Hi everyone,
You read it right: I will be moving the comments section of this site in the next few weeks.
It sounds wrong when you read it, but please hear me out.
It’s not because I don’t like the comments here, on the contrary. I feel privileged that the quality of comments on Bloomin’ Faeries! has always been very high, mature & informative. It’s always been surprisingly insightful and level headed, especially considering the crass and juvenile nature of this comic. There are some very smart readers out there!
No, the reason is just that the comment section is pretty secluded from the internet as a whole. No one comes here but the people who read the comic, and let’s not kid ourselves, that isn’t a whole lot of people. And at a time where ad blockers are killing advertisement revenues, I’d rather relocate the comments to a site where they might help increase the comic’s visibility. I could certainly use more readers, and social media is where everything is happening…
So starting in September (exact date TBD), I’m moving the comments to my Bloomin’ Faeries! facebook page. As a bonus, I’m in the habit of posting about 6 sexy (but not NSFW) pictures a day on that page, so if you don’t go there for the comments, you can go there for the bewbs. Because that’s always a good reason to visit any page on the internet. 🙂
I want to thank all of you readers who have posted here in the past and hope to count on you to keep doing so on facebook. The internet could certainly benefit from more mature conversations. 🙂
Hope to see you all on the other side!
–Jaycee
“I’m doing it.”
12 thoughts on “Comments Section Moving Soon”
Pvblivs
That’s no good. I despise Facebook’s “real name only” policy and will not set up an account. Couldn’t you at least find a site that allowed pseudonyms?
Random User
I’m not a frequent commenter here, so it won’t affect me a great deal but that’s an absolutely horrible idea. First, while I have a Facebook account, that account is associated with my family, children and grandchildren. There is absolutely no way I will associate my Facebook account with a site like Blooming Faeries. I’m not ashamed of visiting here. My wife knows I follow this and several other adult comics. I’d have no problem with most of my friends knowing. But my grandkids? Parents, aunts, cousins, and various other family members, many of whom are religious or extremely conservative? Not happening.
p
If it includes the comments to the preview posts, I won’t be following. Not linking this site to my personal account, sorry.
Gary Jones
I have to agree with the posters above, there is no way I’m going to be commenting on the comic on Facebook.
Also I too wonder why the move? I look at the Facebook page there are almost no comments on there.
Hopefully this will work out for you but I can honestly see you losing traffic over this and not gaining it.
Jaycee
All very fair points. I’ve been giving this a lot of thought after reading the comments above, and in a context that is wider than just this comic. Let me clarify elaborate…
First off, we (myself included) feel some shame and embarrassment where sexuality is concerned. While it’s an act that’s as natural as breathing, drinking or eating, we have arbitrarily assigned it a special (and shameful) status. This, I find, is mostly the result of organized religions, many of which (but not all) have an obsession with what goes on in our bedrooms and between our legs. A large part of me objects to this thinking, and working on this comic certainly has been a liberating experience in that respect. Sex is just one of those things we do and there’s nothing wrong, shameful or taboo about it–or there shouldn’t be. So in the context of “be the change you wish to see in the world,” a part of me wants the comments to go on facebook to help take sexuality out of the shadows and into the open, where it belongs.
At the same time, considering I’m using a pseudonym to write this comic (you guys knew this wasn’t my real name, right? 🙂 ), it’d be hypocritical to say that I’m “all out” and open about sexuality myself. It may also be unfair to ask the audience of this comic that isn’t ready to come out, to do so on facebook.
At the end of the day, to be perfectly transparent, I’m looking for ways to increase the readership of the comic, and social media is the only viable option at the moment. It’s unfortunately not possible to advertise Bloomin’ Faeries! on facebook (obviously), so reader support is the only way to go. Nothing is ever truly free on the internet, it’s just the currency that’s different. It used to be eyeballs & traffic (back when advertisement worked), now it’s social media exposure.
So I’m not done thinking about it. I hear you, and hopefully you now understand where I’m coming from & what I’m looking for. It’s important for this comic to do well to have a strong readership (with the hope that a percentage of the readers become members). It’s not bad as it is, but it could definitely be better.
–Jaycee
“I’m doing it.”
Catfish
If only you could get all your faerie friends together to create a reality-alteration spell that would remove all those sexual taboos from the world — but I know that’s not particularly workable (if nothing else, I have a feeling getting them all on the same page would be a definite uphill battle).
In addition to what others have said about the difficulty of dealing with Facebook’s “real name” policy in leaving comments (something I would also have an issue with), it does seem a little weird to have the comments in a separate location from the actual strip — at least, I assume you’re not going to be posting the strip to Facebook, since a fair number of the installments are not-safe-for-Facebook.
Nonamejane
Well if you want to use social media, Facebook is not the way to go. You will not gain viewership, infact, you will probably not see any comments at all. You should be looking at Twitter or Tumblr for more commentary regarding social media.
Infrequent idea suggestor
What about disqus? Easy to set up an account. And it exists for pretty much this exact purpose.
Dan
I want to add the fact that many people actually loath facebook, all the more due to how popular it is. If I click on a link and it takes me to facebook I’m closing that tab asap and going to a different site instead of the one that took me there.
I really only lurk on this website, this is my first comment I think. But I do read the comments and this will prevent me from doing so, so it does affect me. And frankly with media like comics where the strip itself can be read in a minute or less, comments can make or break the experience.
And comments in facebook would be less interesting than comments that are here even if I did go. I know how you dislike how taboo these topics are, but they are taboo and that’s not going to completely change no matter what we do, and I’m not even completely sold on the idea that it should. I’d feel bad if my 4 year old niece and 3 year old nephew were directed to this page because of me. And even if I didn’t I know my sister would be livid. All in all, I’d likely be banned from family get-to-gathers. So I can understand why others wouldn’t be open while on that very open form of media.
Twitter though, I’ve gone there specifically for hilarious comments. There have been web comic artists that even set up accounts for individual characters and post content that suits those characters so extremely well. First time that it really lived up to the name of the comic too. That robot’s twitter feed really lives up to the name of “Questionable Content”. You know? Imagine that content on facebook though? You may as well put a forum on neopets.
Sorry for the rant, but facebook feels like the “Like, subscribe” portion of youtube shows. Except that the shows are run by friends and family, there’s nothing but commercials in the sidebars, and if you find some way to ignore those commercials, you’ll find that they’re also in your friends and family’s shows because they’re fine trying to sell you products you do not want just so that they can use those products in a slightly less annoying way. Then they laugh about how some musician is “selling out” because they get brand deals that actually pay that musician’s bills. Urgh, long story short, to me facebook is absolutely toxic. Maybe I’m getting too personal about this, but yeah. Hearing the word facebook elicits a strong reaction from me.
I like the idea of twitter, and I guess tumblr? Idk I’ve never had a real reason to go there. And disqus, as has been mentioned, is basically built for the purpose you’re trying to shoehorn facebook into.
Gallstone
One more point to add: sexuality is natural and normal and should not be demonized… but what happens in BF is not normal sexuality.
Often, it involves forced alteration of the participants’ mind or other methods to coerce them into sexual situations.
Not the sort of stuff I’d want my younger relatives to be guided towards and come to accept as somehow normal, “because Cousin Gallstone is looking at it”.
In closing, facebook is pretty horrible. Thank you.
Lurker
Please, no! Anything but Facebook!
Why not a forum?
Dangerously Chloe uses http://www.pixietrixcomix.com
El goonish Shive uses http://community.910cmx.com/index.php?/forum/9-egs-comics-area/
Lurker
Unfortunately, I will not be able to comment if it requires logging in to facebook. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.