An Unrehearsed Riot

In the Summer of 2007, sometime in August, I started reading xkcd.  It was the first true webcomic I had ever read.  At this time I was already frequenting “art” sites like havesomehats.com, explodingdog.com, and creaturesinmyhead.com, but I was strangely totally unaware of the then rapidly developing world of webcomics.  When I started reading XKCD, I was blown away by the humor.  It was specialized, the kind of thing you could never find in a newspaper, and it appealed to my nerdy, off-beat sense of humor.  Shortly thereafter I began to add more comics to my library – Questionable Content, A Lesson is Learned but the Damage is Irreversible, Buttercup Festival, Pictures for Sad Children – strictly the popular ones.  As my discovery of webcomics coincided with my manic doodling phase, i figured I’d join the community.  Somehow I discovered The Noir Project, launched my site, and I find myself oddly detesting the whole  thing.

I can’t read comics anymore.  They reek of irony and overspecialization.  They appeal primarily to a subculture I now find arrogant and hypocritically insincere: the nerds.  Yes, this post has now devolved into a pretentious, cultural tirade, but please, let’s  just keep reading; there is an absurd amount of catharthis [sic] going on here.  Half the nerds I know are only nerds because they wanted to be different and thus cornered themselves into a pattern of life they now refuse to change.  I can’t stand it anymore – the irony, the fantasy, the whole thing is just a big charade.  There’s no sincerity in it.

At this time, I feel that I should warn you to avoid reading anything by David Foster Wallace unless you want to permanently ruin your ability to enjoy humor, irony, anything “meta,” and especially anything “meta-meta.” And yes, I’m completely serious – I read an essay by him and it has totally destroyed my ability to enjoy anything even remotely ironic.  No wonder the poor fellow had depression.

The point is, I’m giving up webcomics, at least for a while.  I can’t read them anymore, and I need to stop before I destroy the sense of enjoyment I got from them.  Don’t worry, I’m still going to draw my comic; that’s something I can control.

This was a really weird post to be sure.  There won’t be many more like it – I’m not this bitter in real life.

Sincerely,

田立永