Just an observation that’s niggled me for a while, I guess.

I’ve just been catching up on a bunch of webcomics that I read, and occasionally I would delve down into the comments.

I know, I know, you’re already saying; Mod, really, comments? What do you expect? This is the internet. Reading the comments and then complaining is like sticking your hand in a blender and then wondering why your fingers are so short.

It’s okay, I’m not talking about hate or creepers or anything like that, but it’s something that I’ve seen all over the place, and it just, I don’t know, I’ve never understood it.

It’s the people that will find that one mistake; that one tiny, insignificant continuity flaw that the artist has missed (a seam here, a pocket there, a flower with a different number of petals from before), and they jump at it like a rabid piranha that hasn’t seen a side of meat for a month. Sometimes it’s passive aggressive “hey what happened to the ***? snark snark”, or just overt waving of the hand “OH HEY MISS, MISS YOU DID THAT WRONG, HEY EVERYONE LOOK THEY DID IT WRONG”, and I just find it morbidly fascinating.

Do people actively enjoying doing that? Do people actually spend time looking for these mistakes? It’s like going to a museum hoping to find some crack in a marble statue to insert a crowbar into it. Stranger still, when they find a mistake (and it is inevitable that there will be mistakes to find), it’s as if they expect some sort of reward, or feel some sort of achievement for having found it.

Does anyone else see how bizarre this is? Or is it just me? Is it just me that marvels at this obsessive scrutiny that ultimately does nothing save make the artist feel bad about themselves, whilst this hoarder of misplaced artifacts revels in some sad, distant, sardonic glee at having triumphed once again against the person creating what they (presumably) love? Or why else would they be looking at it in the first place?

I don’t know, I’ve just never understood it. I don’t think it makes me angry, I’m not sure what it makes me, bewildered? Disappointed, perhaps. It just strikes me as a fantastic example of why humans are and always will be complete idiots.

Yours truly included, mind you.

In conclusion;