Peregrine Lake – A Weekly Webcomic Written by Trae Dorn and Drawn by Ethan Flanagan

As a person who makes creative projects and publishes them on the internet, there’s a push to find the largest audience possible. Modern social media focuses on follower count and reaching as many folks as possible, but the more I think about it — the more I see this kind of pursuit as unfulfilling. This isn’t a criticism of people who want that audience, and I definitely wouldn’t say no to it if it showed up at my doorstep, but these days I find myself wanting to focus on something else: developing a smaller, more intimate community.

I’ve eluded to it in some of my TikTok posts, but I honestly think at this point in my existence of “person who makes shit and puts it online” I get much more satisfaction communicating with a handful of folks who really like what I’m doing. Like UnCONventional never had more than, like, four hundred regular readers, but that audience actively engaged with what I was making. They fought in the comments over character motivations, and genuinely cared about the outcome. BS-Free Witchcraft has a regular listenership of a few thousand, but I love the feedback I get from the small group that gathers on the Nerd & Tie Discord.

In theory, with almost twenty-three thousand followers on my TikTok, I have the potential to reach so many more people there than I do anywhere else, and it’s not that large a following in the grand scheme of the social web. But reaching that audience seems less fulfilling than the three digit numbers currently reading Peregrine Lake.

Intentional small audiences with a sense of community feel much more connected, and I think that’s probably the more emotionally healthy pursuit for me right now. It’s definitely a more sustainable one, and one hundred percent a more achievable one… because I have achieved it. But the thing is, these communities are two way streets. Like there are tons of people making stuff and putting it out to small communities like mine, and the only reason they’re sustainable is that the audience interacts back.

If you’re reading fics on AO3, leave a comment. If you like the YouTube video of a small creator, tell them how much you appreciated it. If you’re reading a comic, let the creator know how much you’re enjoying it. Every single person who makes stuff wants to know you’re out there, and that interaction is what makes making stuff feel worth it. Participate — because that’s how you build community.

I don’t know if there was really a point to this past my climbing up my own asshole about the nature of internet fame and audiences, but I kind of had the need to write it anyways. Who knows why the hell I do anything.

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