1074 More Than Anything.

by

Well, about half the usual readers are still lost at this point. With some of the old RSS feeds broken I have no way to contact them if, in fact, that’s where most of them were coming from. If there’s anything else I can do I don’t know what it would be. I just have to wait for thousands of people to miss reading the continuing adventures of my motley crew. I am vexed about the whole affair, but resigned to my fate. Every so often life just punches us in the junk, giggles, and runs away.

I’m sure that seems a bit whiny, but losing a lot of readers is equivalent to you having part of your paycheck swatted out of your hand. Not only do I enjoy interacting with those of you who talk to me from time to time, comment on the comic, or what have you, but as a group you are all a valuable commodity. Attention is currency online.

If we’re honest attention is currency in general. A lot of the way things are monetized is based on it. Even the smallest child understands, at its most instinctual level, that attention is valuable. In many ways our entire culture, and most cultures on earth right now, are embracing the idea that getting the most attention the fastest way possible is the best way to achieve success. Which is why during disasters some people run, others help, and a growing number document. You can monetize interest. Competition for that attention has caused the news media to, essentially, go batshit insane trying to retain it.

That’s all as may be… the long and short of it is that I am now in the attention business and circumstances have moved eyes away from my content. I’d never given it much thought until recently. I’m not totally thrilled with this reality, but I have to accept it. I am an attention seeker. An entertainer.

That said, I like that this setup requires so little from the viewer. It’s kind of like how TV used to be. You have to tolerate some advertisements, but for the most part you just look at this story without having to pay for anything other than net service. Chances are you have that for reasons other than reading comics. Comics are just a bonus.

42 Comments

the Art and the story are what draw me to this comic . Keep it up at this quality pretty much seals deal keepin my attention

Do you have an email list? Might be worth considering as once Google shuts down Reader in July they are going to take down a significant amount of the RSS on the web…

I’m currently trying to get all my blog and comic subscriptions moved over to email before then.

Why don’t use just use a different RSS reader? There are a lot. I switched over to a Chrome plug-in called Slick RSS.

Yeah, you may have lost some readers due to site issues, but they’ll be back. You also know that you still have a ton of readers like me who check within a couple hours of th update, then again a few hours later to see if there have been any good comments, then check before the next update to see if anyone replied to your reply…

Can’t lose me, Crave. I rely on RSS to make following your comic easy, but I also have the power of Google. One of my RSSes hasn’t updated in a week or two, and it should’ve? Find website, find out why, add new RSS/find some other way to track comic, done.

Note for other (soon-to-be-former) Google Reader users: Netvibes is a nice, free reader. If you sign up and go to the text version, it looks very similar to Google Reader, in fact, and works essentially the same way. You can even migrate all your feeds by using Google Takeout to make a file, and uploading that file to Netvibes.

(Which, frankly, was a lifesaver. I read nearly 100 active webcomics, a dozen or two more on hiatus, and several news sites, carefully built up over years. Can you imagine trying to migrate that one at a time?)

So do you get more from having people comment? Or is it also just fine when people simply go to this website and look at your work? I understand that you can quite enjoy having conversations with those that follow your comic, but I am curious about what you were saying to having readers and such; also I love Brooksie’s reaction. :D

I’m glad I found and had a chance to read all of these before the website crapped out on you! This is an awesome comic!

Someone else mentioned moving their stuff around due to things being shut down, so if your site messes things up too much you could post your comic on The Otaku. It’s a pretty nice place, mostly anime fan art, friendly users. Kinda quiet though. There is also a comic section that is pretty easy to use.You can check it out here:
http://www.theotaku.com

BUT! They don’t allow anything rated over PG-13!
I think so far your characters in this comic have been sufficiently covered up.

Stop giving me new avatar options! It’s hard enough picking one as it is!

At this rate I’m going to go back to multiple email/avatar combos, and nobody wants that.

Trust me.

You can’t lose me either. I have all my links saved in a email draft so if something goes wrong I can just check them from there.

Also thanks for the comic. :)

From time long forgotten, i have been following both sites rss. This is how i was sure of keeping track despite one blowing up. Not ideal set up really, but was only a minor inconvenience.

RSS Feeds are for wimps, I have a webcomic bookmark folder that I have organized by update days. Barring the website completely borking, I’ll be reading until the end.

From second frame:
“Well, Yeah… I guess everyone is kind of curious about her”

Yup – including all your readers. And since the last frame indicates that Jo and Carol are about to have a long conversation about Brooksie’s movie, I guess we are going to be waiting another week or two at least before the the object of Mr. J. Thomas Blackwell’s animosity appears in the comic. I’m guessing that we will find that she has moved on less than Thomas believed and that Thomas has moved on more than she expects (with a lot of help from Carol).

I think she shows up next Friday, but I can’t remember for sure without looking at my buffer.

Do a Kickstarter.

Just do one.

I don’t know what your readership numbers look like, but I am positive you would sell shit and no mistake. We will buy the books and plushies and whatever else you feel like selling. (I know I’d buy original art.)

Just do a Kickstarter.

OMG.
Just the thought of plushies of Brooksie, Carol, Jess and Nina…

OMG!!! Just the thought indeed!!! Can I be totally anonymous, TOTALY Otaku AND TOTALLY CREEPY for just one second…. Can One get a Life Size Plush Carol for a $1000 kick starter donation?????

Why so expensive? I don’t think Crave is running an auction.

Have you ever looked at the price of a human-sized stuffed animal? The ones that are 5 feet tall and made in-bulk run around $300. A one-off would be even more expensive – probably not $1000, but still kind of pricey. When you consider that Carol is Plus-sized to begin with you might have extra expense just for the stuffing… ;-) She looks so cuddly though that she would have to be the best subject for a plushie. Mike would be a distant second…
(all the other characters are so skinny that they would wind up looking like voodoo dolls if you tried to make them into stuffed figures!)

Your insight into attention as a currency sounds pretty spot on. It is true that he who holds the most attention online can direct as he chooses. It can be used for riches, to push a point or simply abused.

Anyways, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I’d expect that most will quickly realize that they aren’t getting updated about the comic and will come looking. Right now you probably have a gap that’s small enough they think maybe it’s just a delay. They’ll be back, in greater numbers, they always come back. And we’ll need a bigger boat.

ANYWAYS… The ads on comics are very tolerable I feel. Watching videos online is starting to become much more frustrating as advertisements are pushed into every corner of every video, sometimes multiple times during longer videos. It can be really annoying and distracting! I know I’ve just given up watching something before because of how many ads I am being forced to sit through. /rant

Not always is direct attention the best kind, though. Sometimes the attention people give others can be more useful. Then again, I have something of a subterfuge mentality. The more people are paying attention to the big shiny thing in front, the less they are giving me whilst doing other things. There again, it pays to be the director of attentions, but in the shadows you learn to use the little surprises life throws at you while you can. Free attention, I guess? So a useful analogy, I guess, and perhaps one of the more accurate ones out there…

As to the corner ads in videos… Yeah, that’s annoying. But I’ve been watching a lot of cable’s on demand programming (since I rarely am home for original broadcast), I’ve noticed that they all display this little message in the beginning. Almost small, subtle, and unnoticeable enough to be subliminal advertising, but obvious enough not to be. It says “Fast forward may be disabled during this program”. Funny thing is, though, that while it may be disabled, it never actually seems to be. It’s a sort of trick to get you to put down the remote and watch all the commercials. Not as obtrusive as the corner ads in online videos, but I found it particularly insidious, especially should one actually ever carry out on the threat to disable fast forwarding someday.

I’m a lucky new reader, I had Just gotten caught up when your site went wacky, so I’ve been able to keep up by just keeping the page up in the browser and refreshing every couple of days to read new pages. Sorry everything went kablooey on you, but you have a Great comic. Jo is my favorite character, I went to Community College for a great Video Production program there so I understand a lot of what she is wanting to do, plus I have a particular weakness for two kinds of girls, shy/awkward ones (they’re extremely cute to me), and “weird” ones (they’re the best kind of fun). So if she does quit smoking she’ll have Everything going for her.

Sorry, I’m not a big talker. And by ‘not a big talker’, I mean Jo meeting strangers level.
But I’d like to say I do thoroughly enjoy your work, and I’m happy to support you any way I can. Keep it up!

Never really understood the whole RSS thing or how it worked. I just keep a bunch of bookmarks and check them on update days. Sufficient to say that unless you change URLs spontaneously and don’t say anything, I’ll be reading this comic for as long as you post it.

links are the easiest way to go with comics instead of rss because anybrowser can use the and save them and organize them in folders and if the .net goes down I just check the .com and if all else between-fails I wemt and got a deviant-art acct. to check your stuff out there,you still have twitter and even that garbage american idol, dancing with the stars, ect. use that so fear not crave you are still well covered you simply have to conquer the technical issues you are having which are much more managable than loosing audience.. I am going nowhere eaither HECk I have been checking paradigm shift for months at a time waiting on a new page before! I would have even posted myself before now but my lap top got dropped so I have to do everything on an external screen which is blurry and makes typing and reading hard!

DJQ

I don’t do RSS feeds either im too set in my archaic ways to learn anything new.i use the old fashioned bookmark thing to keep everything on track and have update days memorized.so unless your website goes offline permanently you’ll have to deal with my old ass FOREVER!!!!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

on a lighter note im waiting patiently to see what this chick looks like and what happens when she arrives.love the comic

Another guy who got here from the link from Questionable Content. IIRC, your ProjectWonderful numbers shot up from that ref, so asking Jeph politely to do a “Hey, BF’s site died, but they’re back, hit ’em up!” would probably work wonders.

Oh yeah, check out piperka.net as well. It’s a site that keeps track of when comics update, and it’s got a pretty good following.

They do the “If you liked comic A, you’ll like comics B, C, D…” thing, so that’d be a good clue on where to do some advertising… their recommendations are based on who subscribes to what comics, so you know where you’re likely to find interested readers.

You’d probably nab some new ones that way, too :-)

I really wanna see Jo descirbe her movie in either:
Noir
Anime
Chibi
Loli
Western Comic
Photorealism
Whatever Go Geta Roomie style is called

I don’t comment much but I have been reading fir a few months and love the comic. I keep it up in a tab on my phone all the time so that I can pick up where I left off, and I check for updates every few days. So unless you hide under a rock and change urls without warning, you’re stuck with me, too. I also follow you on deviantart, so you can’t shake me too easily. Keep up the good work :)

DRAW MORE FASTER!

also I’m learning how to draw and will probably start copying you’re comic, it’s a bit more fun than trying to draw goku’s face over and over again

“I want to make a game called Age Of Paperwork. Where an office worker sees his job in the context of an RPG.”

and your immediate superior is the mid-boss right? lol

oh, oh, oh, my – tooooo funny!!!! That’s an idea that should be expanded into a complete write-up for a humor page.
What would the specializations be?
instead of ranger, mage, and warrior maybe you could have admin assistant, IT geek, and project lead? dunno
Weapons?
staplers
highlighters
overpowering cologne/perfume

Armor?
ranging from t-shirt, jeans and sneakers to suit and tie
optional extras of deoderant or B.O. depending on specialization

Skills?
blame shifting
meeting scheduling
credit stealing
super organizer
conference room squatting
multi-tasking
….

That picture of Carol at the end is fan-freaking-tastic. I would love if she was drawn wearing a hat more!
Also, as I’m sure you’re aware even a cursory Google search of your comic’s title brings up your main site first. So there’s not a lot of for regular viewers to throw up their hands and give up even if your feed is screwed up. Hopefully things get better.

Ummm, is it just me or does Carol suddenly look super skinnier? Not skinny but with less roundness than before?

Thank you, Kris. I am hypo with hashimotos and have read a lot on the topic, but none as concise and fact filled as this. Finally someone has decoded the confusing and bland info! You’re amazing.

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