Category Archives: social media

Saying ‘ok’ is okay

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I saw this quote and it’s me! I do this all the time. But I didn’t know it was a sign of maturity. I do it so that I don’t have to have a long conversation. It seems easier to just say, “Ok” and leave it at that.

I say “ok” a lot on texts. I also do it because I don’t want to type, or dictate a text. A couple of my cousins sort of mentioned it. They sort thought it was rude for me to just respond, “ok” to their texts.

I do it to be agreeable and to answer a question or statement concisely. There’s a thumbs up thing now, so I can do that rather than even type “ok.”

For instance, I’ll get a text that says, “We’re meeting at such and such place at 2 pm.” And I respond, “ok.” Or they text, “We want Italian food, so we are going to such and such restaurant,” and I respond, “ok.” They have said, “Take the R train because the M train isn’t running,” and I respond, “ok.”

But seeing that they don’t care for those “ok’s,” I’ll sometimes answer, “Ok, looking forward to it,” or “That damn M train is always out of service!” or things like that, just not to be “rude” which I don’t think I’m being, I think I’m being economical.

One interesting thing is that two of my brothers type “okay” when they respond, they spell the whole word out, which I find interesting. I don’t think I have ever done that.


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Cloudy with a chance of faces

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A cloudy eagle

I started this thing called Cloudy With A Chance of Faces. It’s images I see in clouds.

I’ve been posting pictures over the years and a friend suggested I make a thing of it. I add a few outlines to show what I’m seeing and there it is.

I live in Miami, right on the Bay, that combination makes for interesting visions in the sky. The clouds here move very quickly, if you see a formation, you have to capture it quick or it’s gone.

Every morning when I wake up, I look outside and there is something staring me in the face. Many times the clouds look like mountains, other times Snoopy or a lady or whatever.

You could get addicted. I could literally stand in one place and get so many images in a short amount of time. Now that I’m doing this Cloudy project, it gets a big hard not to be obsessed and just be staring at the clouds all day long, waiting for the next image to appear. But oddly enough, when I’m deliberately looking, I don’t see anything. It seems to be an organic thing, you know, it just happens when you least expected, you look up and something is staring down at you.

Snoopy over the bay.


A friend visiting from New York once said that our clouds have layers. I take that to mean they are very expressive. And they are.

If you’d like to follow my venture, I have set up two social media sites. I have the website CloudyWithAChanceOfFaces.com, too, but I haven’t done anything with that yet. I just wanted to get the name while it was available.

Here is the Instagram account: instagram.com/cloudywithachanceoffaces
and Facebook: facebook.com/CloudyWithAChanceOfFaces
Also Tumblr: tumblr.com/cloudywithachanceoffaces

Hope to see you there!

Abe watching over the city.

Madonna, Marilyn Monroe or Mae West? You choose!

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We’re all content creators

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I keep seeing the words “content creator” so I looked it up.

According to Adobe’s website, “A content creator is someone who creates entertaining or educational material to be expressed through any medium or channel.” They say it’s mostly through online publication. Which I think is what we all do.

If we blog, if we draw, if we use Instagram or TikToc or Facebook, we are content creators.

I posted my vacation pics, there, I’m a content creator.

I prefer to be called a cartoonist rather than a content creator. Writing this blog is making me a content creator and I think I prefer “content creator” rather than “blogger” in this instance. So sometimes it’s good to be called a content creator, other times I prefer to be called a cartoonist. You may prefer to be called a photographer or chef rather than content creator, too. I guess it goes back and forth depending on whatever it is you are doing.

I guess we’re all content creators whether we want to use that term or not.

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I’m being used for clickbait!

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I find it amazing at how many people don’t mind stealing others’ intellectual property and think nothing about it.

When this cartoon was published earlier today, people started commenting on social media. Some said due to Netflix’s new policy of no account sharing, they would be dropping their account. It’s sort of cutting off their nose to spite their face. But they don’t think it’s a good idea to support the streaming service they like.

This reminds me of some of these sites that are clickbait. I’m on on a few now. Not deliberately. And it’s happened before. The sites shall remain nameless here.

A guy reached out to me last week and asked if I would answer a few questions for an article, which I’ve done so many times before. Next thing you know, they placed 60 – not 6 – 60 of my cartoons on their site and sort of placed the answers to my questions in between.

When I complained, they sent me this long spiel about how this is their method of publication – basically that’s how they do it – they take your work and make it theirs. They didn’t say it that way, they said that’s how they “showcase” it. One bad part is that they are then copied around the internet and others do the same thing – they take a bunch of my cartoons and make clickbait out of it. The only difference is that they go on my site and pick and choose so the cartoons are different.

I’ve interviewed artists for many years and I’ve asked permission to use a few of their pieces to show off their work which was part of the articles. I also had them send me images when possible, so that they were in control of what was shown. But the text was the majority of the work, and a few of their works complimented it, along with a photo of themselves. Here are some on my 10 With Tom site – interviews I have done without stealing anyone’s work.

I’m fuming over this plagiarism by these other websites and I find it amazing that they have a link on them for “removal” of articles. When I brought that up to one of the sites, they said that is for people who post their own stories on the site and want it then removed, which I find to be B.S.

I sell some Tomversation items on Etsy. I saw my actual stuff picked up and being sold in Asia somewhere, they just snapped up the images and cartoons and are using them.

Many years ago, before I was an editor or writer or anything, I was taking photos at an arts festival and one of the artists yelled at me. He didn’t like me taking pictures of his work right out there on the street where it was being shown. I learned a lesson back then and I never again took people’s work for granted or took photos of it without asking their permission.

Yes, I’m guilty of taking Starry Night and other images whenever I’m in museums. I’m not sure where they falls into this. And my cousin goes to museums and draws the work. Not to sell, but to just practice his art. So I’m not really sure where to draw the line (draw the line, no pun intended).

I guess I should be happy that they like my work and they are keeping the copyright and my website part of the images intact, which is a good thing. I guess.

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Snowballed

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Wednesday’s snowman/people cartoon really took off. It was liked and shared by thousands of people, it really went viral. You might remember a month or so ago I was having problems with social media algorithms, but it seems to have passed. Many people are back to seeing my work.

I got the idea about the snowballed kids really fast. I had a morning show on, I think the Today Show, and a guy was talking about how his social media post took off. He said it started slow and then snowballed.

And the word “snowballed’ just hit me. I heard the expression all my life, but in that moment, it struck me as something I could use for a comic. I thought of the snow people right away and I drew up the cartoon right then and there.

One of my neighbors and his wife go walking around the neighborhood daily, and I ran into them one day, we started walking together. I asked them if I was intruding and he replied with a funny quote that I think he made up himself. At that moment, I thought it would be good for a cartoon, but I just kept walking and talking and I forgot what the quote was.

A bit later, he asked where I get my cartoon ideas from. I said they just seem to pop into my head. I then mentioned the quote he had said a bit earlier and I said I thought that would make a good cartoon in some way, only I couldn’t remember it. So he repeated it and we laughed.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember it again and can’t use it. But that’s where I get my ideas – hearing things and twisting them around in my mind.

Speaking of the Today Show, Martha Stewart was on the other day, she was making her famous eggnog recipe and last week I ran that cartoon with the witches discussing Martha Stewart’s and Ina Garten’s eggnog recipes. It all comes full circle, I guess.



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Getting eyes on my work

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I’m having problems with my Facebook page for Tomversation which is at Facebook.com/tomversation.toons .

I’m not getting the views I usually have. It’s been about a week since I’ve seen this. Were the algorithms changed?

I used to get thousands of eyes on the cartoon daily and lots of comments, likes, etc. Now it’s a handful.

My Instagram site seems to be the same regarding views and algorithms and so does my dedicated website, TomFalco.com. Those get thousands of eyes on them, but I’m concerned about Facebook. You can see below one of the cartoons that reached over 2 million views on Instagram; it has over 83,000 likes. So when it’s being seen, it is really being seen and interacted with.

It makes no sense that people subscribe or “follow” a page and yet they don’t see it in their feed. If I follow a page for old movies, or baseball or whatever, don’t I wish to see the latest posts that come up daily?

I know many cartoonists have moved away from social media and focus only on their websites and subscriptions. Their blog and cartoon/comic are one. And they publish once or twice or three times a week – not daily.

I’m trying to think what to do. In the meantime I’m trying to figure out this Facebook algorithm. I like Facebook because people share the work and many more eyes see it this way.

I saw cartoonist Harry Bliss along with Steve Martin on The View the other day. They were promoting a new book they collaborated on, called Number One Is Walking, their second book together. Harry was great, but he started the interview by saying he was so nervous being on live tv. I found that very humbling and endearing and like him even more for that.

I think I reached out to him before to interview him for 10 With Tom, but never received a response. I’ll maybe try again since he’s out and about promoting his book now.

I’m also trying to get noticed by Andrews McMeel and GoComics.com.

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Ads, lots of ads – and phone calls!

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Ever notice that when you look for something on Facebook or even other places you start seeing the item as ads every other second on Facebook? I mean it’s not secret, I did a cartoon about awhile back. Sometimes you think you are being listened too, as well, as you seem to just think of something and you start seeing ads all over the place for the item.

They should have a button on the ad where you can click it and say, “I already bought it,” but I think there is an “ignore” button or something, but of course, why would Facebook want to do that when they can keep getting money for those ads that are running, even though they aren’t needed anymore. Once the product is purchased, all those ads are wasted and just racking up clicks and money for Facebook from the advertiser.

But now something interesting happened the other day. I was looking around for an ultraviolet sanitizer lamp. I didn’t know I needed one, but I saw an ad and thought, “why not?” So I looked around online, not really for the best deal, but for the fastest delivery.

I bought air conditioner filters from a place I always go. I didn’t shop around or do a search, I need a certain size I can’t find in stores, so I managed to find a place online. I just went there, ordered and that was it. Now I am seeing air conditioner filter ads on Facebook. Which is a waste of money for the advertiser, since I am not in the market for those now and it’s unwanted spam.

One trick I did learn is that if you fill in the form and abandoned it, most times the advertiser will email you a coupon code to complete the order, and you can save money. So I did that. But apparently I put my real phone number in, not that I put fake phone numbers in the form, but I usually put my old landline, which I got rid of years ago – so it’s a real number, just not used anymore.

Anyway, I guess I put in my cell number and I started getting calls from the companies where I filled out the form and then abandoned it. In the meantime I bought it from one company and the other companies kept calling me. I only answered the calls because I was expecting a call from my insurance company and I didn’t know what number the would call from.

So it seems that you are not just stalked on Facebook but now they will actually call your phone number to attempt to complete the order.

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Wordle showoffs

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I love this cartoon because I love the characters. I drew this months ago and it had different text and context. I don’t even remember what it started out as, but I changed it so many times over the past few months.

I didn’t change the drawing, I changed the wording. It reminded me of something someone said on social media about the New Yorker cartoon I wrote about the other day – that “they draw the images and then figure out what they are saying later,” which of course I don’t think that’s the case, but maybe it is, because this Wordle gag ended up that way.

One part of love about the cartoon is that the thought Steve is thinking “Ouch!” as a Wordle answer is not really an answer because it’s only four letters. But it almost makes it seem like his whole life is Wordle, including all his thoughts.

I find it silly that people post their Wordle scores on social media every day. The silly part is that you don’t see their answers or the way they got to the final word of the day, it shows blank boxes. It doesn’t show what the previous word tries are or even what the word is.

Maybe people just hit a “share” button on Wordle somewhere and it posts your final score without you even realizing what it looks like on Facebook or wherever.

It’s like saying, “I’m great!” everyday.

One friend of mine posted his score every morning and I actually appreciated it because it reminded me to play the game. But posting your score without any concept or content is like saying, “I won an award for something,” and not saying what the something is.

It’s annoying when people post this online, but then again, it gave me the idea for this cartoon, so it all worked out.

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Do people like snakes?

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This snake/worm cartoon from last week has gone viral on Instagram. I’m not sure why, do people like snakes? Or is it worms?

You can see by the numbers below that over 2 million Instagram accounts have seen it, and by the time this story runs, the numbers will be even higher. Over 83,000 people so far have “liked” the image and over almost 8000 people have “saved” the image on Instagram and over 2800 have shared it. They don’t link back to me or tag me, which is the proper thing to do, so those many people shared the image without giving me, the artist, any credit, but that’s ok, my signature and copyright is on the cartoon.

But it’s interesting to see what goes viral on the internet and what doesn’t and this snake/worm cartoon has really taken a life of its own.

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Our local celebrity

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We have this homeless guy in town. At least I think he’s homeless, because I’ve given him a lot of money over the years because I want to help him out. And now I see what he is doing with some of that money – he’s on Instagram! And he’s asking for donations on his Instagram page.

I am cracking up over it, because he’s a local celebrity, one of the bars sells t-shirts with his picture on it and gives him the money and a friend of mine with a business in town handles his accounts when need be – like maybe cash a check or whatever. He’s a left-over hippie from the 1960s, one of those people that everybody loves so we support him.

Anyway, I noticed he started following me on Instagram and he has such great pictures posted. Really well lit and he’s in the pictures with beautiful women around town. He’s living the dream, well it looks like he is living the dream, I don’t suppose being homeless is the dream – but he may not be homeless, after seeing all this I’m flabbergasted. He’s got a lot of jewelry, is dressed well and is hanging out holding his own at local watering holes and places.

Maybe that’s his schtick – making out as if he needs the money, so people give him money, and he lives off of that.

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