Smiley Town, Episode II: Attack of the Grin [Now with over 1.5 million page views!]

[Blademaster]

Maybe that's because society IS broken.

[Gavin Luper]

Maybe that's because society IS broken.

I dunno, that's getting too close to the whole victim mentality for me. A lot of idiots have been writing things like "well, they're poor and they've been oppressed, so they're fighting back against rich, white people, good on them".

I call bullshit. Being poor doesn't excuse or justify this kind of behaviour. I don't for a second blame the nebulous notion of "the system" - I blame the morons who think it's somehow acceptable to bash people, steal from them while pretending to help them, set people's homes and workplaces on fire and trash their own neighbourhoods. They aren't hurting anyone but other people: families, workers, blue-collar, poor people like themselves. It's idiotic, it's criminal, and I can't think of any other way to describe it except absolutely disgusting and contemptible.

[mr_pikachu]

I dunno, that's getting too close to the whole victim mentality for me. A lot of idiots have been writing things like "well, they're poor and they've been oppressed, so they're fighting back against rich, white people, good on them".

I call bullshit. Being poor doesn't excuse or justify this kind of behaviour. I don't for a second blame the nebulous notion of "the system" - I blame the morons who think it's somehow acceptable to bash people, steal from them while pretending to help them, set people's homes and workplaces on fire and trash their own neighbourhoods. They aren't hurting anyone but other people: families, workers, blue-collar, poor people like themselves. It's idiotic, it's criminal, and I can't think of any other way to describe it except absolutely disgusting and contemptible.

Egh. The whole mob mentality. It's... disgusting, yes. I can't think of a better word for it. It's also sad that this continues to serve as one of the most practical applications of social science to date. (Relatedly, thank you, Philip Zimbardo.) That fact does, in my opinion, say a great deal about society itself.



Flash: Well, I'm not planning to use it for WotF, no. In my view, one of the nice things about WotF is that it serves as an exploration of narrative through the webcomic format, in addition to being a fun story for me to write. Part of the reason I chose to produce it as a webcomic was that I felt that was the ideal format for the story, and I maintain that belief now, so I don't intend to use Flash in continuing the story. (Besides, publishing each issue in Flash would take a crazy long time.) Maybe I'll do future trailers with Flash, but not the pages themselves. There are other tales that I think are more suited to that medium, anyway.