Finding Flamingos ~ a webcomic

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🦩 About Finding Flamingos

About Finding Flamingos (and why you're here)

Finding Flamingos started as a dumb little lunch-break doodle. I'd take my break, grab a beer, and I had just enough time to draw one panel before I had to drag myself back to work. That was it. One panel, lunch, beer, back to the grind.

Then I "upgraded" to drawing them digitally in OneNote (yes, OneNote — I know). Which meant I had exactly four usable "colors," aka highlighter mode: blue, green, pink, and yellow. No fancy palette. No thoughtful character design. Just whatever OneNote would let me get away with.

And because that's what I had, that's what they became. Those four highlighter colors are literally the reason everyone ended up the colors they are. Entire cast design by Microsoft's least artistic software choice.

Eventually I got an iPad, started using Procreate, and Finding Flamingos became what it is now: still goofy, still scrappy, just… with slightly less cursed tools.

Why this site exists

Finding Flamingos used to live on the usual social media places, because that's just what you did. You posted a comic, people who followed you actually saw it, and the internet still had that "made by humans" feeling.

Now it mostly feels like the internet got bought up, shrink-wrapped, and turned into five giant corporate theme parks. You can make something you're proud of and then watch it get buried… while the platform happily sells your data, shoves ads in your face, and generally acts like it's doing you a favor by letting you exist there at all. And I'm done with that.

I'm done putting my work on platforms that won't even show it to the people who asked to follow it — but have zero problem monetizing me and my readers. I'm done with Threads, Facebook, Instagram, and Webtoon. And I wouldn't touch X with a 10,000-foot pole.

So: this is the home of Finding Flamingos. Not a "link in bio." Not a "content funnel." My site.

The old internet is coming back (a little)

Part of why I'm doing this is because I miss how the internet used to feel: personal sites, little weird corners, web rings, pages that existed because someone cared — not because an algorithm decided it was "worth distributing."

The IndieWeb / Neocities vibe is starting to give people that chance again: build your own space, own your work, and actually connect like a person. Finding Flamingos is my tiny way of taking a piece of the internet back.

Where to find the comic

Here first: This site is where Finding Flamingos lives now. If you want the real home base, it's this.
Bluesky (maybe): I might cross-post on Bluesky sometimes — but I'm not promising a perfect schedule there.

Who am I?

I'm Johnathan — software QA engineer by day, gamer and cartoonist by night. I've lived in the greater Seattle area for about 20 years, and I've been making webcomics long enough to have strong opinions about RSS, archives, and why "the algorithm" can kiss my ass.

A Rusty Life — off and on since 2003
Stairwell — running since 2012
Unearthly Unraveled — a supernatural podcast comic, also proudly on the IndieWeb

Finding Flamingos isn't my first rodeo. I've got a long history with webcomics, and I'm not interested in handing that over to platforms that treat creators like disposable content machines.

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