Ronin Digital Express will be returning soon.
And brother, you want to be there.
But when it does, comments, likes, and restacks will be turned off.
Let me explain.
I’ve written a few posts about my ideas about navigating the future as an independent artist.
The TL;DR is this:
My gut tells me that the social media model, the idea that you build a following in digital spaces through algorithmic luck and community ladder climbing, is dead.
It was viable and exciting and democratic at one point in time, but that’s over.
The algorithms choke your reach while training their AI models on your work
The community is, to put it diplomatically, distracted by other priorities
Managing a social presence has become a drain on my time and productivity
And the worst part of the new normal is this: anyone left who manages to build a following must continue to service them.
But not by providing them with art. Rather, by providing them with themselves in increasingly vulnerable (and desperate) ways.
I look at that and I just think, “fuck that.”
And as I’ve written, this leaves me with no idea how to move forward.
But it turns out, that opens up a lot of possibilities.
I’m still putting all of that together. But one thing that I know is not going to be a part of the Renton Hawkey Inc. model is audience management.
The pressure to be available, and the idea that this is some sort of strategic advantage, I think, is bullshit.
An artist’s personal availability to me does not influence whether or not I purchase their work. It does influence whether or not I feel the need to reach out to them, with either positive or negative feedback.
But at the point of purchase, it means nothing.
Most of my favorite books were made by artists who aren’t that online. And I buy books all the time from artists whose online persona pisses me off.
Then there are a lot of people I’ve met online that I like.
But, I don’t buy their books or support their Kickstarters. Because I am not a fan of their work.
I don’t think I’m all that alone in these behaviors.
So what do we stand to gain from being available in this way, really?
As I see it, I stand to gain a job.
A volunteer position managing conversations. That is, the content of others.
Available to fans, frenemies, and foes.
I become a therapist, a referee, a cult leader if I get enough of a reputation.
I don’t want that.
I want to be the CEO of my art and nothing more.
Don’t mistake this as antipathy for readers and fans. I’m extremely grateful to anyone who wants to support my work.
I like people. Sales is a big part of my day job, and liking people is a pretty fucking important part of sales.
At a convention, I would be happy to mix it up with passersby. And I enjoy getting to know some of my fellow indies in small Discords.
One on one.
What I’m protesting is not people but social media norms. The path that’s on.
And I’m tired of feeling pressured to stick my head into that oven every day for some kind of advantage that I’m just not convinced is real.
Just about everything cross-pollinates with politics and social issues in some way now. Posting a drawing of a unicorn is no protection from your replies becoming a forum for Israel/Gaza propagandists or whatever the thing today is.
Indeed, an innocent drawing of anything can attract personal attacks with political valence — Keyboard warriors have become so talented at bending everything they see through the prism of their grievances that they can, within seconds, infer everything they need to know about you and your politics from a drawing of Bluey.
The internet was, in retrospect, probably always destined for this. The public-ness of these conversations and the pressure one feels to perform and to win simply make thoughtful dialogue and feedback difficult and potentially impossible.
Personal conversations are also increasingly reflecting the ones we have online, even though they have none of the public features.
In principle, I’m a free speech bro. But practically speaking, my charity has been drained by trolls searching open comment threads to browbeat a readership into caring about their pet grievances (and if you’re the kind who is smugly nodding, “yeah, the other guys do that all the time!” rest assured, I also am talking about you).
This is not only unfair to me, it’s abusive to those showing up simply to enjoy the art. If you really think about this, is your inability to comment below an episode of Ronin Digital Express an unworthy trade for avoiding a comment thread that has descended into chaos?
Perhaps you feel mature enough to avoid the temptation, but if it’s me, I’d rather not find myself at the bar at midnight with a beautiful stranger in the first place. So I’m closing the bar for all of us.
Some longtime knowers of me may smirk at this shift in my thinking. “Oh, not so staunchly a free speech absolutist anymore, are you?”
The difference is, I’m not going to spend a nanosecond attempting to fight with, publicly humiliate, dox, or destroy the trolls. What is often required here to stand up to nauseating speech is the very kind of distracting engagement I seek to avoid.
And I’ve put my time in. You don’t have to go very far to find out what I think about these kinds of things.
I do believe in free speech. I’m practicing it now. You may also practice it in response to this with your own writing. Though, maybe you should think about what you might say and create an essay of your own, instead of vomiting the first eloquent-ish diatribe that appears in your short-term memory queue.
My principles haven’t changed. And I haven’t changed my mind on any of the critiques I’ve made of “cancel culture” or the “free speech chilling people who don’t want to be called out and think canceling is good anyway,” or whatever you want to call all of it.
I’m simply pulling up the bridge to my own castle.
And I think more artists should. Hence the title of the piece.
Artists should act like Publishers.
Think about this lost concept of “letters to the editor.”
No doubt thousands of letters once ended up on the desk of your average Marvel editor.
Some of them were very likely bilious and obnoxious. Though even they must have required some level of organized thinking to compose, compared to your average split-second reaction in the comments.
But how many of these letters saw the light of day each month?
How many were valuable enough to share with the audience? How many were fit to print?
Six? Ten?
Why is that?
Because there was a gatekeeper.
And if you’re an independent artist, the gatekeeper is you.
You are, in fact, in control of how much you see, and how much you allow the public to see when it lands on your desk.
You are the editor-in-chief of your digital publication.
And as EIC, I am simply too busy to run a forum. And it’s too distracting to do so.
Maybe you don’t think this is really a problem.
But for me, it is.
It’s increasingly difficult, even here on Substack, the supposedly “sane” social network, to publish anything and not get one or two irrelevant, saber-rattling comments.
And amateur colleagues are seeing this as well. They struggle to manage comments and negative attention.
Do I block them, do I leave them up because of “free speech,” do I engage with them and try to change their minds about me?
That’s audience management. And I’m not interested.
And it’s important to note here that I am not interested at the expense of likes and shares.
You see, Substack doesn’t allow you to parcel out comments from likes from restacks. You can have them all on, or you can have them all off.
Fine. Off with them.
And why not? Isn’t a like also a distraction? Does turning off restacks prevent someone from forwarding Ronin Digital Express to a friend, or using their physical mouths to talk about it?
“But how will people know whether your comic is popular or not?”
I don’t know, how can people figure out whether or not Batman is popular when there are no “likes” on the cover of the latest issue?
We’ve bought into this idea that these signals matter, and at one time, they did seem to be a useful way to gather feedback from an audience.
But I think the scale has tipped. The value of the feedback is in the red. Trolling is in the black.
So what will be my north stars when Ronin Digital Express returns?
Followers, subscribers, my ability to earn more and more revenue, and ultimately, my fucking satisfaction with the work.
And really, that last one is all I need to consider myself a success.
I’ve been quiet for most of this year, I’ve been working on pages, I’ve posted fuck-all, and guess what?
I’m happier than I’ve ever been in 10 years of grinding in the comics scene.
This is where it’s at. Everything else is a nice to have.
I won’t close myself off from feedback completely. That would be impossible. People can always write about me, or Ronin Digital Express. Whether thoughtful articles or pithy Skeets, Yeets, and Bleats.
But I don’t need to invite that into my living room.
And if someone is really desperate to write me to give me a piece of their mind, for good or for evil?
At the end of every post will be an email address.
That’s where you can send your letters to the editor of Renton Hawkey Inc.
Some of them may indeed be fit to print down the line.