looking at Tapas at their primary platform; it's probably not going to work out.

Something else I'd point out about Tapas's UI that probably makes smaller creators more number hungry is the section with views, likes, and subscriber growth.

image.png1032x67 8.13 KB