Re: Sarah Johnson/Ordinary Batman

Remember that time you nodded off, woke up, and the internet hated you?

It took having to draw an admittedly immature drawing to get any sort of response from Sarah Johnson, and the now many fans of her work. Though most of the arguments leveled against me seem to quickly devolve into armchair critiques of my artwork or comedy stylings, and not the actual issue, it was an interesting thing to wake up to.

Many seem to share the idea that this was all for attention. The argument is that I wanted to attract as many people as possible to an old website which between domain hosting and sticker giveaways, actually costs me money to have, and as many people were keen to point out, has been sparsely updated. And I was going to do this by attacking a similar site that is way more broad and popular than mine with an elaborate story (and dated twitter posts) about an inferred slight by it's creator. Sounds like a plan.

One particularly impassioned fan wrote a whole post on "internet etiquette", and even went so far as to somehow try to imply sexism. Watch that you don't hyper-extend your joints, fella. You're reaching awfully far for that one. Wouldn't the first rule of etiquette be to respond to someone when they take the time to message you directly? Or even to take the time to message a person directly before putting up a whole blog post about a situation publicly? I haven't heard from anyone involved directly. But, I guess having arguments via blogs is what people who aren't just looking for attention do.

I'm willing to (again) give Sarah the benefit of the doubt. She claims to not have gotten any of my messages. If that's the case than this really is just a miscommunication that I (and subsequently many others) have taken too far. Honestly all I wanted to say was congratulations on your success and it's weird that we both had a similar idea. I took offense to what I saw as being ignored, and what being ignored implies. Up until now the spirit of the site has always been light-hearted and silly, and that's why I did it - because it was fun. It was a project I was and am quite proud of. I think in my frustration and hubris I may have lost sight of that and upset a few people, and for this I am sorry.

I've disabled comments (there are screen shots documented over on Sarah's blog if you care to see them), but I'd be happy to discuss it with anyone at meandbatman@gmail.com.

Over and out.

(original post here)