Infamy

Last night at around 11:00PM, I got a funny text message. A sweet girl named El sent me an IM last night letting me know she was a huge fan and not a creepy stalker crazy girl, but with one little caveat: I had to be Ryan North.

I politely informed her that, “Ryan North, I am not.” I told her that I still made internet jokes, and shot her a link to my comic, cringing at the thought of her turning away from her monitor in disgust. She didn’t—instead, I got disconnected and she took a shower.

We wound up chatting until midnight about web comics, English culture and infamy. I’ve always wanted to be infamous. I don’t particularly want to be disliked or anything like that, I just think it would be a heck of a lot easier to be infamous than regular famous. I mean, I could go shoot a dude in the face screaming, “READ MY BLOG, YOU SHIT!” and shortly thereafter, thousands would be reading my crazy, face-shooting blog. I doubt that I’d go to those extremes since I’m not too fond of murder or prison, but I’ve been trying to come up with ways to get infamous on the internet.

Unfortunately, I’ve not managed to come up with too many. The more I thought about it, the more likely you are to be famous by your work on the internet (unless you just post thousands of racist hate sites or spam people with your name and stuff). Even if you make utter crap, as long as it fills a niche, you become famous.

“Hey, have you seen that guy who posts pictures of himself ejaculating on pictures of celebrities?”

“Yeah, he could totally fill my niche any day!”

Bam. Fame. For being a creepy fuck. And the weird thing is, he wouldn’t necessarily be “infamous,” because people who aren’t interested in that stuff generally won’t find it or won’t go looking for it, and people who have been looking for it will find it rather quickly.

Now, keep in mind that the fame thing only works if you put your work online, not if your work gets put online (a small difference, but a huge one). For example, poor Miss Teen South Carolina 2007 is now infamous, because her “work” got put online. Like, such as.

So, I know that my comics and writings fill a niche, and no matter how small that niche may be, people “should” find and appreciate my work. This is where I’ve hit another roadblock—the only people who are actually viewing and interacting with my work are generally close friends or people I’ve shown them to online. What is preventing me from becoming famous online? Is it advertisement? Is it word of mouth? Why are people not getting from a Google search of “creative introspective emo blog” to I, Revolutionary!?

I've no idea.