A Handy Guide to Non-Dickery

Yes. I vanished for a week. No, I do not care about your complaints. This blog does not cost me money, but it also does not pay me money, therefore, classes (which I do indeed have to pay for) come first. Still, let it never be said that I like going so long without an update, so an old request is placed here for shits and giggles.

How does one avoid being a target on this blog? It's pretty simple, really. Don't be a dick. I'm going to demonstrate, step by step, how you can avoid such a fate, and just how badly the people I target have fucked up to be picked for roasting.

Step 1: Don't have a massive ego. For fuck's sake, you scribble on a sheet of paper/tablet/mouse and suddenly you think you're God's gift to humanity? No. No you are not, because there are better artists out there (and this is if we just stick to webcomics alone, really, much less commissioned artists and those who make a living off of such), much better writers (hint: if your webcomic could have its characters replaced with those of a popular TV series/movie/whatever and it sounds exactly like a fanfic found over here, you've fucked this step up), and much nicer people out there.

Step 1a: Do not tell me you're suddenly allowed to have a swelled head because your fans pay for your computer/your rent/for eye surgery. This just means you have a lot of fans. That old expression about X amount of (blank) fans can't be wrong? Yes. Yes they fucking can. By that logic, Lazytown is a television classic because pedophiles want to fuck the lone non-animatronic female in the cast.

Step 2: Shut your mouth. Do you know why I take so long between articles? It's because I'm looking for as much stupid shit that you said, in an effort to make the people look at you and go "the emperor is wearing no clothes and he has a tiny penis". You can be as smug as you want, if you just refrain from telling everyone about it. But no, you'll end up bragging, and this is the fucking internet. There will always be someone who saves the post, or keeps a copy of the fanfic, or whatever. Just stop talking.

Step 3: No turf wars. A lot of the easiest material to find comes from a two-sided rivalry. If you start dickwagging against comic X, the fans from comic X will discuss it, your fans will discuss it, the creators of comic X might, and that spreads like flames on a grease fire.

Step 4: Quit being fucking lazy. This is only tangentially related to getting mentioned on here as a target, but for fuck's sake, use some common sense. Going to change your schedule? Make a fucking note of it. Have to put up filler or can't make a deadline? Mention it, don't leave everyone hanging. It might take two days to make a single strip, but it only takes five minutes (unless you have Fred Gallagher's shitty backend, I'm told, in which case it's around an hour) to say "Hi guys, strip's going to be (late/canceled/posted after I have sex with MY GIRLFRIEND/whatever)! Sorry about that."

Yes, I am aware of the fucking hypocrisy on that last one. I do write some of these as a reminder to myself, be aware.

Step 5: Apologize or something, fuck your pride. This is the big one, really. An inability to be humbled will get you crucified so fast if you're unable to back down in some situations. Hell, let's just confuse some of you all over again (a fun note: no less than three people who know me in real life keep thinking I'm John Solomon despite my saying otherwise) and use responses to criticism as an example. A great duo to look at for this is that of David "Walky" Willis vs. Robert "Tangents" Howard. One of them gets roasted and goes "Yes, I saw this, and hey, it's not going to hurt me, and at the worst, I get one or two new readers who look at my strip 'ironically'." The other uses the same logic... except he makes a post in which John isn't named or linked, and starts nazi-moderating any discussion on his forums to remove names/links to John while going "THANKS FOR THE HITS, ASSHOLE!". Can you see why someone might be tempted to think one of these people is an asshole and go after them, now?

Alright, I think I'm about out of rage here, so unless I come up with something later, consider this a good enough starting point. Really, I'd say "use common sense" here, but the fact that I had to list some of these things already makes me wonder if there's some sort of internet-wide lobotomy that I missed to remove it from people.

Oh, that's right, AOL. Nevermind. (Look, topical humor, only a decade later!)