This comic did not do well on Reddit, which I mention because it’s essentially the only place I self-promote. I’d love to branch out. Facebook is off the table, formerly because of how expensive they made it for indy creators to reach people, and recently because of revelations about the company in the news. I’m terrible at Twitter and its shadow-clone, Counter Social. And I feel like an unwelcome intruder on forums where I try to mention my own work. So if you like these comics, show a friend — it helps Zach and I a lot.

I’m never sure what to do about Reddit. Occasionally, something explodes and gets a ton of attention, and that always feels great. Most of the time, though, my work gets a few upvotes or a few downvotes, and then sinks into obscurity.

And usually when this happens, there’s some hateful comment left behind. My hypothesis about this is that I found someone who hates the comic before I found someone who doesn’t, and early upvotes on the Reddit platform are exponentially more valuable than later upvotes, but I’m not sure how to avoid my content bumping into people who gatekeep at the new and rising sections of the site who also happen to be spiritually allergic to me.

And since I can’t avoid them, I wish I was better at dealing with them. I’ve been writing since I was wee, and soliciting agents and editors for about as long, so I grew thick skin fairly quickly. That skin is naturally pretty thin, so learning to cope with critique — first solicited, then unsolicited — has been a big personal accomplishment. And I’ve learned that for solicited critique that I dislike, the polite thing to do is thank the person for their time, and if applicable, talk briefly about what I’ll brew over. And for unsolicited critique, the polite thing to do is to pretend it doesn’t exist. I’m incapable of the latter, and this invariably leads to my trying to explain my writing or Zach’s art to some hostile faceless creature online. It’s fruitless, 9 times out of 10, and I wish I could find some better way of interacting with those sorts of hostile comments.