#reminiscing about the good old days!!!

[longlostlorian]

I don't want to add on to that good webcomic post with what I'm p sure is just my own fruitless navelgazing, but I started doing webcomics as a kid in the mid-aughts and the scene was basically unrecognizable from what it is now. I would come home from school and post sketchbook comics scanned in with minimal touchups, and I don't think I've ever gotten as much engagement on anything in all the years since. I didn't know how to implement a comments section (I was hardcoding everything in html on a domain my dad helped set up for me, lol) but I got tons of emails from excited/curious readers every week! A phpbb board (early internet forum) with 300+ human members (and all the fun of viagrabots I had to cull by hand)! People were just excited by what it was possible to see online. And that was for a bad comic made by a kid with minimal skills that nobody remembers today!

For better or worse, the grand majority of readers live on apps now. Webtoons and tapas host hundreds of the most niche, beautiful passion projects you can imagine, better than nearly anything available 20 years ago, but there's just as many stories that were literally churned out by content farms (studios with large teams producing a groupthink product they aim to sell/IP farm - in other words, something that's nobody's baby). And by and large, the userbase is simply too young to discriminate. They've literally been trained to view webcomics as content. Does that mean readers today are the problem? No, of course not! And it's hard to complain about greater access to free, often queer art that's technically better than it ever has been before. I'm glad young readers have easy access to things like that.

But webcomics have become subject to the same level of scrutinization as any other aggregated content. Don't post for two weeks and people will talk about you like you've died, and a week later they stop talking about you altogether. The culture that I grew up with by and large doesn't exist anymore, though remnants of it struggle bravely on. Part of this comes as the "wild west" aspect of the internet circles the drain. When comics are produced with the knowledge that they will go up on webtoons/tapas - sites with strong censorship requirements - people dull down their work. They have to. Anything that goes on those sites automatically becomes a product. And so the truly weird, the unexpected, the indie, and the unapologetically, freely, charmingly bad (and messy) aspect of webcomics is systematically sucked out, both by the exacting standards of a captive consumer base and by the requirements of the platform.

I don't know that I view wt/tapas as net evils or anything like that. I use them myself. And I've heard things about places like comicfury that make it sound like a great substitute for the culture that used to exist around smackjeeves, drunkduck, etc. I also think it's more accessible than ever before for creators to monetize their work, even if for most of us, passion projects never come close to paying the bills. So maybe what I really miss is the early internet and I don't think it's ever coming back.

[narfin-frood]

What would the shorts be in your AU? I think it be a live demonstration of how someone (Mr meteor) is integrated into the hivemind and how it's "safe" and "the right thing to do"- basically propaganda. but things keep messing up

wander's not like. super public with the cult the way hater is with his empire in the show, so i don't know whether he'd be airing something like that across the galaxy. hater's got like. totally negative charisma, especially when he's being recorded, and yet he continues recording himself, and i think that's a trait meteor would still share with him. mr meteor is very much like metroman of megamind to me, also, where he quits his life of fame & glory to become a nobody, but he still has that streak of like. craving the kind of attention a rockstar gets as opposed to the superhero/king treatment.

so i imagine the shorts would be like. meteor's vlogs on his youtube or something. and he's starting a series called Inside Planet Yonder or whatever where he sets up a camera in an unassuming place and does little dances for the camera until he gets caught. like a prank show or something, but very benign and mildly annoying as opposed to antagonistic. this does require the shorts to take place before wander is redeemed, but honestly, the timeline in this au is so scrambled when you try to put it up against the show itself (which is already crammed into two very short seasons) anyway

[thanatika]

fun history fact: body snatchers, the people who would steal corpses from graves and illegally sell them to be used in medical research and anatomical study, were commonly referred to as "resurrectionists" or "resurrection men".

anyway...

[millenari]

'PLAYING AGE 31-55?'

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

Favorite Pacey/Joey Moments Per Episode: 6x1 The Kids Are Alright (Part 2)

[yuriyuruandyuraart]

AFTERMARE WEEK: Day 7- the end of a beginning/ the beginning of the end

make me believe and raise my hopes up one last time, then haunt my dreams for the rest of my life

aftermare week is hosted by @bluepallilworld

[sainz100]

idk how to explain it, but I feel this small bubble of hope. as if some good news is right around the corner 🫧🌅 not yet, but maybe soon, I'll always feel that hope that the next chapter will be better than the last

[only-one-brain-cell]

Penelope: we do have *points to Luke* that holding us up.

Luke: remember 30 seconds ago when you thanked us for coming in? We were so young then.

[wuiliburt]

guys i really miss the dsmp

i don't care if this is cringe or unrelatable but i kinda just need to get it out

like today i randomly got recommended a Technoblade compilation video and in it was some clips from the dsmp which sent me on a spiral to see what the members are up to now (there mostly inactive, get little views or have moved on with their lives) and watching those old clips made me really sad because i really miss being apart of a fanbase like that even though their was some weird stuff that kinda ruined it but still! also idgaf about what anyone says, it was an amazing time of life and i wish i could go back and re-experience it

[champagnepadre]

i always found it different wen people on here in 2016 would only follow <200 ppl if they had a lot of followers or somethin like for aesthetic purposes. When i would tell ppl i follow over 3 thousand ppl they would get disgusted w me! Sorry tht i like versatility 😐

[the-casbah-way]

why is owen wilson so hot why am i thirsting over a blonde man

[tangledinourstrings]

thank god i left voidkin asylum/cult of vin/whatever else it was called when i did, my mental health is like wayyyyy better now.

[batsplat]

every time i open jorge lorenzo’s instagram there is some new batshit crazy stuff he posted, it’s a joy every time, the man is a motogp legend, and he decided it wasn’t enough, he needed to defeat every other corny millennial man alive by exclusively following women and posting dude bro advice

this is so funny to me because honestly I have no clue what he posts on instagram beyond what gets reported on motogp news sites or (more commonly) what crosses the pond to reddit, but can't say I'm surprised... I don't use instagram myself so I have no clue what these men actually do on there lol. these days I am getting further updates on their activities via tumblr! quite glad not to be directly experiencing a lot of it!

anyway yeah that does all sound very... him. kinda reminds me of that 2013 controversy where monster energy did this thing where they made a video of him showing off his mansion filled with bikini-clad models. the video ended up being taken down, it was seen as tasteless both given spain's economic situation and... y'know, the gender of it all. and jorge does have an... interesting approach to social media in general. also definitely the most opinionated of the retired aliens these days! casey probably comes in second and he does have a lot of thoughts about many things, but generally speaking it's not QUITE as relentless as it is with jorge. he's really missing a bit of a filter lol, there's an entire career arc here where when he was younger he was all about finding himself and establishing a character and explaining to the world who he really was, before getting burned by the world and being way more closed off for quite a few years, before retiring and relaxing a bit and sharing everything that comes to his head. for better or for worse. he may be cringe but at least he's free

[goldensunset]

there were a couple years i couldn’t even say the name of the show vld i couldn’t even allow my fingers or tongue to form the shape. to this day it’s still my instinct to call it v slur lol

[gilded--imprisonment]

And I'm back. We've arrived in Nacrene, and it seems the gym leader is an archaeologist. I think I'll wander the city a bit, then challenge her.

[coffeetime88]

Hey kids, do ya'll know about AMVs?

We used to go frame-by-frame of animated stuff we liked and did our best to create videos by syncing those up with songs we liked. (This was in the way-back of course, before YouTube started copyright-claiming everything.)

It was a long and tough process with no compensation aside from the occasional "Like" (this was also the time back when "likes" were worth so much more than they are today), but the good AMVs did for communities and fans was incomparable back in the early internet.

Anyways, thanks for listening to this old penguin. I think ya deserve to get yourself a frozen treat.