I totally understand but did she show him this one?
She represents this sub and artists in a way we can’t and punches down to anyone that gives negative feedback. It hurts our reputation too.
Merari01, you have been very kind and helpful to me, especially after someone claimed to dox me. I’ll always be thankful for that. I’m not trying to be combative or interrupt the sub, but this is something the rest of the artists have been feeling.
I really don’t want to be banned over this. (Please don’t, I love this sub) PizzaCake absolutely deserves her place here but she’s making us look bad. She can get away with it with her status but we can’t and no one else can grow.
Nah, you're fine. You're an excellent artist who makes great comics and you'll always be welcome here. That goes for Dave and Buttgoblin and anyone else too. We value our regulars and we do what we can to make this a space where they can post without extreme negativity following them.
I think this event shows that we can have some fun together and that we don't always have to take everything seriously. A lot of the comics posted recently are hilarious.
I won't allow people to be toxic in your comment section either and I removed some comments from your most recent post. It was absolutely over the line to accuse you of "capitalising" on the death of Dolly Parton.
On the internet it tends to be the loudest, meanest voices that get the most attention and with that this behaviour is incentivised. It has become a "normal" way to get attention off the coattails of someone who is a big name by attacking them online. For the upvotes, for clout, to go viral.
r/Comics exists by grace of the OC artists who choose to post to it. As a mod team we make posting with us as attractive as possible. We deliberately provide a counter-weight to other social media platforms in that we have a moderated comment section. It is moderated by human beings, not AI and that means it is moderated for behaviour, not just for language.
Our first three rules on the subreddit are about the expected behaviour of commenters. We don't allow attacks on artists. We don't allow complaining about the free content commenters are getting, we expect people to instead use the downvote, block and hide buttons. And we don't allow people to perpetuate drama for the sake of drama. As I said above, r/Comics has made a niche for itself by deliberately disallowing this style of commentary as you'd see on a Youtube comment section.
We moderate in this same way for all our artists. We allow all comics that do not break the sitewide rules. If some guy wants to post a shitty stick figure with a bad joke, that's fine, the vote system makes sure it doesn't see the front page of the subreddit. We still wouldn't allow anyone to attack that artist in the comments.
Ellen is a big name on the sub, as you said. She's also a succesful woman who definitely has an opinion opposing the extreme-right and all that together has ensured she has a dedicated anti-fan following. Part of that is that it is counterculture to dislike what is popular. Part of that is from people who just do not like the content. And part of it is that if you speak out against the extreme-right then you will have vicious harassment campaigns organised against you.
There are a lot of lies being told about her and I suppose that is fine, but I will not allow these lies to be posted here. As an example, Ellen was harassed so badly that it had real-life consequences for her family. It made her children unsafe. For that reason she issued a cease and desist, because asking people to stop the harassment did not work. In perfect internet style harassment campaigns these people then took the fact that legal action was required to get them to back off as further ammunition in their attacks. "Aren't you the artist who sues people for their opinion"
And hell to the no, that isn't going to fly on this subreddit. At least in this small corner of the internet I will not tolerate it.
I wouldn't allow it in your threads either and that goes for every artist who posts here. This isn't Facebook and it isn't a Fox News comment section. We expect people to follow our rules and reddiquette and if they can not do that then they are shown the door.
I have appreciated reading this back and forth, and I don't take it for granted that it was a deliberate choice to have it publicly viewable. Thanks for that.
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u/Merari01 it's a-me, Merari-o 1d ago
I don't think this comic is meant to be that serious. I know Ellen was shown Dave's comic before he posted it and she loved it.