415. Drawing Googlers & Mastercarders, Substack > TikTok & Christmas Viewing!

+ Waking Up Gift Cards, and Morris finds you in the Christmas tree

Welcome to issue #415 of New York Cartoons

It’s almost that time; Morris the Holiday Goblin may be visiting your tree soon. Keep an eye out and hide your ornaments. Last year, he swallowed a bauble.

Why Substack?

I have a lot of friends in creative fields asking me why I went all in on Substack and not on socials. Many of them are lamenting the loss of their ability to show their audience work on account of their art being suppressed by the algorithm in favour of outrage-bait video content. It was inevitable. Now, it looks like those in the US who built their living on TikTok will be facing the same problem…

Well, the long answer I wrote back in 2022. The short answer could best be summed up by Substack co-founder

Hamish McKenzie

in a post he published this week:

TikTok’s exit will be a pain for its many millions of fans and addicts in the U.S., but it will hurt a lot more for the many creators who have built an audience on the platform. Those creators are learning a lesson that BuzzFeed learned in the late 2010s: never give the keys to your business to a drunk driver.

…

The collective influence of creators today is more powerful than BuzzFeed’s in the 2010s, and yet they are vulnerable to the exact same problems. They cannot afford to bet their future on platforms whose rules—and sometimes even existence—waver with the winds.

Is that algorithm really ‘For You’?

_

I guess I also feel that I’d rather read people bloviating than watch it on a live stream because writing at least requires you to organize (and, God forbid, interrogate) your thoughts. Even if they’re bonkers.

I’ve been live drawing at a lot of holiday parties this year— yesterday’s gig was for Mastercard’s end-of-year party, and tonight’s is for Google. I’ve been working digitally for some and traditionally for others. Here’s a sneak peek of the digital ones… (I’ll share more with paid subscribers)

Buddy VS Christmas

Gather the family around the Christmas tree and put something on in the background that involves my face. It’ll be running on the Food Network if you still have cable… or on Paramount+ if you don’t remember what cable is.

Clearly there was no budget for a stylist for me...

Give the Gift of a New Mind

Help someone discover the true purpose of meditation—and the joy of an examined life—with a subscription to Waking Up. (I don’t get any monetary kickbacks from this, I just love the app and have found it useful for my brain for years. Full transparency: I also work for the team that makes this app and they’re excellent.)

Is There Something In This?

Take a listen to the latest episode, where we talk about Post-election Cartoon Reactions, Simone Biles and getting judgy, Getting backlash for cartoons online, Nine-year olds dealing with another pall, Cartoons that endanger democracy itself, Baby-Dividers!, Broken Ice Makers, The Golden State Warriors at The Louvre, Polyamory at the tennis and more!

This week’s Sketchbook is a bit of a mixed bag from my live caricaturing gig at Queensyard in Hudson Yards where I had to draw caricatures on business cards…

See more sketchbooks here.

…and Merry Christmas