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Comment by jarcane | Hacker News Reader

The only exception on that list is a gimmick card game illustrated by a popular webcomic author that for whatever reason went viral.

It went viral because said webcomic's creator is a professional SEO marketer.

The Oatmeal is basically the Buzzfeed of webcomics.

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Personal opinion of course, but even if you don't like The Oatmeal, a comparison to Buzzfeed isn't really appropriate, they're very different animals. One's a comic written, drawn and published by a guy, the other is a couple of lists interspersed with gifs, then lazily rehashed weeks later.

Read some of the stuff he and others have written in the past about his process. Even the subject matter is selected based on virality more than anything. You really think it's coincidence that all his comics seem to be about whatever is an instant meme on reddit this week?

Nobody ever went broke on the internet by running cats and bacon into the ground.

Now I don't read the oatmeal so am not really qualified to comment on its content, but what you just described (content based on timely matters) seems like the very definition of the editorial cartoons I grew up reading. I imagine there are a large variety of non-contemporaneous comics one could also read on the web if it's not to one's liking.

Can you link to some of that stuff?

And even the bacon phenomenon was marketing-driven: http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-10-06/bacon-why-am...

Actually, buzzfeed has some good long form content

I've noticed that, and been surprised every time. It's like finding a diamond at the bottom of a dive bar urinal.

It's not all that surprising once you know about their efforts:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mathonan/come-fly-with-us#.pqdmg3WRE

http://www.journalism.columbia.edu/page/1109-buzzfeed-news-c...

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