Years ago, around the time my Oldest was getting interested in theater, the show Avenue Q was a big favorite. One day, we were driving to town, along long, winding country roads, through fields filled with tall stands of heavily laden stalks, Oldest was singing (slightly off key) one of the more famous songs from Avenue Q.
Until my then 6 year old piped up, “Mommy, what’s ‘porn?’”
I admit, I panicked. But I didn’t miss a beat, “No, no, she said corn. The Internet is for corn.” The field next to the car was a wall of 10 foot tall, verdant green. And after that, the Internet was for corn.
I think Youngest and Middlest were about 13 and 15 when their theater pals disabused them of the notion that the Internet was, indeed, for corn. They were embarrassed that they did not know (teenagers are perpetually embarrassed by their parents, of course) that the song says “porn,” not corn. They were quite angry with me for Bowlderizing the song in an effort to protect them at such a young age. So much for childhood innocence!
Something sort of perplexing has happened just over the last few days. Last week, I published three cartoons. Two of them trended, making the top 18 and staying for a couple hours a piece. Neither got higher than 15 or so. One of them got over 900 poll responses. It was a high point. It also garnered a really virulent comment, accusing me of attention seeking. The following day, I replied pleasantly to the comment (which was inappropriately personal in tone), and then the commenter followed up with a widely read post excoriating the use of AI (at all).
I was really perplexed by the commenter’s rank projection. I mean, we all know what narcissism is and how people accuse you of what they do themselves. I mean, I divorced a narc. Rump was president. We ALL know that projection is!
So, let me set the record straight. Less than a hundred recs and 20 or so comments does not “attention” make, even if 900 people voted in a poll once. If I was seeking attention, I’d be a lot more effective about it. I was a national level journalist. I wrote a best selling book. I know how to get attention for my work if I want it.
I wanted to make cartoons. So, I did.
But something really weird happened to my most recent cartoons. For the first time ever, that I’ve seen, the #cartoon hash tag disappeared from the site headline. My last cartoon got LESS recs than anything I’d ever posted—as did MANY of the independent cartoonists’ work (been seeing more of the indies lately, go Community Cartoonists!). Leaving me wondering if I’ve been cancelled… censored, and if others had been injured as an unforeseen consequence. I wondered if someone decided that because they didn’t like how I produced my cartoons, that no one should be permitted to see them. I’m still pondering that, whether it actually happened or whether I should write a script to measure what is actually happening.
Nevertheless, here I still am, publishing a new cartoon, whether anyone pays “attention” or not. Making cartoons because I want to, I enjoy it, and I have something to say. I publish on Wednesday and Saturday mornings at 9 AM Eastern. Please come looking for #cartoon(s). Not because I need the “attention,” but because we are not the Republicans burning books and sending death threats to librarians. We are for speech. Louis Brandeis said something like, “The answer to speech you don’t like, is more speech.”
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The Internet is for corn. The Internet is not for censorship.
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Don’t forget to rec and tip if you like the cartoon, and send some bucks to the artists.