This kind of reminds me of how almost every website used to have a forum section but that faded out so slowly over time that I never really noticed, what exactly happened?
@HTTP Error 404 and
@I don't like gays :^) have it. Social media.
instead of 500 forums with a "current events" section you have /r/GayThingYouLike and now all the people from other niche interest areas can go to /r/politics.
I could go on about how this concentration of discussion makes things worse and easier for tranny jannies to coopt discussion but I'm not waiting to go that deep on a webcomic post.
edit:
Forums also used to be a free "value add" on hosting packages, check a box and your forum is ready in 5 minutes, but that's less common now. Some places still offer them but you have dig or request via support ticket, but mostly you're on your own to deploy your own app or go 3rd party.
For webcomics, specifically, three things:
1) Free forum hosts are folding. Forums used to be a free box-tick you could check in your webhosting package, but not any more. Ad revenue in general has been drying up ever since 2008, hackers and russian bots keep trying to get around protections, so a forum is now something you need to pay for. This is fueling a vicious cycle with the above mentioned social media concentration, means more people go to the "big" sites -> ad market for small forums dries up -> more small sites fold -> more people go to the "biggies" - this also fuels why forums usually aren't a part of hosting packages anymore.
2) Expanding on above, ad revenue being down means webcomics have less money, so the money spent on the forum may not be a good place for limited scatch to go when you can just point everyone to Facebook/insta/reddit/twitter, which feeds into...
3) Webcomics no longer grow their own communites, they suck in people from other communities by reposting and hoping shit goes viral. Hosting your own community is good for retaining fans (sort of) but is poor at attracting new ones. When I say "sort of", you can end up with stuff like PA forums where a lot of people probably haven't read the comic in 5+ years but still come to the forum to bullshit with the people they've bullshitted with for the past 20; basically a bald man hanging around the barbershop.
Webcomics having a dedicated site and not just using Instagram or similar is becoming less common. Terminal Lance, a good military humor comic, has even moved from a traditional webcomic site to a style sheet over a generic media blog.
I think the breaking point was the 'raped by dickwolves' thing.
He cucked both times. That's the only reason he "lost."
The reason they cucked out was because at that point Penny Arcade wasn't a webcomic anymore. It was Child's Play and PAX and they believed screeching triggered libs that these things would hurt their other brands. Basically sold the fuck out and have been getting gayer ever since.
Dickwolves was fucking funny, and it wasn't even about the rape. It was about the fact that in an MMO, you do the quest and you move on, regardless of how sadsack the quest lures are.
That's the dumbest part. The comic is all about how terrible rape is and that in an MMO the player is arguably a total sociopath because they never actually fix the source of the problem. At no point is rape portrayed positively.
Same goes for Buckley, who, to my eternal surprise, made two actually funny comic strips this year.
Intentionally funny? I don't believe you. Post them.