Pinned Post 2021 (Patreon)

I've had people ask me about why the 2020 Schedule was still pinned, all the way in April 2021. I've had people say it looks bad to have it pinned so long. I've had people say it makes it look like I don't care, and that I should replace it.

So I have replaced it, as you can tell. And as you can tell, it doesn't have any actually useful content. That probably makes it look like I don't care. And you know what?

I really don't.

To be perfectly clear, I absolutely love each and every one of you, my Patrons. And it's not that I don't care about Patreon as a platform, or as a mechanism to fund my efforts and allow me to do what I love as a full-time job without needing to worry about how to pay the bills or the anxiety of living paycheck to paycheck.

I cannot overstate how much my Patrons mean to me, and how much Patreon as a service means to me.

But what I don't care about is Patreon as social media, or Patreon as a web front.

For the past several months, if not years now, I've been lucky if a Patreon post gets even 5 likes. I'm over the moon when I see a comment, even if it is literally just "Cool." These are both examples of extraordinary engagement on Patreon as a website.

Every week for the past month now, I've been putting 12+ hours a week into preparing early-access comic pages. Do you know how many people have been viewing them? About 12 people a week. 12. People. A week.

And that's at the $2 tier. At the time of writing, there are 511 people with access to the $2 tier and above. And of them, less than 2 a day take advantage of the early access of the comics.

The engagement with the $5 Progress Report posts is even worse, with only 403 people having access to them.

I won't lie, every week for the past several months I've questioned the point of spending 3+ hours every Friday evening putting together and writing the Progress Report posts. No one likes them. Even less comment on them. Frankly, so far as I can tell, no one cares about them.

The only reason I keep making the posts is because it's one of the few structured things in my life that helps me manage my depression. The Progress Reports stopped being for Patrons months ago, since Patrons don't seem to give a shit about them. They're primarily for myself.

All of my other social media platforms get far more attention from me than this Patreon does. Twitter, Discord, even the AMA section of my website. And the reason why is simple: I get far more engagement in them than I do on Twitter. People actually share their thoughts, give their opinions, or hell even just hit the bloody Like button. That's more than what people do on Patreon.

I don't have anything to pin here for 2021. I don't have a schedule. The schedule for 2020 was a fucking disaster that worsened my depression in ways I can't put into words. Back in November I made a post on my blog about how I am pointedly not making a schedule for 2021, because my schedules are prone to fall apart. And you know what? My non-schedule for 2021 is already falling apart.

So will I put something else in place of this post? Maybe. Probably not.

But for those of you who wanted me to update the Pinned post, well, here you go. I've updated it.

I'm really not sure what the point of it is though. Only maybe 12 people in the entire fucking world will read this post. Of the 600+ people who have access to it, it'll be worth throwing a party if the number of them who actually read it even reach double digits.

For those of you who actually care about my work, you probably already engage me on Twitter, or participate in the public Discord, or send me messages over my blog's AMA. And to all of you who do that, I can't thank you enough.

But for the rest of you, who just lurk without even pressing the Like button, or just subscribed 3 years ago and forgot to unsubscribe, well... I appreciate the fact you support my work, despite apparently not caring enough to even press a Like button once in a while. I won't pretend that I am entitled to your engagement. But I will plainly state I am disheartened by the lack of it.

So yeah. Here's the pinned message for 2021.

I'm getting back to work now.