What’s up with artists contradicting themselves?

Yup, I agree!

I know for me personally, I'm always looking for ways to grow my platform and gain new readers because I want more people to read my work, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that! Looking to what other successful people are doing, comparing your approach and such isn't bad in my opinion.

While yes, no one is owed likes or engagement, there's nothing wrong with looking for that, and I understand people when they feel frustrated about not having that. Most people are looking for engagement from people who genuinely like their work, not under the mindset that anyone "owes" them anything.

I'd say there's nothing wrong with being motivated by engagement- hell, it motivates me to know that I'm sharing my story to people who care about my work and want to see more of it. I reckon it shouldn't be the only motivation for creating things, but I think it's fine to feel upset about it without being dogpiled on.

Ah yes I saw the comic on Twitter. I can understand their frustration but lashing out is rarely a sound strategy. The thing ended up getting quite some engagement in the end but not in the positive kind. If people follow them now it'll be for the drama and not their art

Art is a subject that is overcrowded on every big site. It's gonna be hard to stand out especially as a beginner, not to mention any algorithms that might favour the bigger artists. You gotta understand that and think in the long term. If you want instant gratification (likes/comments/shares a la retweets) for your work then you are gonna be disappointed.

The upside to so many artists is that there are a lot of people to learn from and talk to. That doesn't mean you need to stalk them and barrage their dm's of course, but interacting with people helps. Maybe they see something you don't see in your art for example. And of course it can't hurt to make friends and get in or create a bit of a community. It doesn't even have to be strictly art you talk about, it can be about games or shows as well. Maybe you can make art for a show or game you really love. Do art for the things and people you like, but really do it for yourself.

It's a whole complicated mess and honestly... most people have absolutely no idea what they're doing, including a lot of very popular people, but people like to give advice, whether out of a genuine desire to help others or because giving advice and putting out tutorials is a good way to appear as an "authority" on your subject and a good marketing technique... and obviously people want advice... And so you get a lot of people giving incredibly unhelpful advice.

Because there are essentially two kinds of people who build an audience in current webcomics, and chances are most of both groups will struggle to give you effective advice.

Group 1: People who simply made a fairly polished comic that's easy to read on a phone by drawing it and presenting it in a way similar to comics they like (which were optimised for mobile) and in a genre they like and it blew up... because the genre they like is something like sexy BL or Villainess Isekai. If you ask these people "how do I succeed on Tapas?" they'll just tell you "Have you tried posting on social media and updating regularly?" and make you want to scream, "NO S***, SHERLOCK, yes I tried that!" but they're seriously trying to give good advice... that's literally what worked for them, and they've never experienced trying to sell a comic that isn't perfectly on-trend or had any struggle finding where their audience is.

Group 2: People who worked their arses off learning design and marketing. They carefully planned their comic's brand, they probably do stuff a company would do like having brand colours and fonts and think about the "tone of voice" to make sure all their marketing materials stick to it. They may well post regularly and try different campaigns across multiple social media. They'll put themselves forward for every possible event and award they can. They probably planned how to make their comic look good and read well on Tapas very deliberately by doing research, agonising over their font choices and how their opening is paced. This group will technically give you good advice... but it's really not short and punchy. "Post some memes now and then!" is much more fun and immediately actionable than, "go and read some professional books on typography and branding" or "look up comp titles and research their marketing techniques and which ones got the post hits then try to reverse-engineer it"

As a group 2-er, I know I can tell people to improve their comic's typography and readability on a phone, or try to target their marketing towards fans of works with a similar vibe til I pass out and the vast majority of people won't listen... because that kind of "try hard" "sellout" attitude isn't as fun or cool as the, "make what you feel! Post funny memes about your OCs on social media sometimes!" advice that the group 1s will give... but if, like me, you're not somebody who by pure chance happens to be drawing in a perfectly on-trend style, format and genre, and if you're in a group that gets sidelined by media... you have to. It sucks! It actually really sucks and feels really fake or annoying or even selfish or greedy, but that's what's involved, just pure try-hard grind and always saying "Ooh! ME! ME!" at opportunities.

But discussing this stuff is a really easy way to tread on people's toes. Group 1 people don't want to be told they're only popular because they happened to make work in a popular style/genre/format... because they're not, they're usually making something very polished too! And Group 2 people don't want to be told their work isn't very good and they only got popular through marketing the crap out of it...because they didn't, they worked really hard to make their work entertaining and attractive! And neither group wants to be told that comics are basically a lottery and they only got popular through luck, because obviously almost any kind of comic involves a lot of hard work and it can come across very dismissive. So sometimes people who bring up these feelings just really tick off either other creators, or the people who want to stick up for other creators... and then you get the people who just want to be righteously angry...and you get a dogpile.

Yep, I feel you. I used to tell myself that it doesn't matter if I don't get engagements but the thing is, it feels like toxic positivity if I did. Like I'm giving an excuse just because I didn't get noticed. The moment you get low engagement, people will tell you that likes and comments don't matter as long as you're doing what you love. BUT at the same time, engagement is one of the things why artists do what they love. We love getting engagements from people. Yes, people are not entitled to engage with the content but artists are valid to show their frustration too.

On a side note, that's why I leave comments on content I really like as much as I can to show support to the creator. Once comment can make a difference on a person's day and motivation

I'm gonna play devil's advocate for a bit-- I think the reasons people tend to react negatively to these kinds of posts are as follows:

1] They do nothing to help your situation (if anything they'll make it worse). Your followers who see it will feel bad-- they'll think the little support they DO give you ultimately doesn't mean anything. People who are considering following you will feel bad-- they'll feel guilted into following you, and/or worry that you'll see them as a 'pity follower' and not care about your support either in the long run.
And people who aren't considering following you will just think you're a whiny loser (and to an extent, feel justified in ignoring you). =T

2] 'Wanting attention and not being able to get it' is seen as a capital social sin in any context, and a personal failing that no one should help you with-- you should either deal with it by yourself or quietly accept your fate. Most people are conditioned to try to shut down that kind of vulnerability on sight.

...And there you have it.

There's only one conceivable benefit to making a vent post like that-- catharsis for other artists who are in the same boat. ^^; Unfortunately, Point #2 makes that unlikely in many cases...the few artists who do approach will usually be the MOST frustrated, depressed, angry artists in the vicinity, who will take the opportunity to ALSO vent about their experiences. Add this to Points 1 and 2 and you end up creating a bonfire of ugly feelings of every kind. And Twitter algorithms will only serve to stoke the flames. ^^;;;

It's not that I think this kind of thing shouldn't be talked about, though. Tbh I think the Tumblr posts you quoted have the right idea-- the issue is with fans, right? So talk to them, tell THEM what they should do to support the creators they love.

Saying "people tend to stop creating when they feel like they're being ignored" is simply a true statement, one that people will be less likely to ridicule than, say, an extremely meme-able vent comic.
I don't mean to victim-blame (seriously though, this is probably the worst possible outcome for the poor OP ), I'm just saying...when you approach a sensitive topic, your best bet is to go straight to the people you want action from, explain the problem factually, and then tell them how they can fix it. Anything else can easily turn into a circus.

I personally am the type that mentions to others to don't Get Obsessed with engagement, mostly when they type it as a frustration thing which is not wrong we all felt that way, but at the same time we need to stay healthy, if they are the type to demand and claim it's others fault X thing then yes, I'l tell them to stop complaining because guilt tripping and complainig works to a certain extent but at the same time makes you look bad at other people's eyes... especially if you complain more than once, it's easy to be seen as an attention seeker, so it's important how to phrase things.

I try to share the advice to those two types of perople, share them what I personally do, or what other people does, the first type is willing to try while the second just expects you to tell them some kind of secret and that you swear whatever you suggest will work 100%. Be it sharing in one hundred places, be it making extra content, to engage with the public, creating memes or jokes that are trendy at the moment, etc. To try whatever is there and see what works, because nowadays with algorithms, shadow bans, competitiveness, people constantly posting, you just don't know what may pull the trick. But again, don't get obsessed because you're only going to exhaust yourself, getting obsessed is totally different from trying (Which I've noticed, some people tend to merge together and basically believe you're telling them to NOT try anything at all)

But at the same time I want to mention that I notice the following, in this time and year, people don't care about engaging too much, they don't care about typing what they think, like it used to happen back in 2014 or prior years. I can see it as well between artists, and I don't deny it, I don't interact much with fellow creators or their works either, mostly because I feel tired and the only thing I want to do is disconnect from anything comic related, not their fault.
Nowadays what seems to be the engagement is liking and then if the option is there and it's automatic, without so many steps, share/reblog/retweet. It's easier to heart react and call it a day, you don't have to think about the chapter that you just read in less than 5 minutes, you don't want to prove the author that you didn't take your time to process the information, you'll do it as you continue with your day or you're just busy or lazy, there could be so many reasons.

I think it's an issue where the polar opposites are not a great place to be, it's a nuanced situation that is entirely situational. There will be times in your life that you must get more engagement or you must stop creating, and then there are other times where you have to recognize you won't learn to level up your craft better if you don't put on the blinders and stop marketing so you can spend time creating. It's not a one size fits all for anyone.

It's also important to be honest about the current state of the industry. The chance your comic will be seen is pretty low, and most of the time that I see people very upset about their views and their follows, is because they're new to the industry, and they don't realize that their slow growth is normal. They think that everyone just starts posting and if you don't get big right out of the gate, then you have to throw everything out and delete your comic.

Which sounds like an exaggeration but I see kids do that all the time! I once saw a video on youtube where someone was like "If you don't get 2000 followers within a few months you won't get promoted on Webtoon, so delete and start over" and kids were linking it asking "Oh, is this true?" because they don't know better and we had to say "not in any universe.".

But it is a problem when we try and lay blame on either the audience or the author. There's no blame there, it's entirely on the services we are using which push us into putting all this emphasis on follower count when like--what's the point of it? Like do I get ad revenue from follower count? Yes I get like 2 cents. Do I get sponsorships from follower count? No, I'm an artist. Do my followers even see all of my posts? Nope, because of the mysterious algorithm that is constantly changing, purposefully, so we never find out how it works. Saw an interesting video a marketing professional said about tik tok that mentioned that our feeds have so much sponsered content, that it probably won't matter in the future if you follow anyone at all. A wild thought, but I can see it.

And, when we "do things for the love" entirely, then we put ourselves in a position where we can be easily taken advantage of. Yet, I think you should do something because you love it, just make sure to set your boundaries so you don't overdo it and leave people with this expectation that you are some sort of free art machine. Again, the polarized of any platitude is probably not great.

And like when I saw this whole discussion go down on twitter I didn't even want to touch it with a 10 foot pole. Twitter is just the worst environment for the discussion, like you mentioned.

Venting about low engagement with art,
generates more engagement than posts sharing art.

"HELP I'M STABBED AND I NEED HELP!"
"Lol put a band-aid or somethin'"

Jk. But yeah I get what you mean... although I was put in a weird situation where when I did stuff like that I.... actually followed people's advice who respond like that and now I'm.... where I am now....

I don't know if I should say "Hey, maybe these comments work" because of my OCD that makes me double down on what people say to an unhealthy degree where I work myself to the bone to get what I want. Like they're nothing comments to other people but for me it's like "OH GOD IS THAT THE PROBLEM!??! I GOTTA SPEND HOURS FIGURING THIS STUFF OUT!!!!".

I will say they are irritating and you can just... I dunno TELL them stuff you learned to give the little guy more help.

I did see the comic in question and I can understand why some people were upset by it but I also think other people totally misunderstood what it was saying.

It reminded me a bit of this meme.

image.jpeg478x598 54.4 KB

However, I have seen overtime that artists on Twitter eventually evolve into focusing more on talking about gossip, hashtag trends, giving hot takes, etc. as opposed to mainly focusing on posting their art. I noticed people will plug their art in a Tweet talking about politics that has people arguing under it. It is so bizarre. I hate Twitter.

Oh Im not the only one weirded out when people do this. like a post that's like

Unintelligible screeching into the void
"Also here's my art "

Like I get frustation but I also get the back lash, when it low key suggests popular artists are only popular cus they ""went the easy mode" NSFW art, fan art, joke art still struggle in on social media in genral especially what is promoted is less art and more... things .

Honestly Ive heard many keep saying "lets make our own social media but for artists " song and dance. But.. time and time again those sites tend to flop due to being overunned with only artists, very few causal viewers and customers. Hence big artists who want to make a living leave to twitter and instagram cus the new site can't support them, making a feed back loop of a dead site.

its a sad fact

They might be different people with different opinions, but also people are naturally irrational and contradictory

Damn it, people saying they know which comic this was is making me curious but I feel like I shouldn't ask :'D (EDIT: oh screw it, someone plz PM it to me, the curiosity's killing me, I won't go flaming on it or anything I swear XDthanke :D)

True; I guess it's just that thinking of it as 'different people with different opinions' makes me less salty XD People are naturally irrational, but I feel like a person discussing stuff in good faith would acknowledge their contradictions when pointed out to them and concede they were probably wrong about one of their opinions if they can't logically reconcile it with the other.

It makes me really salty when people want to have their cake and eat it too, and straight up gaslight you into thinking their logically inconsistent opinions are perfectly consistent so they can hold onto both

Regarding social media, fan art and luck, I think it's important to be aware that getting "lucky" and going outrageously viral with a post, especially a piece of fan art, doesn't mean you're all set. It's not completely useless, but it's maybe not as effective a means of promotion as people think.

Because on the internet, when marketing, you need to always keep in mind this one concept: every extra click loses people.

Only a fraction of the people who see the piece on their timeline will drop a like, comment or share.
Then only a fraction of them will go to your profile to see that you have other work.
Then only a fraction of them will be interested enough to look at your original work (how many depends somewhat on how similar in style, tone, themes and audience demographics your work is to the thing you posted fanart of).
Then only a fraction of those will follow links off the platform they're on to look at a comic.
And then only a fraction of those few who got this far and looked at your comic will subscribe and become readers.

It's compounded nowadays with the way social media is constructed to make leaving the site a pain. Twitter's algorithm doesn't like links, for example. Social media platforms don't want you to go and look at somebody's webcomic on Tapas; they want you to stay on their platform and engage with more posts there. This means they're a lot less effective than they used to be for promotion than they were back in the day.

I'm friends with a lot of professional artists, and a general feeling is that fan art can boost engagement and your social media following, but you need to go in knowing that most people who engage with your fan content won't then engage with your original content. It's not a good way to advertise your own stuff, but if you pick the right fandoms, you might be able to attract the attention of people who like similar things and then you can market your original content to them while you have their attention, and whether that succeeds will depend on how suited your content is to that audience and how well you market it, just as if you were advertising anywhere else.
In many cases, you may find that it's just as effective, if not more, to post some panels from your comic that highlight how funny or dramatic your comic is and to tag it into every webcomics-related or other appropriate tag, as it is to draw a really great piece of Owl House fanart that gets a thousand likes and then to hope some of them look at your other stuff. In either case, whether people engage with your original content depends heavily on how accessible, appealing and engaging your original content is. At least the people browsing webcomic tags are likely to actually be looking for webcomics to read and will be open to giving original content a shot; the people browsing Owl House tags probably aren't, so even if the engagement with that post is high, the trickle-down into new readers on your original comic might be very small.

So that's why I don't really encourage people to focus too heavily on the "luck" element of things, because it's simply not the case that one big viral hit will have you set (or even several if you're me... I once went so viral I got interviewed by Kotaku. There are multiple blog entries about pieces of viral content I've done because one is used as a teaching aid now). Once you have people's attention, the thing you show them while they're looking at you needs to be accessible, appealing and entertaining just as much as if you use or are gifted any other means to get people looking at your work (ie. paying for ads, getting a Tapas feature, having a famous person give you a shout-out). Having a massive number of people looking may offset your poor "conversion rate" (an advertising term: Conversion is how many people who see an ad click to go to the site, or how many people who get to the site subscribe or buy something), but only somewhat. So you should always be focusing on how to make your work as inviting and engaging to the people who do see it as possible, before you focus on trying to make lots of people see it.

You can't necessarily control when your visibility gets boosted by a feature or a recommendation or something, or how well suited to your original work the people who see you are, so yeah, that part is luck... but you can control how you capitalise on that luck by making sure that what people see of your original work when it's visible looks attractive and compelling, and that's nearly entirely not luck (the only luck element is if you happen to work in a fashionable style and genre without having deliberately planned it), it's largely stuff you can choose and learn through research, study, attention to detail and good creative choices. If your work isn't grabbing people's interest when people see it on the forums or discord or webcomics communities, people seeing your work because you drew fan art isn't going to fix that problem.