So last week I decided to try and do more with social media to try and reach more people that way, so I shared this comic on Tumblr, which was connected to my twitter, and this time I remembered to tag the picture so more people would see it. On twitter it got a few retweets from people agreeing with the intended message of how it was hard for new titles to gain an audience compared to established characters. Unfortunately, one person on Tumblr caught onto an unfortunate implication regarding the cover David is holding up and people latched onto that. Not everyone, I got quite a number of instant messages from people who understood the intended point of the comic and told me not to worry, but there were more people reblogging the negative than positive replies.
Realising I had offended people, I amended the original post with an apology and then wrote a new post that explained the intent of the comic and also said sorry for the unintentional message it gave. To me, that’s the right thing to do. If you hurt someone’s feelings, you apologise, even if you didn’t mean to because you still hurt them. I got even more notes saying thank you for this, with many complimenting me for being so mature and accepting the mistake. However, many did not see it and the reblogs reached some online celebrities like Linkara from Atop the 4th Wall. Let’s just say it exploded after that, so I gave another explanation. This lead to more of the same, some saying good on me, others ignoring it, but this time people were outright cutting out the apologies to paint me as a monster and some even comparing this to the dickwolves issue at Penny Arcade.
Now, I do not believe anyone is under an obligation to accept my apology. I have no right to accept it. All I can do is say sorry, which is why I only responded to personal messages after. There was nothing else I could have done so I didn’t try. But it did still hurt a little to see people mocking me for trying to own up to my mistake, chalking it up to a poor little white boy crying over being privileged. It also hurt to realise the only reason these people are even acknowledging my existence is because I screwed up and they just want to punish me for it.
That is one benefit of this whole thing. LWI had its hits double for a few days. I do honestly regret not putting a link to the site in the original post because imagine how many would have clicked on it? But while I could have tried to stir the pot a little more, these days I hold a higher value on my reputation.
It’s dying down, thankfully, and the best part is that hundreds of people saw the comic, liked it, and became fans. So there is a silver lining to this cloud. I am going to be more wary of what I share, this experience has taught me that.
Still, I would rather have gotten 25,000 notes because people liked me work, not because I made a mistake. Oh well, maybe some day. People are enjoying Fer’s Batgirls pic so maybe that’ll be it.
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