Confessions of a Total Webwhore

Jared becomes a Drama Queen & gets preachy (You've been warned):

You’re looking at a weekly banner I made for the site a while back, but ended up not using it because I realized that numbers shouldn’t be what this is about…and I didn’t want it to look like that. It still didn’t’ stop me from painting about my site traffic, obviously. I’m still not 100% sure where the people were coming from, but that’s a whole other matter entirely.
I’ve been wanting to rant about this for a while, but have been second-guessing myself out of fear of over dramatizing the whole deal. I think that might still be the case…but I’m going to go ahead anyway.
There needs to be something that’s the equivalent of Web-Catholicism. There needs to be a confession booth for webmasters and webartists to run to purge themselves of sins of the past. Lately I’ve been wanting to poke fun at some of the stuff I’m seeing online…but it would only be hypocritical because I myself did a lot of the same stuff not too long ago. Of course I’ll slip up and web-sin again I’m sure, but like I said: There needs to be a digital confession booth somewhere for stuff like this. Typically you’re just supposed to delete the old posts or the old pages and pretend it didn’t happen. I can’t do that, so here are my web-confessions:
Head Injury Theater is almost two years old now. The first incarnation was just a movie review site (and home of the Death Toll) that lived over at Angelfire. It’s still up for some reason….my own laziness, probably. Anyway, I have to admit that I started reviewing movies because of my intense love for X-Entertainment.com. Like far too many sites out there, I saw something that I liked and said: “Hey, I could do that!” That’s a sin, I think. Of course I lost interest in doing it a few months down the road. A year later, I accidentally found out people liked my doodles and I picked up a paintbrush for the first time in about 6 years. Thus Head Injury Theater was born, as the two of you who read the site know it today. (On a related note I put a link to X-E on the site this week.)
I have a lot of trouble not bashing the crap out of my site. I think it has something to do with its inherent amateur quality or just the fact that I don’t know much about how a site SHOULD be run, only what I like.
Further Confessions:
I have joined 2 forums with the only intention of pimping my website. Yes, I was one of THOSE guys. I think the worst part is that I pimped myself a while back and, at the time, I thought my stuff was good. Compared to what I’m making now..it’s kinda crappy. In a year from now the stuff that I post tomorrow will look like poo as well.
I started a forum because, for some reason, I thought that was a good idea. Despite the fact that they’re terribly common, not every site needs a community directly created for it. :sigh:
I have googled my own name on numerous occasions to see what people might be saying about me. By “numerous” I mean far far too regularly.
I’ve watched my Hit-Counter/Web statistics like a hawk. What the hell is wrong with me?
Oh, and I started a Blog. I hate Blogs. Why does EVERYONE have to have a blog?

So what’s my problem and why am I writing this? I think it has something to do with the fact that, thanks to the internet, one’s popularity and reach can actually be measured in exact figures. Websites get ranked and distinct visitors get tallied. So, sensitive artists types sometimes NEED to see that people are watching to be motivated. Just take a look at the bajillion websites out there that are defunct out of lack of interest: They were started not necessarily for the sake of creating something but for the sake of gathering an audience...or something. Link exchanges, voting lists, and all sorts of nutty things go on all the time just so that a site can get a bit more exposure....which is necessary for a lot of people.
Just so we’re clear: All that’s mentioned here aren’t really sins. So if you’ve got a site of your own and you’ve link-swapped like crazy or put a half-dozen VOTE buttons on it: Whatever works. Chances are your site is infinitely better than whatever I put up here. I just feel I need to fess up to this stuff before I’m allowed to start making fun of it. It’s kind of a benefit to not really being that involved or aware of what’s going on in the webcomic world. I’m so out of the loop…which might actually be good when it comes to sorting out why I post on the site.
The site is just to entertain myself and others. It’s really a portfolio but, quite frankly, it updates too much and has too much damn content for me to keep calling it that.
This is the most preachy I’ll get, but I had a long talk with a few people and realized I really did need to visit a web-confessional and clean the slate. If you want to know what literally inspired this, take a look at Blank Label’s Telethon and try to count the entries that are comics where the punchline is “Hey, if I make a comic about Katrina I get lots of free advertising!” I know I’m naïve and shouldn’t be throwing that particular stone because I HAVE gotten a lot of exposure thanks to the Katrina cartoons. :shrug:

Now I’m off to draw a dozen “Hail Mary’s” and, with a clear conscience, start to digitally sin all over again.
-jared
“Who would like to apologize for this post as well as the pretentious bastard that he was back in spring”