And in the second series there's a video of Garfield and Odie making a home video. They created YouTube channels for the in-video characters with actual character relevant content, including that home video, 5 years before the second series was posted. Absolutely amazing work, hats off!
There's a great YouTube documentary that ties all the Garfield subculture together, and it's absolutely worth your time: What The Internet Did To Garfield
I think Lex also has recycled some questions / topics across several guests. I'd enjoy a virtual panel supercut where we see only all the guests' responses to the same prompt.
Tim Ferriss minus Tim has long been a dream of mine
After discovering Dwarkesh, Lex and Rogan have struck me as tragic waste. At worst a laundromat for psychopathic distortions, and at best a lazy unguided exhibition of the guest’s choosing.
Garfield is certainly (meant to be) real, but I've never seen a strip that confirms that Jon can actually hear Garfield's thoughts. I think that's why Garfield minus Garfield works so well.
> I mean this one is just reality. I’m not sure Garfield is a figment of Jon’s imagination
It's not reality. Hobbes it's not unambiguously stated to be a figment of Calvin's imagination either.
That's a fine interpretation but it's not canonical. Watterson wanted the ambiguity, as Wikipedia mentions (sorry, I don't have the interview with the direct quote where Watterson states this):
> "[Watteron] gave an example of this in discussing his opposition to a Hobbes plush toy: that if the essence of Hobbes' nature in the strip is that it remain unresolved whether he is a real tiger or a stuffed toy, then creating a real stuffed toy would only destroy the magic."
> Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.
Did not think I would be relating to Jon on a Thursday morning.
Its also pretty interesting given that the original title for the comic that would become Garfield was simply "Jon"
There was a small YouTube documentary about finding the old comics in libraries and scanning them in. I the description of the video there is links to scans of all the ones they were able to find: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxiwjaUSYJM
This is the first thing that came to mind for me as well. Have always loved how mean everyone seems without the canned laughter to tell us "hey, this is funny!"
You won't find me defending The Big Bang Theory, but it's worth noting a lot of actually funny television would have this kind of dead energy if you removed the laugh track, because it's both written for that environment and paced and acted for the audience reaction breaks.
True, the awkward long pauses between each beat are there specifically for the laugh track and if they had gone without the track they wouldn't include the pauses either.
I don't think this came about by randomly deciding to take a character out of a strip. The creators of G-G recognized that Jon is a depressing character who has these one way discussions with Garfield. Garfield's inner monologue (that Jon is not aware of) provides all the humor, mostly at Jon's expense. Take the humor out of the comic, and you're left with the depression. It goes straight from a comedy to a tragedy.
This is what's interesting about G-G. The tragedy was always there. We kinda knew the tragedy was always there, but we'd rather laugh at Jon with Garfield than commiserate with Jon.
Taking superheroes out of a random movie would lead to silliness, yes, but nothing poignant.
I think the most surprising thing about it is that it's good. Not just good as a curiosity, but actually good, in ways and to a degree that would be pretty hard to replicate if you set out to create it from scratch, without existing Garfield strips to lean on.
I did! And it started to make me wonder whether the same shenanigans could be applied to make any interesting Calvin minus Hobbes strips ... but my guess is it wouldn't turn out quite so dark
I love how this turns the comic into psychological horror.
Super Eyepatch Wolf actually did a really interesting analysis about how Garfield entered the horror genera https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2C5R3FOWdE. I click on the video randomly out of curiosity, but I got really sucked in.
Maybe the Jan 27 entry, but the Nov 03 entry reads much the same if Garfield is present or not. What I mean is, the strips that focus on Jon talking to Garfield always had this element.
Remember, Jon is already talking to a cat who he assumes can't understand him & knows can't talk back. He might as well be talking into the abyss. Only we can read Garfield's inner monologue. Jon's actions are sometimes presupposed by Garfield's whims. This premise is already the basis of some horror or otherwise unsetting fiction.
If Garfield is there or not, if we focus on Jon as the main character of the strip, we might have to do some introspection, whether it's about expecting to have a conversation with cat as if he were your son, that our lives are as boring as his, etc. These are scary thoughts! Garfield's presence serves as a humorous distraction and allows us to forget these thoughts and laugh at Jon, even if briefly. In the same way, Freddy Krueger delivers funny one liners to break up the dread of realizing we're in some sort of living nightmare like people of Elm Street...
I feel like removing it removes some noise, but doesn't affect the tone. Story is, the MASH showrunners didn't want a laugh track, but the network insisted, so they used the lowest-fidelity one they could get away with.
They filmed in front of a live audience in a theater and those are real people laughing. It's unsettling because the actors pause between lines until the laughter stops.
Reflexive dismissals of shows with laugh tracks are lazy.
To each their own! When I watch Ross ask how to beat up a woman in the street with eyes bugging out of his head there's a pretty big difference between a laugh track and no laugh track. Just like Garfield comics hit very different when you realize that John is actually talking to himself.
I don't "reflexively dismiss" all shows with a laugh track. Some of Friends is genuinely hilarious. But a lot of it is only funny, to me, when surrounded by others laughing.
I signed up a while back and got an invite today so things are happening. It'll be interesting to see what a Digg looks like on today's internet. Things are much less innocent these days.
When Garfield Minus Garfield was being published regularly, I was a regular. I couldn't get enough of its dark, sardonic undermining of the comic aesthetic.
I think (worry?) that stumbleupon rearranged my brain much like drugs or alcohol rearrange the brain of an addict. Once you’ve been there, you can’t go back to being able to have “just one” beer or, in my case, “just one click” on a link aggregator. I think the novelty-seeking part of my brain was always there, but SU helped pathologize it. I found some cool stuff, but I kind of wish it had never existed.
HN has a gentle enough design that I can enjoy it without it sucking me in, but I make a conscious choice to avoid Reddit, twitter, et al.
Eh, if you hadn't found Stumbleupon then you would have experienced the same effect from one of the zillion other competitors in the attention economy.
You're right that this kind of novelty-seeking content has a profound impact on the brain. It's really interesting to see finally see longitudinal research, plus research on screens/novelty on child development (search for $thing + "psychosocial development").
One of the most encouraging thing I've taken away is that neutral pathways are still quite plastic well into adulthood.
For example, here's an experiment to try if you wake up and scroll in bed. After you do your morning routine, jot down a mood score (-1 feeling crummy, 0 meh neutral, +1 feeling good). You can do this for a week or two if you want to collect control data. Then, force yourself to get out of bed without looking at your phone (buy an alarm if you have too). You should see changes in your mood log within a week. Sleep regulates/replenishes dopamine levels, and scrolling through a dopamine wonderland first thing in the AM can result in dopamine dysregulation for the rest of the day. Try it!
I so fondly remember StumbleUpin, but I’m trying to recall what was so amazing about it. Was it just something of a novelty at the time or the autocuration of the decentralized web would still be relevant?
it seems like a few social media sites took over from the random delight of finding someone’s little weblog or side project.
I hear they’re trying to buy it back and restart with their uber gains
It wasn't completely random or completely (in the current social media sense) algorithmic: There was a settings page where you could pick among dozens of broad topics you were actually interested in and it would only give you results people categorized under it.
There's a site called cloudhiker that kinda does the same thing. The idea is the same but there was something special about early days Stumbleupon. Idk if we'll ever recapture that.
Loved stumbleupon! I think when I realized that I was no longer stumbling upon anything interesting was the leading indicator of the long downhill trend of interesting content on the web.
It's so strange that StumbleUpon died but TikTok thrives today.
TikTok's algorithm is based entirely on when you click the Like button and when you linger on a video, exactly like StumbleUpon's algorithm. StumbleUpon even had a video product, StumbleVideo, that was basically just TikTok.
But, in 2018, when StumbleUpon shut down and sold their assets to Mix, the prevailing wisdom was that people didn't want to use StumbleUpon because they wanted to use Reddit and Facebook, to follow curated feeds of links, instead of random links that other people like.
If that wisdom were true, TikTok should have failed too, because TikTok just gives you "random stuff that similar people like," just like StumbleUpon.
I guess it just goes to show that there's no accounting for the rise and fall of social media apps/networks.
TikTok was mobile device centric, and the people that glommed onto it quickest were young mobile users. StumbleUpon was just a website that the "olds" used. Maybe I'm wrong, but did SU have a mobile app? If so, they did a very bad job of getting it into the hands of those that TikTok did.
StumbleVideo was exactly like TikTok, including focusing on mobile. The only material difference is that StumbleVideo's videos were landscape instead of portrait, and they had a "Stumble" button instead of swiping.
(Maybe it's the swiping gesture? Maybe the gesture is more comfortable in portrait?? But it's hard to see why that would make or break a video app like this…)
I used SumbleUpon but not their video service, but some differentiating factors is TikTok specializes specifically short form video content in an environment where creators are rewarded and incentivized to make addictive content.
Something that I find delightful about this project is that Jim Davis approves of it!
From Wikipedia: "Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield, approved of the project, and an official Garfield book (also called Garfield Minus Garfield) was published by his company. It was mainly edited comics by Walsh, with some comics contributed by Davis."
Not only do I really l talk to my cats, but they talk to me too! We're about equal in our abilities to understand each other; sometimes one of my cats might just run around for a bit yell-meowing and it's not clear why, but I'm sure they feel the same way when I occasionally get upset at things. Other times, like when one of them starts whine-meowing when I'm putting their wet food into a bowl, I know _exactly_ what's she's saying even if it doesn't actually cause me to get it done any faster.
Not only that, but the meows get more frantic as I'm walking towards the spot where the dish goes. She needs to be absolutely certain that there's no chance I'll change my mind two steps before getting there!
yes to all of this. i actually think my cat thinks i am dumb, because she often mimes out the thing that she wants me to do in increasingly unsubtle ways as she gets more and more frustrated as i don't get it-- like she is playing charades and i'm the useless teammate that isn't getting it (which i find absolutely hilarious every time, even if it is often something that is objectively annoying were i to forget that she is a cat and not a human). she also has an astonishing "vocabulary" of very different meow... tambres?... that it is very hard for me to think don't have _some_ purpose-- if they didn't, why wouldn't she just make the same or similar noises every time?
IME while clear two-way communication might be impossible [1], talking to your pet, cat or dog or any other mammal [2] does deepen the mutual bond and provides some communication framework - not saying that your cat will definitely understand what does it mean when you say "Garfield, fetch me that yellow slipper", let alone actually obey, but it will, over time, learn to recognize tone, sounds, and even context, and will also try to vocalize back, which may turn into patterns you start to recognize. So yes, it pays to talk directly to your pet.
Though that's not as strange as talking to your plants that seems to help the plants somehow.
[1] let's call it super rare because one in a trillion trillion is still not zero
[2] smarter birds too, can't say much about reptiles beyond a pond turtle really bonded with my brother
There are a million cat & dog owners out there using Talking Buttons, borrowed from nonverbal human assistive communications. Mostly to make funny Tiktok videos, to be fair. It's rarely clear what is random, what is Clever Hans training, and what is direct operant conditioning.
It's still notable that Jim Davis has that level of chill about it. Someone with a mercenary capitalist attitude toward their work can be just as much a control freak as Bill Watterson. (Not being judgmental; Watterson's position is completely valid too.)
I don't think the concern is that Davis "did it for the money", and that's not a fair representation of why some of us mock Jim Davis.
I don't think anybody is arguing comic authors shouldn't make money out of their work.
The concern is that Garfield is the product of conscious market research and not whatever we imagine a comic artist goes through when creating their comics. You can dismiss this as some ridiculous search for "purity", but wouldn't you say most people imagine Watterson, Schultz, etc. went through a process more or less "I liked these other cartoons, and wouldn't it be cool to make something about <idea>/<childhood memories>/<something that inspired me>/<something that worries me>" vs "hey, let's make money, what kind of character would make me the most money?".
Art without money is madness. Money without art dies on the vine in obscurity or pays its dues in criticism through time.
99% of everything commercially produced is somewhere between these and, if made by a person, part of a cannon, a body of work that grows and changes as the person does.
Just because an artist invites us into their mind does not mean we don’t owe them the respect we’d give a stranger. At least that’s how I look at it.
We don't owe Jim Davis any kind of respect as an artist. He must earn it.
In the scale you're describing, he leans heavily towards making money and away from the art part. It's OK to feel scorn for this. It's also OK to respect it, but that's not me.
> Art without money is madness
This isn't what my comment was about, but I cannot refrain from answering: art can exist perfectly well without money. I'd say the vast majority of art humanity produces is not related to money at all. It is definitely not madness without money.
> Money without art dies on the vine in obscurity or pays its dues in criticism through time.
Sadly, I don't think the former is true, and I don't think the latter matters enough.
I've created so much art in my spare time, for the sheer love and joy of it. It's done for me, but I've shared it with friends and family and they've also greatly appreciated it, and sometimes participated in it with me with splendid results. Money has never entered the equation.
Am I missing something, or am I correct in my reading of that statement? If I'm correct, I don't mean to be judgemental, but that's a horribly disappointing view of art, whatever the medium, and I'm sorry that you feel that way.
Would you go and dig rocks out of a mountain and refine them into pure ore just because?
We are social animals. Art is storytelling. It has many utilities, but it is primarily education and entertainment.
A modern version of the cave painting is to distill complex and uncomfortable truths about the world for those who wish to thrive in a society built on lies.
If you want to go dig shiny rocks from the mountain at great personal risk to your mental and physical health for no benefit to society you are probably sick. If it heals you, that's its utility.
But if you find you're good at it and you want to use this skill for its intended purpose, you aught to be getting paid for it.
As someone who is into producing visual and musical art for no monetary benefit, and happens to do a lot of backpacking and is very into the geology of the areas I backpack in, yes. I would absolutely find great value in something akin to trekking into remote, hard to reach areas just to see some rocks shaped by ancient glaciers.
If that all makes me "sick", then fuck yeah, proud to be mentally ill. It's truly sad that doing something for pleasure, education, love, fascination and reverence (like being fascinated about how our planet shaped itself, or learning to play the guitar because you love music and think it's fun) is viewed as "mad" or "sick" if there isn't some kind of monetary return. YMMV indeed, but money is not everything.
What's sick, in my eyes, is only being able to view things through the lens of monetary value.
Getting together with your friends and playing/creating music together, with/for yourselves, and for no financial gain is of tremendous value, for instance.
> The concern is that Garfield is the product of conscious market research and not whatever we imagine a comic artist goes through when creating their comics.
Jim Davis has consistently said this, but really, take a look at strip #1. It's not funny, it's not cute. It's a cruel joke at his own expense - I don't think it's overanalyzing it to say that the cartoonist loser Jon is a stand-in for Jim. If this was a product of market research, it was the worst market research ever!
It's possible Davis overstated his claim for effect. There are definitely elements of Jon as an author stand-in.
As an aside, over here (Argentina) we have an extremely marketing-oriented and bad comics author, Nik, who "invented" a cartoon cat vaguely similar to Garfield called "Gaturro", which started as a copy of Garfield with a slightly more political bent. It's as bad and bland as Garfield, without any trace of originality.
As Fight Club would have it, "a copy of a copy of a copy...".
I'm sure some of my vitriol against Garfield is influenced by my dislike of Nik and his Gaturro.
Dudes sitting in a smoky room: “Yeah, so the pig’s a big fat pig with mobility issues and get this, he stutters hahahaha gonna sell like moonshine, go tell the artists.”
I'm sure it impugns many of the classics (and later), not only Garfield! In my mind, it does impugn He-Man, G.I. Joe, etc. YMMV, of course.
> Dudes sitting in a smoky room: “Yeah, so the pig’s a big fat pig with mobility issues and get this, he stutters hahahaha gonna sell like moonshine, go tell the artists.”
There was a lot of artistry in the Looney Toons, the artists were both doing it for the money (of course) but also out of love for cartoons and they had ideas about them. It wasn't pure cold hearted market research. They didn't go "what would sell more stuffed toys, a pig or a rabbit?".
There must have been some of this too, of course, but have you read memories or articles about Tex Avery and other people involved? They truly cared about their craft. They had ideas about what they wanted to achieve, and it wasn't just "make money".
Good points, and to be honest I love the older, meaner cartoons. But cute Mickey and cute p-p-p-Porky differed from their originals for the same reason as the “Garfield is a lasagna” joke stopped making visual sense.
The conclusion doesn't follow the premise. In fact, precisely the opposite arises from it. People who make things for money tend to be controlling about their thing, as it's the thing that makes them money. Others controlling the thing is a potential threat against the money-making capability of the thing, so they usually try to quell it. To not just let a remix be, but actively endorse it, is a notable and unusual event.
It doesn’t really surprise me, but I’m not sure it changes how I feel about it.
My family were huge Garfield fans growing up and had a bunch of the books (one in German). The side characters were fun Odie, Lyman, the overly adorable kitten (Nermal), some relatives that came from a farm or something.
The “worst” thing was at some point it did seem like Davis was cranking them out for the newspaper without some of the care (though it might be I overdosed and became kind of sick of them). The other characters disappeared or became infrequent.
Garfield always struck me as having exhausted all available novelty almost immediately. Simpsons at least was able to do 5-10 seasons (depending on your taste), but there is only so much one can do with 3 panels and a handful of characters eh?
I think he kept his slot more out of nostalgia and risk adversion from the papers than anything else.
I don't think he's said, but he has written some shockingly creepy stories himself, like the Halloween special which suggests Jon died or moved out ages ago and Garfield is just hallucinating due to starvation and despair. He claimed he wrote it after a market survey indicating that loneliness is what people fear the most (this is a pattern with Davis - he always cheerfully claims he's just in it for the money whenever someone suggests he has any kind of artistic vision).
Or the one in "Garfield: his 9 lives" where a different incarnation of Garfield goes suddenly feral and kills the elderly woman owning him. Jim Davis didn't draw it, but he did script it!
The concept would be more interesting and realistic if they removed only Garfield's thought bubbles (after all, Jon can't hear Garfield's thoughts anyway) but still left Garfield in the comic.
The somethingawful forums started this with garfield in the comic before "Garfield minus Garfield" was a thing. I agree that the original gag is much better.
Yeah I never liked this one. There's that one other that replaces Garfield with a slightly realistic cat (without thought bubble of course) and I prefer that.
Love GMG, glad to see it at number one here. It's really quite amazing how much funnier and yet more profound it is without Garfield. If you like this, you might also enjoy Nietzsche Family Circus: https://www.nietzschefamilycircus.com/
I used to have one stuck to the door of my doom room. No one laughed. :(
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 229 ms ] threadhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAh9oLs67Cw
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N8RDNd92sK0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3NLa4ebX4E
It is surprisingly good.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O2C5R3FOWdE
I want to see Rogan Minus Rogan and Lex Minus Lex podcasts where all the host's speaking parts are cut out and you only hear the guest's replies.
Thanks in advance.
After discovering Dwarkesh, Lex and Rogan have struck me as tragic waste. At worst a laundromat for psychopathic distortions, and at best a lazy unguided exhibition of the guest’s choosing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFE2CCfAP1o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbLcY0XeVY4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXG2h3RWTPE&pp=ygUGI2RrYWl0
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buD2RM0xChM Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juts9IlrixQ
“Huhuhuhuhh.” “Wow.” “You wrote that?” “Who?” “Where is that from? What show is that from?”
Very interesting listening material I am sure
https://qlymwesmrj.s3.amazonaws.com/temp/joe_without_joe.mp3
Edit: if you want to ruin your day, check out this C&H fan art https://www.reddit.com/r/calvinandhobbes/comments/6vwll2/is_...
It's not reality. Hobbes it's not unambiguously stated to be a figment of Calvin's imagination either.
That's a fine interpretation but it's not canonical. Watterson wanted the ambiguity, as Wikipedia mentions (sorry, I don't have the interview with the direct quote where Watterson states this):
> "[Watteron] gave an example of this in discussing his opposition to a Hobbes plush toy: that if the essence of Hobbes' nature in the strip is that it remain unresolved whether he is a real tiger or a stuffed toy, then creating a real stuffed toy would only destroy the magic."
Did not think I would be relating to Jon on a Thursday morning.
There was a small YouTube documentary about finding the old comics in libraries and scanning them in. I the description of the video there is links to scans of all the ones they were able to find: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxiwjaUSYJM
or took soem movies and made all the villains super-attractive and the heroes ugly and dressed in black.
https://youtu.be/jKS3MGriZcs?si=RRlSVL0jwi5sDl3f
Removing the laugh track from the big bang theory
It feels slower and more natural. It also helps because I wouldn't have laughed at any of those spots with it without laugh track.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9WVDvVd0E
This is what's interesting about G-G. The tragedy was always there. We kinda knew the tragedy was always there, but we'd rather laugh at Jon with Garfield than commiserate with Jon.
Taking superheroes out of a random movie would lead to silliness, yes, but nothing poignant.
https://screenrant.com/15-dark-garfield-minus-strips-jon-dep...
Super Eyepatch Wolf actually did a really interesting analysis about how Garfield entered the horror genera https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2C5R3FOWdE. I click on the video randomly out of curiosity, but I got really sucked in.
Remember, Jon is already talking to a cat who he assumes can't understand him & knows can't talk back. He might as well be talking into the abyss. Only we can read Garfield's inner monologue. Jon's actions are sometimes presupposed by Garfield's whims. This premise is already the basis of some horror or otherwise unsetting fiction.
If Garfield is there or not, if we focus on Jon as the main character of the strip, we might have to do some introspection, whether it's about expecting to have a conversation with cat as if he were your son, that our lives are as boring as his, etc. These are scary thoughts! Garfield's presence serves as a humorous distraction and allows us to forget these thoughts and laugh at Jon, even if briefly. In the same way, Freddy Krueger delivers funny one liners to break up the dread of realizing we're in some sort of living nightmare like people of Elm Street...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ayjz18d8Kpo
Similarly creep and unsettling.
Really changes the tone, though in that case it doesn't ruin it, just makes it different.
Obviously it still wasn't as darkly observant as the movie, but it did have a edge.
Reflexive dismissals of shows with laugh tracks are lazy.
I don't "reflexively dismiss" all shows with a laugh track. Some of Friends is genuinely hilarious. But a lot of it is only funny, to me, when surrounded by others laughing.
So, at least for the vast majority of these: manual.
Kagi has brought it back (kind of): https://kagi.com/smallweb has a random button (Next Post in the top left corner)
https://reboot.digg.com/
https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/05/kevin-rose-and-alexis-ohan...
Pretty interesting timeline of events in their Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StumbleUpon
HN has a gentle enough design that I can enjoy it without it sucking me in, but I make a conscious choice to avoid Reddit, twitter, et al.
You're right that this kind of novelty-seeking content has a profound impact on the brain. It's really interesting to see finally see longitudinal research, plus research on screens/novelty on child development (search for $thing + "psychosocial development").
One of the most encouraging thing I've taken away is that neutral pathways are still quite plastic well into adulthood.
For example, here's an experiment to try if you wake up and scroll in bed. After you do your morning routine, jot down a mood score (-1 feeling crummy, 0 meh neutral, +1 feeling good). You can do this for a week or two if you want to collect control data. Then, force yourself to get out of bed without looking at your phone (buy an alarm if you have too). You should see changes in your mood log within a week. Sleep regulates/replenishes dopamine levels, and scrolling through a dopamine wonderland first thing in the AM can result in dopamine dysregulation for the rest of the day. Try it!
it seems like a few social media sites took over from the random delight of finding someone’s little weblog or side project.
I hear they’re trying to buy it back and restart with their uber gains
TikTok's algorithm is based entirely on when you click the Like button and when you linger on a video, exactly like StumbleUpon's algorithm. StumbleUpon even had a video product, StumbleVideo, that was basically just TikTok.
But, in 2018, when StumbleUpon shut down and sold their assets to Mix, the prevailing wisdom was that people didn't want to use StumbleUpon because they wanted to use Reddit and Facebook, to follow curated feeds of links, instead of random links that other people like.
If that wisdom were true, TikTok should have failed too, because TikTok just gives you "random stuff that similar people like," just like StumbleUpon.
I guess it just goes to show that there's no accounting for the rise and fall of social media apps/networks.
(Maybe it's the swiping gesture? Maybe the gesture is more comfortable in portrait?? But it's hard to see why that would make or break a video app like this…)
I didn't know I needed this, but now that you shared it—I NEEDED IT!
From Wikipedia: "Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield, approved of the project, and an official Garfield book (also called Garfield Minus Garfield) was published by his company. It was mainly edited comics by Walsh, with some comics contributed by Davis."
https://garfieldminusgarfield.net/private/61669516/fSymsOGXO...
Though that's not as strange as talking to your plants that seems to help the plants somehow.
[1] let's call it super rare because one in a trillion trillion is still not zero
[2] smarter birds too, can't say much about reptiles beyond a pond turtle really bonded with my brother
[1] Garfield was originally created by Davis with the intention to come up with a 'good, marketable character' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfield
That Davis did it for the money is just "meh". Most people work for money.
I don't think anybody is arguing comic authors shouldn't make money out of their work.
The concern is that Garfield is the product of conscious market research and not whatever we imagine a comic artist goes through when creating their comics. You can dismiss this as some ridiculous search for "purity", but wouldn't you say most people imagine Watterson, Schultz, etc. went through a process more or less "I liked these other cartoons, and wouldn't it be cool to make something about <idea>/<childhood memories>/<something that inspired me>/<something that worries me>" vs "hey, let's make money, what kind of character would make me the most money?".
Davis is not the only one, of course.
99% of everything commercially produced is somewhere between these and, if made by a person, part of a cannon, a body of work that grows and changes as the person does.
Just because an artist invites us into their mind does not mean we don’t owe them the respect we’d give a stranger. At least that’s how I look at it.
In the scale you're describing, he leans heavily towards making money and away from the art part. It's OK to feel scorn for this. It's also OK to respect it, but that's not me.
> Art without money is madness
This isn't what my comment was about, but I cannot refrain from answering: art can exist perfectly well without money. I'd say the vast majority of art humanity produces is not related to money at all. It is definitely not madness without money.
> Money without art dies on the vine in obscurity or pays its dues in criticism through time.
Sadly, I don't think the former is true, and I don't think the latter matters enough.
I used to binge read those meaningless colorful flip books to put myself to sleep.
Benadryl without the side effects.
Is it art? It felt like the smear of endless days I couldn’t escape and it was comforting. It didn’t challenge me, but I treasure it.
Like a child’s fairy tale that never ends and every day was just… ever after
... wha?
... huh?
I've created so much art in my spare time, for the sheer love and joy of it. It's done for me, but I've shared it with friends and family and they've also greatly appreciated it, and sometimes participated in it with me with splendid results. Money has never entered the equation.
Am I missing something, or am I correct in my reading of that statement? If I'm correct, I don't mean to be judgemental, but that's a horribly disappointing view of art, whatever the medium, and I'm sorry that you feel that way.
We are social animals. Art is storytelling. It has many utilities, but it is primarily education and entertainment.
A modern version of the cave painting is to distill complex and uncomfortable truths about the world for those who wish to thrive in a society built on lies.
If you want to go dig shiny rocks from the mountain at great personal risk to your mental and physical health for no benefit to society you are probably sick. If it heals you, that's its utility.
But if you find you're good at it and you want to use this skill for its intended purpose, you aught to be getting paid for it.
*Your mileage may vary. Just my take.
If that all makes me "sick", then fuck yeah, proud to be mentally ill. It's truly sad that doing something for pleasure, education, love, fascination and reverence (like being fascinated about how our planet shaped itself, or learning to play the guitar because you love music and think it's fun) is viewed as "mad" or "sick" if there isn't some kind of monetary return. YMMV indeed, but money is not everything.
What's sick, in my eyes, is only being able to view things through the lens of monetary value.
I appreciate your perspective, but I hope you appreciate that mine is just aligned with a more social view of the world.
Getting together with your friends and playing/creating music together, with/for yourselves, and for no financial gain is of tremendous value, for instance.
I find lots of joy in life without money entering directly into the equation (other than "without money I wouldn't be able to live").
When I start doing something I enjoy -- a hobby, an activity, a craft -- the first thought into my mind is definitely NOT "how can I monetize this?".
It can be, but it's not the only one.
> mine is just aligned with a more social view of the world
I wouldn't say this, no. It's just a money-oriented worldview, not a more social one.
In any case, I didn't say anything about art in my comment immediately above. I was disagreeing with your worldview.
I also didn't say anything about arts being less deserving of compensation.
Could you try addressing what other people actually say?
Jim Davis has consistently said this, but really, take a look at strip #1. It's not funny, it's not cute. It's a cruel joke at his own expense - I don't think it's overanalyzing it to say that the cartoonist loser Jon is a stand-in for Jim. If this was a product of market research, it was the worst market research ever!
As an aside, over here (Argentina) we have an extremely marketing-oriented and bad comics author, Nik, who "invented" a cartoon cat vaguely similar to Garfield called "Gaturro", which started as a copy of Garfield with a slightly more political bent. It's as bad and bland as Garfield, without any trace of originality.
As Fight Club would have it, "a copy of a copy of a copy...".
I'm sure some of my vitriol against Garfield is influenced by my dislike of Nik and his Gaturro.
Dudes sitting in a smoky room: “Yeah, so the pig’s a big fat pig with mobility issues and get this, he stutters hahahaha gonna sell like moonshine, go tell the artists.”
I'm sure it impugns many of the classics (and later), not only Garfield! In my mind, it does impugn He-Man, G.I. Joe, etc. YMMV, of course.
> Dudes sitting in a smoky room: “Yeah, so the pig’s a big fat pig with mobility issues and get this, he stutters hahahaha gonna sell like moonshine, go tell the artists.”
There was a lot of artistry in the Looney Toons, the artists were both doing it for the money (of course) but also out of love for cartoons and they had ideas about them. It wasn't pure cold hearted market research. They didn't go "what would sell more stuffed toys, a pig or a rabbit?".
There must have been some of this too, of course, but have you read memories or articles about Tex Avery and other people involved? They truly cared about their craft. They had ideas about what they wanted to achieve, and it wasn't just "make money".
Newspaper comic artists aren't working for free. They all want money. That's why they work.
My family were huge Garfield fans growing up and had a bunch of the books (one in German). The side characters were fun Odie, Lyman, the overly adorable kitten (Nermal), some relatives that came from a farm or something.
The “worst” thing was at some point it did seem like Davis was cranking them out for the newspaper without some of the care (though it might be I overdosed and became kind of sick of them). The other characters disappeared or became infrequent.
I don’t begrudge him though.
I think he kept his slot more out of nostalgia and risk adversion from the papers than anything else.
I'd say there are things which suggest he's not entirely sincere about that.
Or the one in "Garfield: his 9 lives" where a different incarnation of Garfield goes suddenly feral and kills the elderly woman owning him. Jim Davis didn't draw it, but he did script it!
https://screenrant.com/garfield-his-9-lives-primal-self-horr...
https://boingboing.net/2014/03/09/garfield-without-garfields...
https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/7zfbr3/realfield/
I used to have one stuck to the door of my doom room. No one laughed. :(
https://www.tumblr.com/timeisaflatcircus