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had a strange experience last night
A lot -- the majority -- of my Facebook “friends” are cartoonists. It started with me adding some whose work I have long known and respected, and then of course FB suggests other people you can add, or you see who else this person has friended and you go “Oh yeah, them!” ... until it got to the point where I was adding people I never heard of, whose work I had never seen, but who clearly were cartoonists. And they'd almost always add me back. All I know about them is the few samples of their work I can see on their profile. My primary use of FB is “professional” networking.
Last night, one of them announced that another one had just lost someone -- from the context it sounded like his child had died. The man this happened to is one of those whom I don't know at all. I went to his profile and was able to confirm the details. He and his wife are a [to me] young couple, perhaps early thirties, and their daughter -- not quite two yet -- had just died. Don't know how or why.
For some reason this struck me really hard. I ended up feeling compelled to leave a note of sympathy for this stranger who happens to share my avocation. Dunno how he will react to seeing a strange name in his stream of support...
I eventually realized that I found this news more affecting than I would otherwise, simply because I know that this man is also a cartoonist. As if that means that his suffering is somehow different, or as if this news more directly involves me.
It's the first time I realized how I have come to think of cartoonists as My Tribe.
Looking back, I can see other examples of this. Via shares and suchlike, I see plenty of examples of appallingly ignorant posts on FB re politics or whatnot. But whenever I see one from a cartoonist, part of me automatically thinks “He ought to know better” ... as if being a cartoonist makes him smarter than average, or a better human being. I expect better from My People.
And I suspect it isn't just me: why are other cartoonists so willing to add me -- a stranger -- back? Simply because they can see that I am also a cartoonist? Maybe there's a lot of us who feel that way. I also sometimes see one cartoonist posting to drum up support for another cartoonist who's in a scrape (health, finances, etc.), and the outpouring of response is always noteworthy.
I'm not completely sure how I feel about belonging to a tribe... but I believe at least part of me kinda likes it.
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