The plug-in I used to clear my social media more or less had to run for three days to delete everything. I wasn’t just online for an Ozarker, I was very online. That was clear watching it go through every post. It was a little like a tv airing my entire adult life where I’d stroll past my office and see the episode where I passed my driving exam, that one that was my first week of college, early relationships and song lyrics after early relationships. I saw posts of my dreams and aspirations, I saw myself achieve some of those dreams and aspirations. In truth, it was a little cathartic watching a sad lonely boy develop into someone he hoped to become. For a brief moment I regretted I was destroying all these moments. But that’s because it was just me and a computer screen and the evaporation of my last twenty years.

Another sense came to mind as my life flashed before my eyes. These little posts were hardly revealing in isolation, but in their accumulation? I saw something deeply private given away to everyone I’ve ever known, and a lot more I’ve never met. I truly had ascribed the entirety of my life to a platform. 20 years I’d given ownership to people who mean us all ill intent. 

Late last year there was a small kerfuffle in Fayetteville, Arkansas over a Christmas Parade. A local bar owner appeared as a Krampus. This wasn’t particularly out of course for Fayetteville. I’ve done Christmas Markets for years in the region. And almost every single one included some presence of the horned Christmas goat man. Plenty even had folks running around in Krampus costumes and committing mischief. If there’d ever been a single issue it certainly didn’t make the news. So I was a little surprised when 2025 provided a crusade. Right wing influencers seized on it stating it as proof of satanism taking over our region.

In 2017, during the first Trump Administration, I’d do little charity portrait drives. I didn’t really know what I was doing, just mad at the state of things and wanting to help. I’ve never been good at yelling at people in the correct way to get the results I want so I drew pictures. It was a decent success, and I’d do more occasionally. Trying to focus more on local charities (or at least local chapters with something like Planned Parenthood) I was purposefully uncombative with as little grandstanding on my calls for portraits as possible. I wanted to invite people to help where I could, I was better at that than condemnation. 

After awhile I’d intermix for profit portrait drives around Halloween. I used these to fund a lot of Tourist Unknown’s print editions. You’d get to pick your own horror theme and I’d draw you in costume. The Halloween Drives proved meteoric, and I’d had have to start earlier and earlier to make sure I got to everyone in who was interested. A lot of books got printed on those portraits, even if I fear they outshined most of my other artistic output at the time. It’s still how people introduce me locally. “Oh this is Gus, you know those little cartoon profiles? He does them.” 

Turning back to 2025 an enterprising influencer proved I’m right to be suspicious of anyone with digital creator in their job description. Old Halloween portaits I had drawn of the bar owner had been brought forward as proof of his satanist past. He’d be already been hit with hatemail and ridicule for a few weeks, and digging into his social media was naturally the next event. Luckily, I didn’t really experience any turmoil from the controversy. Rightwing influencers aren’t very good at the research part so he attributed the drawing to Bo Counts, the bar owner who had been in the Krampus costume. For what it’s worth I’ve known Bo for years and even was a brief co-host on his then radio show, now podcast, on film. We are both painfully into movies, and his portrait was not portraying him as the devil but Darkness from the film Legend. A subtle distinction I grant, but I think it’s an important one. It demonstrates that there is a point where we are taking seriously the fears of people performatively cowering at a character from a movie about unicorns.

It wasn’t lost on me that most of the complaints came from the nebulous online and rarely from locals who had actually attended the parade. Just folks whipped up from other places to stop “the enemy” or I suppose “the adversary.” Online with little aspirations of community but plenty for targeting. It’s impossible to presume good faith in an attention economy where content creators gin up controversy for their brand. Add a moral element and you can justify the time spent to yourself. It’s a tale as old as time dating back further than the town square or the fire. What’s new is the algorithmic push to make every ranting town loony read authoritatively.