Hey guys, it's Celestia and today we're going to be talking about what exactly Webtoon did to
manage to piss off half the internet: both its own creators and readers and people who don't even use
the platform, and whether or not that outrage is warranted. But first, it's the first video of July,
so buckle up for some contest updates. You can skip to the timestamp on screen to get right to the
topic if you're not interested, but if you do want to see all of the gorgeous entries to June's neon
themed art contest and hear about July's theme and prizes, please stick around. So oh my God, apparently
you guys did it again. I keep getting stupidly excited about the number of entries to one
month's contest, and then you guys submit even more for the next one. And holy sh*t, I think the theme of
neon prompted an even more diverse collection of entries than any other previous prompt, because
scrolling through them, just-- I am so taken aback by how talented you guys are and how uniquely you
all interpreted that prompt, because everything is so striking and eye-catching and gorgeous and I'm
amazed. Thank you all so much for participating, and while I could absolutely never pick a winner
myself, as always, I am nonetheless thrilled to announce that by popular vote, the winner for this
contest is -- I'm not sure how to pronounce it Feh-fee or Fee-fee (Fefy) -- regardless, their piece is so, so beautiful
and so colorful and vibrant. Big congratulations to them for both making some incredible art and
winning the GAOMON PD1220. But as always, even if you didn't win, please don't feel discouraged -
you'll always have another chance to win a tablet on this channel, apparently, to my personal surprise,
because VEIKK has sponsored July's prize by offering the first place winner a VK1060
Pro drawing tablet. A commenter requested that to contrast June's theme of neon, I should make
July's theme black-and-white, and I love that idea, so I'm going with it. As per previous months, please
submit your pieces based on the prompt of black-and-white to duchesscelestiacontests.carrd.com,
also linked in the description, for a chance to win a VK1060 Pro drawing tablet, which you guys know
I have to talk about first, because yes, I tried it out first, and yes, it passed all of my
recently developed but nonetheless finely tuned tablet tests to earn my endorsement. Let me tell
you how. And I'm gonna condense my review this time because I know you guys hate it when I talk about
this stuff for too long, but that doesn't mean the tablet itself is any less impressive than any I've
reviewed before. It comes with a drawing glove, which you all know exactly how much I appreciate,
two adapters so that it can work with either an Android device or a PC, a cleaning cloth - which
is above and beyond - a tablet bag, which is even MORE above and beyond, which I got really excited
about, more pen nibs than I have literally ever received with a tablet, a pen stand, a pen pouch,
even stickers that I wish I could have kept, and most importantly to me, a tablet protector with a
paper texture. Not only does that mean that you'll feel like you're drawing on paper, obviously, which
is a huge sensory win, at least to me, you'll also save the tablet from any damage that would
eventually accumulate over time after having your pen pressed into it for long enough. Beyond that,
installing the drivers and getting them to work with the tablet took all of five minutes, it's got
a pretty big size in terms of drawing space while still remaining very lightweight, and it has dials --
TWO dials! Now, I've endorsed previous tablets with dials, but VEIKK's program-slash-interface-slash-tool-
slash-whatever-it-is, uh, makes it so, so easy to program them to do exactly what you want.
And better yet, again, it has two - that means you don't have to constantly reprogram your tablet
depending on whether you want it to zoom in and out, or rotate the canvas, or change your
brush size, whatever - you can pick the two functions that you use most, and program them in, and I love
it. On that note, we're back to another tablet with express keys, which you guys know how much I love,
because God bless: there are buttons that will undo my 700,000 mistakes with ease that PC users cannot
otherwise experience. I mean yes, there's control-Z, but do you know how many times I've pressed control-X
or control-A or control-S instead? Zero times with these express keys. They're better - I know it, you know it.
Or at least you WILL with this tablet. And before I move on, this is stupid and shallow and purely
aesthetic-based, but the whole tablet is completely matte, and as someone with sensory issues, I'm
really, really sensitive to how a tablet feels, so that texture is not only aesthetically pleasing -
although it definitely is that too - it's also just a pleasure to hold and work with. If you want a
chance to give this blessing of a tablet a new home, please consider entering July's art contest
with the prompt black-and-white via duchesscelestiacontests.carrd.com - again, linked in the
description. You can also find VEIKK's information in the description, so please
check that out as well, because their tablets are both affordable and very high quality. And quite
frankly, we're done with Wacom in this house. VEIKK, GAOMON, Parblo? They do it better. Anyway, thank you
to those who stayed for the monthly contest essay, which I am at least TRYING to shorten - although I
will not apologize for being f*cking passionate and subsequently long-winded - and welcome back to those
of you who skipped. Let's talk about Webtoon. For those of you who are somehow unfamiliar, Webtoon
is a platform that allows individual creators to host and share their comics with the world - and in
an ideal world, make money off of them. While that isn't always or even frequently the case, it still
allows independent artists the opportunity to use its platform to access their very wide-reaching
audience, which is particularly beneficial for artists that don't necessarily have the largest
followings of their own - which is the vast majority, because it's the Internet. It's kind of like
Etsy: you don't need a following to sell your stuff on Etsy like you would with an independent store,
you can sell it to their existing marketplace. Webtoon, similarly, lets you host your comic on
their platform and advertise it to their existing user base, which is gigantic - I mean, they're one of
the online comic hosting industry's leaders, so a ridiculously immense audience doesn't exactly
come as a surprise, but still. But that doesn't tell you what they did to earn the unforgiving wrath of
Twitter, so let me elaborate. On June 14th of 2022, a photo of a Webtoon subway ad started circulating
online, and it was... problematic? Inflammatory? Tone-deaf? There are a lot of words that could be used
to describe their choice of advertisement here, but none of them are complimentary. I'll show the
ad on screen, but the visual component of it is largely irrelevant, because the point is that one
of the online comic industry's leaders decided to make an ad that actually said, as a primary focus,
"Comics are literature's fun side hustle", and that, understandably, was poorly received. And it being
poorly received by ONE half of the community was poorly received by the other half of the
community, there-- there are a lot of mixed feelings here, so let's get into why. Some people are mad
that comics were called literature's side hustle, some people are mad that their life's work was
called a side hustle, and some people think it's just an ad that shouldn't be taken so seriously
and people are just being babies about it. And I'm going to talk about the last group of people first,
because contrary to what you might expect, I don't completely disagree with them. Actually, okay-- I do
completely disagree with them, but I thoroughly understand where they're coming from, at least most
of them. Let me explain. First of all, from what I've personally seen in my research, the vast majority
of people saying that the ad is fine and harmless are not artists or creators. Some of them don't
even use Webtoon - MANY of them don't even use it. A lot of them ARE readers of the comics hosted on
Webtoon, but a significant number of them seem to just be fans of comics in general, which means that
their perspective is limited to their experience - and their experience does not, in most cases, extend
to the production of comics, so of course they think that comic artists are overreacting to
the ad, because they have absolutely no idea what it's like to create them - much less to pour your
heart and soul into them as a full-time job only to have both your work and your entire medium
demeaned and diminished by the very platform that's supposed to support you. It's MADE to
support you. And I can't completely blame them for that, because of course they're going to view the
issue from their perspective automatically, and not consider one that they
don't have any knowledge of. Expecting otherwise is unreasonable. But I DON'T think it's unreasonable
to at least expect them to try to HEAR the artists explaining their perspective before dragging their
asses for being upset over nothing or throwing a Twitter tantrum, and many of them are, quite
frankly, failing quite abysmally to do so. So while I can understand them not automatically getting
why artists are upset about the issue because it wouldn't occur to them to be upset about it for
those reasons, I definitely can't understand those of them that are just refusing to listen to the
artists trying to explain that to them, much less acknowledge the reasons' validity, and there are a
lot of people refusing to listen. A lot of people saying "Yeah, comics ARE a side hustle to literature,
because it doesn't take eight hours to read like a novel, so it's low-effort", without bothering to pay
any attention at all whatsoever to the fact that it takes the artist much much longer to create it
than it does for the reader to read it. And a lot of other people saying "Making comics IS a side
hustle for a lot of people, so the ad wasn't wrong", without realizing that the ad wasn't
speaking literally. And even if it was, it would still be insulting to both the full-time comic
artists being referred to like they're hobbyists, and the part-time comic artists being referred
to like their inability to pursue it full-time makes them inferior. But, actually, let's get into
that more, because that brings me back to the two primary groups of people that are mad about the
ad: the ones that are mad at the insinuation that comics aren't professionally viable as anything
more than a side hustle, and the ones that are mad at the insinuation that comics are an inferior
medium to literature. And let me just start off this point by saying that I don't think there
are many people that are nearly as angry about the former as the latter, because I think a lot
of this whole controversy comes from a differing definition of the word "side-hustle". For the reasons
I just mentioned, I can understand why full-time and part-time comic artists alike would find it
insulting if meant literally - that making comics is a part-time job at best - but I don't think that's
the case for most, because contextually speaking, I don't think that's even vaguely what the ad is
trying to communicate, and I think most people see that. The ad is clearly trying to say that
comics themselves as a form of media are a fun, less serious sidekick to classic literature, not
that making comics is literally a side hustle. The ad isn't targeting potential comic artists to come
do work on their platform, it's trying to target a wider range of readers by trying to make comics
more appealing to people who only read books. Based on that alone, it's clear - at least to me - that the
ad was speaking metaphorically and not literally, and subsequently, specifically belittling comics,
not comic artists. Which is precisely why I'm so f*cking sick of hearing people say "Why are you guys
so pissed about this? Comics ARE a side hustle for a lot of artists, so the ad's right", because I feel
like you have to actually put some solid effort into missing the point that hard. Everything about
the verbiage and target audience screams that it wasn't meant literally, so these people have to
be either dense enough to miss that altogether, or are deliberately misinterpreting it to be
meant literally because that's the only way it's defensible. Maybe I'm being too harsh, and I'm sorry
if I am, but it's just so f*cking irritating. Like, the number of artists who DO make comics as a side
hustle is completely and utterly irrelevant to the reason that so many people have taken issue with
this ad. It's not even what it was referring to. What the ad was quite blatantly implying was that
comics themselves are a less serious, less valuable, and more frivolous version of literature than more
traditional forms, and that is absolutely a problem when so many people already look at comics as a
lesser, inferior form of media that's just for kids. Obviously, I understand that Webtoon's intention
was probably more along the lines of saying "Comics are for everyone, even if you're normally only into
books", but like-- this ad went through layers and LAYERS of approval to get here. How did no one
look at it even once and see that it didn't even vaguely come across that way? Even the word "fun"
in that context reads as devaluing comics as a thoughtless, superficial, lesser version of
books, rather than selling them as another similar form of media that's popular and engaging, which
I'm sure, in fairness, is what they were going for. But in all their tone-deafness, no one at Webtoon
had the foresight or good sense to notice that, and here we are-- with an ad that basically says "we, an
industry leader in webcomics, think webcomics are insignificant", even if that's not what they meant.
So yes, I think people are right to be upset about this. I think this ad was a huge slap in the face
to comic artists everywhere, both on Webtoon and off of it, but especially its own creators. These
artists are working their asses off to create high enough quality work at ridiculous rates
to keep up with the platform's algorithm that prioritizes comics that post impossibly often,
only to have that very platform call that work, on a fundamental level, just a fun side hustle.
It reads like a goddamn headline for The Onion: "Breaking News, Well-Known Industry Leader Calls
Whole Industry Inconsequential". How stupid can they be? I don't think taking this as the blatant insult
that it is is a bad thing, and I don't think people are being babies about it, either. But I also don't
think people are right to be acting like Webtoon had any malicious intent with this, nor do I think
it's productive nor warranted to try to cancel the whole f*cking platform for it. At best, Webtoon
thought they could promote the comics on their platform to a wider audience, and their plan was
so poorly executed that it did the opposite. At worst, their advertising team was ridiculously
negligent and tone-deaf, and thoroughly failed to see this unbelievably obvious outcome coming, with
the foresight of someone who just tripped over a banana peel walking directly into a line of 40
more banana peels. But I do not believe in any way that they were TRYING to insult comics or artists.
I think people should absolutely call them out on being that f*cking dumb, obtuse, and insensitive, but
trying to demolish the entire platform's reputation through Twitter cancel culture
is more than unreasonable. They made a stupid ass mistake - they weren't trying to hurt anyone.
They should have done better, but f*ck, let them learn from this and TRY to, god damn. I feel like
the Internet's like "Okay, you're allowed one mistake. Just kidding, you're obviously fired from the world".
This issue has a lot of validity, and I understand why people are angry, but it feels like a lot of
people are angry in a way that doesn't... yield resolution. It feels like people want Webtoon
to pay for this mistake more than people want to see them use the experience to grow and
not repeat it, and that's just disappointing and counterproductive. Webtoon did issue an apology in
which they acknowledge that their ad copy missed the mark with this, and while I struggle to imagine
anyone missing the mark by that astronomically much, I think they've done all they can do to right
their wrong here. And while artists have every right to be angry about it - I know I certainly
am - I think Webtoon more than deserves the chance to follow these words with actions and prove that
they won't make this kind of dumbass mistake again. That's just me, though what do you guys think? I
know Webtoon as a platform has its own fair share of issues, so I'm sure for some of you, this was the
nail in the coffin that ended your relationship with the platform altogether. And for others, it
might be completely irrelevant to you. Either way, I'm really curious about this one, because
even amongst fellow artists, I've seen a lot of different perspectives being shared on the topic.
Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed today's video, please leave a like and subscribe if you did,
and thank you for watching special thanks as always to channel members Cafe Soleil, Joseph
Solomon, and Unknown Code, as well as patrons Batman, Kyle Low, blueswanson, thisistotally
myname, Uni Tea, Cora Feere, and Jamesha Walker for their support, and I'll see you guys in my next one!