How do y'all feel about people direct messaging you asking you to subscribe?

[king-goldfish]

I'm gut-checking here to see if I'm just being an old curmudgeon. I've noticed recently a lot of people subscribing to my novel, maybe liking a chapter or two (all at the same time, so it's pretty obvious they have not actually read anything), and then sending me a DM asking me to subscribe to their novel/comic in turn.

Are y'all getting more of this lately, too? Am I the only one who finds this to be in bad taste? I know sub4sub is very popular, and I have made my peace with that. We're all out here trying to get eyes on our stories any way we can. But these direct messaging attempts to guilt me into subscribing seem so tacky to me. Like when Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door unbidden, except at least the Jehovah's Witnesses genuinely think they're trying to save my soul.

So what do you think? Am I out of touch, or is this rude?

[abigaillmartin]

I find it very annoying. I just ignore it.

[KevinReijnders]

Oh it's a sure fire way for me to never look at anything they ever made. I'm not here to play your desperate numbers game, begone "spritses with spraybottle"

[2DLenzy]

Feel like there's more of that happening bc of the AF Tourney rn (can't blame them bc subs/likes/comments are a qualifying criteria outside of story, which is really dumb.)

But it is really annoying. I have read and subbed some stories via this way and some have been honestly been reading mine in return, but it's mostly a shot in the dark for gaining activity on a story and not always worth responding to. I need to quit doing it, lol. My library's full enough!

[AmysGames]

It comes off as extremely desperate IMO. I'm not interested in empty subs, and I'm not going to sub to something I'm never going to read, so I will never engage in sub4sub lol.

[king-goldfish]

Oh, that's a really good point about the tournament. I didn't think about that. So, in the end, Tapas is the real villain in my inbox. But I could probably have a novel-length debate with myself about using easily manipulable but ultimately more populist metrics like subs/likes/comments to determine the winner of a writing contest.

[vapidink]

This happened to me a couple weeks ago after I posted on a thread that wasn't even sub4sub. I just ignore them, but it sucks to see people get so many subs like this during a contest. Just seems kinda wrong when most are working hard to do regular advertising. But I don't like sub4sub in general, so there's that.

[MelancholicOtaku]

I don’t like being obligated to subbed to someone just because they subbed to my story. I would rather have someone subbed to me because they like my story and I the same. If I subscribed back it’s mainly because the first few chapters caught my interest and I wanted to keep reading .

All in all sub4sub it’s annoying .

[itsforevermonday]

You got me with the Jehovah's Witnesses! It made me laugh hard and brought back memories of my childhood home. Honestly, it’s really disheartening when they send those messages. It’s getting wild lately, and the best thing is just to ignore it. If they’ve already done the job and wasted time subscribing and liking mindlessly, thinking I’ll subscribe back, they’ve lost their time. So don’t feel bad or compelled to subscribe back because it's not genuine. Sometimes, we hope people will find our story, and when we get the notification of a new subscriber or like, the private message turns out to be horrible.

[king-goldfish]

Yeah, exactly! Maybe it's silly, but I get excited when I see new notifications in my inbox, and my fragile little heart always sinks when I realize the likes/subs/comments were not genuine but instead a mercenary attempt to grab my attention for their project.

And like, I get it. The biggest reason I and many other creators are on Tapas is to promote our own projects, with reading other people's a secondary goal if a goal at all. I'm not sure what the "pure reader" to creator ratio on this site is, but I would guess it is heavily skewed towards creators (who might also be readers but are primarily here to post their own creations). So to get readers, you have to promote yourself to other creators, and some great relationships with other artists might start out more transactional--you read mine and I'll read yours--but you know... at least be a little slicker in your tactics.

I keep thinking of analogies: it also reminds me of guys on dating sites who send out unsolicited d*ck pics to as many women as they can, knowing that the vast majority are going to click away in disgust. But that one who is into it means their strategy was a success!

[simpleSH29]

I got two private messages from one person within 24 hrs asking me to subscribe to their because they subscribed to mine. I didn't respond but I did report them for spam. I admit, that was probably a dramatic response. But I just don't do sub4sub. I'm subbed to the work I like or am interested in. Plain and simple.

[ThunderChicken]

…except the one who’s into it probably has a dick of his own

I’m seeing a lot of it with the AF tournament. Truthfully, the requirement for likes and subs is the chief reason that I didn’t enter it. It places you at a disadvantage if you’re not a really popular writer/artist, and somebody else with 5k subscribers comes up with a new story, slogs it on their existing story, and automatically ends up with 2500 subscribers. It’s not good, and it’s not fair. It also pretty much eliminates any late entries, because you’d never have time to catch up with likes & subs.

The few AF tourney series that I do follow, I genuinely read them because I’m genuinely a fan of the authors’ writing.

[abigaillmartin]

And honestly the DMs feel like an invasion of my privacy. It scares me.

[irr11tauthor]

Literally what I was gonna say. I'm a little frightened of where it will lead during voting

[BreeBaxter]

Whoa, besties, I’m sensing a lot of 'main character energy' in this thread! Like, I get it—no one likes being guilt-tripped into subbing, but we gotta chill a bit, yeah? We’re all just out here trying to survive the content grind, chasing clout in our own messy ways.

Like, okay Argyle, we get it, you’re not here to play the 'desperate numbers game,' but no need need to go full-on gatekeeper mode on folks. If you don’t vibe with it, just hit 'ignore' and move on. ️ No need to cancel anyone for hustling their hustle.

That said, before anyone thinks I’m only saying this ‘cause I’m the one sliding into DMs—nah, that’s not my vibe. But also, maybe let's cut them some slack? They’re just people, like you and me, trying to get seen in a sea of content creators.

At the end of the day, we’re all just here for the same reason: to share our stories and maybe get a few likes along the way.

[kyupol]

I honestly don't care about others dming me to ask for subs. Marketing is Marketing...

I personally don't do it tho. Not my style

[vapidink]

Well, the first round will eliminate stories based on technical merit, at least. There's also the chance that a story that got most of its subs doing sub4sub won't get a lot of votes because many of their subs aren't actually readers. But I'd be wary of people doing vote4vote then, so I guess we'll see. But this is why I don't like when contests have a popularity aspect to it.

[king-goldfish]

Glad to have another perspective, but I'm curious what you mean by "main character energy." Like, I know what the phrase means. But what about feeling that this style of marketing is rude or invasive gives main character energy? What is being gatekept?

[BreeBaxter]

Totally get where you're coming from, and thanks for asking! When I said 'main character energy,' I wasn’t calling anyone out specifically—just that the vibe of this thread feels a little 'I’m the only one who gets it' at times, you know? Like, we all have different ways of promoting our stuff, and sometimes it feels like if you’re not doing it 'the right way,' you’re getting side-eyed or called desperate.

As for gatekeeping, I meant that people can come off a little harsh when someone’s trying to grow their audience in a way that’s maybe not the most polished. Like, yeah, DMing for subs isn’t everyone’s fave move, but instead of roasting people for it, we could just... swipe left, metaphorically.

Just throwing a little empathy into the convo.

[king-goldfish]

…except the one who’s into it probably has a dick of his own

lmao definitely true

This thread is teaching me so much about this tournament that I did not know. At first, when I saw part of the judgment criteria was likes/subs, I thought, "Well maybe that's fair; it's open to manipulation, but at least it's not just whoever the judge's best friend is, then." Actually my first thought was, "There's another thing that sucks for the little guy," but I tried to push through that impression lol. But thinking about it like you're describing makes me think it sucks again!