The myth of the low effort super popular webcomic

Nio_Kasgami 2016-06-28 04:14:32 UTC #7

ahahah I almost feel concerned with this...

but yeah this a good explaination c:

AnnaLandin 2016-06-28 05:37:29 UTC #8

Well put!

A lot of people scoff at autobio comics with black and white cartoony art, or whatever, because they think it requires zero effort, but it's just not true. Even IF - and that's a big "if" - the artist is able to draw all that stuff with no effort, there's still a lot of invisible work that goes into comics. The writing, the layouts, the structuring of jokes, etc., etc.

And that's to say nothing of the time and effort that goes into promoting the thing and putting it in front of people's eyes.

Comics are hard, y'all. Be nice to fellow comic artists.

carloswebcomic 2016-06-28 09:22:15 UTC #9

Yeah, the idea that you can cheat and somehow fool people into reading your comic has always amused me.

Yeah, putting your stuff out there and then having to post update links in 10 different places, not to mention figuring out how to best advertise and doing extra promotional stuff... Holy crap! It's so much work!

Simon_M 2016-06-28 09:46:01 UTC #10

Just because it requires effort to make a popular webcomic doesn't mean that what usually trends or gets popular is any good, which, while you're not saying it, seems to be implied. In fact, the sole fact that these discussions tend to center around whether getting popular is difficult or not already tells how little we discuss the merits of actual works, whether they get a 1000 likes or just 10.

Mikayi 2016-06-28 10:54:53 UTC #11

I notice that the comics that are popular normally have been on the site for a long time. Or there when the place first started. Others I could only assume they advertised very well, there something that people like to read or they had some fan base before starting which normally means they build it up in other ways then just comics.

I look at what's popular because it comes up on the mobile version with pages. And you can always tell that those people put a lot of effort into it.

gone 2016-06-28 11:05:28 UTC #12

I like how this was put actually...but i wanna make a pokemon fan comic cause...im a fan of pokemon and i wanna meet other fans^^ i make an adventure time (the cartoon) fan comic and have met some fans of that too! But back on topic when everi see those kinds of comics i normally see all the effort they put into COLORING amd things like that. Normally due the short length, people think its no effort but things like coloring, effects, and GIFs ATE HARD TO DO and take alot of time....and no one seems to see that. Lol but they'll get it when they try it and they fail

carloswebcomic 2016-06-28 11:28:59 UTC #13

Yeah, but that's completely subjective.
If people read it and it becomes popular, it means people think is good. If you think it's terrible, then that's not the comic's problem.

Shanny8 2016-06-28 11:38:49 UTC #14

What others do is what they do. I cant worry about that- I need to concentrate on making my own comic.

I'm just a guy that came on here earlier this year and just got my comic started earlier this month, while a lot of the more popular stories have been on here for years. I dont complain about the technique, effort, or skill(or lack of) they've used coz the bottom line is they've most likely put in as much work as I have...and if they havent, I just keep it movin with the knowledge that I'm not the best artist and/or the best writer. I'm just here to create a good story- on my own terms.

Simon_M 2016-06-28 11:41:29 UTC #15

Quality is not entirely subjective, no. Even if you don't like James Joyce's Ulysses you would be a fool to try to argue that is worse than Twilight just because is not as popular, or that they can't be compared because they are different works with different audiences. Yes, they are for different audiences, but they can still be compared as cultural works, and one is incredibly influential and revolutionary and you would need months and months of research to get all the cultural references and the other is badly written entertainment.

And it still required effort to be written and courage on Meyers' part to show it, but that doesn't mean it's good or that anything would be lost if it didn't exist. You erase Ulysses, and the latter half of XXth century literature is basically gone.

carloswebcomic 2016-06-28 11:52:48 UTC #16

But it is still subjective.
You can point at how influential and how highly regarded something is, but if you don't like it, to you it is still terrible.
Ever read The Divine Comedy? It's fucking ridiculous! Sure, I know it is an important work of literature, but fuck me if it wasn't annoying!
It's nothing but self inserting fan fiction with way too much flowery dialogue. I had a much better time reading a Garfield book.
So to me, Garfield is better than Dante. How could I say that despite The Divine Comedy being regarded as a seminal work of literature?
Because quality is subjective and completely up to the individual. You can't make me enjoy Dante and dislike Garfield, because that is my own opinion and no one can really change that other than myself.

Simon_M 2016-06-28 12:14:46 UTC #17

It will still be read and discussed after you're dead, whereas Garfield will likely fade into obscurity. Your "everything is relative" position ultimately becomes a very absolutist position, where what you don't like equals bad, and what you like is good. That doesn't foster criticisim or creative sophistication. And look at tv. Thousands of series every season. Which ones people remember? Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men... works that can be discussed and decoded and analyzed because they are objectively better and more sophisticated than the rest. They don't give big audiences, necessarily. But it ultimately pays off (The Wire is the big example of that). That won't happen here if we go exclusively by the metric of "oh, if it's popular, it's good". No, it's not. But it's giving them clicks and they don't have enough staff to do any other type of promotion, so whatever. That won't stop people from thinking that some of the popular comics look without meaningful effort.

carloswebcomic 2016-06-28 12:28:09 UTC #18

Well, I do think that a lot of stuff that is popular (music, TV and Movies) tend, in my onion, to be trash. What I also believe in though, is that I have no right to tell people what they like is trash. If they enjoy it, more power to them no matter what my opinion is.
You can try to expose them to better alternatives, but at the end of the day, people will like what they like.

kambreapratt 2016-06-28 12:33:19 UTC #19

Having been around quite awhile, I can tell you that you honestly CAN cheat your comic's numbers, alexa, comments, etc and appear that you are much bigger than you are. That in turn can "trick" people into reading your comic because they think it's popular. It happens in comics, on youtube, in podcasting, and it isn't uncommon. We did a whole "expose" on how to cheat Top Web Comics once.
There is a reason why the expression "Fake it till you make it" appeared.
I've seen it a lot over the years. Now that certainly does NOT mean everything popular is fake. Not by any means. I'm just saying that there are a lot of factors involved and some choose to sway those factors in their favor by paying for them.

carloswebcomic 2016-06-28 12:44:28 UTC #20

Never head of this! I guess you can cheat the system and 'trick' people into clicking on your comics, however I would imagine it would be more difficult to trick people into subbing, unless I'm missing something.

kambreapratt 2016-06-28 13:09:26 UTC #21

You have to remember only a couple sites are like Tapastic where you have "subs" and it's more of a recent thing--in the last couple of years. You can buy subs. Go to a place like Fiverr and you can get facebook, youtube, etc. It's not out of the realm of possibility that you can buy subs for any site.
I do think there is cheating going on with subs too. I haven't figured it out yet, but on Webtoons, when a see a comic with 1 update, and like 900 views but 600 subs, it's a bit questionable. Statistically, very unlikely. So yes, I do think there is cheating going on there too. I only recently took notice of this, so I haven't had the time to look into it more.

As far as cheating webcomics in general, it's been going on for years. You can buy pretty much anything...alexa, page views, upvotes, fb followers, tumblr followers, twitter followers, subscribers, etc.

miseryhunting 2016-06-28 13:34:05 UTC #22

I agree with Simon_M! I has the opportunity to edit a friends dissertation on this exact topic (with focus on Mad Men) and while there is a subjective factor, there are standards which absolutely deservedly identify the quality works - those with best quality of production, writing and message. Quality, however, doesn't necessarily mean entertaining. You should remember that not all that is entertaining is quality and things, which are quality might not appeal to the mass. They are not created for mass consumption - they are there to represent a message/change/innovation and appeal to a niche audience. This is is like Fifty Shades of Grey and The Idiot - one is more popular than the other, it doesn't mean it has better quality.
I also loved the Divine Comedy, but I guess it's not for everyone.

This however, doesn't mean anything when determining how much effort has been put in a comic.

Pandastrophic 2016-06-28 13:46:27 UTC #23

Thank you for saying this!
I've been seeing so many posts on the forum about how some of the popular comics are 'low effort' and it's really frustrating because no one really knows how much time and effort is put into someone's work.
(Especially for the slice of life/gag a day comics, t sometimes might not show in the simple art but it shows in the writing. )

Simon_M 2016-06-28 13:57:28 UTC #24

Yeah, I don't know about tapastic, but I tried to advertise through facebook and boy it's been a long learning experience, and a very counterintuitive one. There's so much "fake" likes that if you advertise the facebook page the site gets bloated with fake subscribers who don't participate... To the point that now my advertising there is designed to discourage mindless clicks, only advertising posts that announce when a new episode's up, never the facebook page itself, so that all the fake likes only affects posts and not the number of followers.

indagold 2016-06-28 14:39:37 UTC #25

you have yet to go on badwebcomics wiki and see what type of stuff get a million plus views and a shit ton of subscribers yet is trash. Look at ctl alt del, it is utter copy and paste shit and has a massive fanbase lol

Popular does not equal good and you're kinda implying that.

Kura 2016-06-28 15:05:41 UTC #26

I'm not sure about tapastic, but other webhosting websites tend to have those 'wtf why...?' series that would do mysteriously well and have oddly high numbers. (not super popular, just had oddly high wtf numbers and you couldn't figure out how they got them)

I remember years ago (again this was years ago, the comic is most likely dead and didn't make it over 5 pages) there was one on smackjeeves that was drawn very badly (not anything to do with style, it was beginner tier art the 'Chris Hart taught me everything I know, I discovered the line tool i will use it to draw the VERY long legs, eyes are different sizes, hide the hands behind the back because they are hard to draw, fill bucket everything on the same layer with really bright colours that clash with one another tier art), had dialogue written in MS paint that was almost impossible to read, 2 pages (a title page and an intro page that only said 'yaoi manga this comic has gay sex, do not read if you are homophone') had a description that read '18+ erotic shota comic master and slave' and had around 300+ something subscribers.

At that point your half laughing half scratching your head like ".... how am I REALLY doing worse than this? Really what the hell am I doing wrong?" Regardless of how confusing the numbers where, as well as the fact it beginner tier and bad as the comic was, I can't really say that no effort was put into that on the artists part. The artist was just incredibly inexperienced at art and likely was drawn by someone very young (even though it's an 18+ comic, which is honestly not uncommon online cause even horrible 18+ fanfics are written by kids under 14), and it's very likely that they indeed put all their effort into that work.

That being said, there's not really a genuinely low effort 'super popular' series that I've seen. Maybe 'are those numbers real?' or 'wtf reallly??' but not 'super popular' tier. Sure there are series with simplistic style choices and very noticeable art short cuts, and a heck of a lot of average series that do better than average because they're using a well selling gimmic 'like throwing copy write characters in for a joke' or genre 'and these exist everywhere not just in the webcomic world, take romance for novels and superhero comics for American comics' but even just throwing these things into your series isn't going to make it an automatic sell, and who are you to say that what that artist is personally capable of creating is 'low effort' what may equal low effort to you could equal high effort to them.

As frustrating it is to see a comic genre or style type do better than your own (BL and Gag-a-days in concern to tapastic come to mind here, it's honestly what I see getting complained about the most by artists from this site when it comes to the 'super popular doing well just because it's _____' raging) it's not specifically the comics or the comic creators fault that it fits in or caters to the market readers are looking for. Nor is it a low effort on the artists behalf issue (as subjective as one's opinion on that mater might be) It's just the reader market and demand.