Miscellany: Advertising, Dookie-face & Troll Spam

Could it be any more obvious that a cartoonist is visiting these websites?

Advertising is so dumb: as a matter of "media literacy" I instinctively ignore it in all form across all media. When targeted ads pop up on websites and Facebook for items recently purchased on-line it can be disconcerting for many at times, as they are evidence of tracking and reflecting one’s on-line activity. Mostly it’s a great reminder of how inefficient and laughably stupid that tactic is, because I’ve already bought those very same items that are being paraded in front of me. Pure genius I tell ya.

Take for example my recent waffle maker that I just spent inordinate amount of time researching: it will presumably be another ten – twenty years before I need another one, so you’re wasting your time barking up the wrong tree there. Or art supplies: same logic applies, plus if I already know what it is I want to buy, why are you doubly wasting our your time?

And the current rage about Facebook had me laughing: there was some weapons-grade irony in how many people posted on Facebook about how evil Facebook is after reading something about Facebook on Facebook and then swearing off Facebook. I mean, 99% of the time Facebook’s “Good Morning Jamie” forecast has me in the completely wrong city or state – no wonder the insidious psychometrics somehow failed to convince me to vote Republican.

Also my ISP + browser know just as much if not more about me, so good luck hiding from Amazon Skynet. Guess after buying some more Forever Stamps I’ll go read anonymously down at the public library.

A criticism leveled at another artist hit me close to home, insofar as how I've been mulling for a while now my tendency to fall into a predictable pattern when it comes to all of my characters adopting the same expression, regardless of species. What one of my fellow cartooning friends once called the "Jamie dookie face"  is a trademark look of default, and I daresay is pretty much what I wear every day, everywhere for anything.

"Critics of “CAD” like to point out the laziness of Tim Buckley’s art style. His characters are rarely expressive, their eyelids all droop and their jaws are all slack. Analysis on the Bad Webcomics Wiki points out that many character expressions are composed of pre-drawn assets, the way you might construct a Bitmoji.
According to a statistical breakdown on Something Awful of more than 1,600 “CAD” comics, 94.44 percent of comics inspected feature what is known as B^U (tilt your head left; it’s an emoticon version of the signature Buckley face) — half-closed eyelids and half-open mouths. (The fact that there was even a statistical breakdown being done should indicate the scale of criticism that “CAD” faced.) In addition, character dialogue is often excessive: Buckley tends to tell, not show."- NY Mag

Evidently I've spaced out on cleaning my spam folder for more than a few years (apologies to the couple legitimate commenters who were erroneously caught up in the filter. Whereas it used to be an annual event that merited a separate post, I'm having trouble really giving much of a shit about such details anymore (like analytics etc.). Still, there were a handful of funny ones...

On a related note, I hardly even give a second thought to routinely trashing the occasional troll on any social media platform. Click > Delete, no fuss, no muss. I mean, mainly on account of them being so predictable + boring... there's a mild impression of passing satisfaction in knowing it's the ultimate solution by denying them the one & only thing they have, which is a say in the matter. Kinda like being tailgated: it's annoying sure, but think of the headspace being rented out on the other end.