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Can social networks replace art galleries?
3 years ago
I was talking about this with a friend recently, after noticing how since Tumblr's death, many people migrated on Twitter not only from Tumblr but even from FA or other art galleries (I saw many inactive accounts here being very active on Twitter). Many times I heard questions like "Will Social Networks Art Galleries?". Is it possible? In 4 years on Twitter, that's what I could notice
What makes people go "socials > art galleries" is the bigger exposure and higher chance to get noticed, known and to know other artists (or customers)...which is actually great! I -myself- I experienced this on Twitter and I also could know many other artists long before reaching them here on FA, because it's somehow easier to spot similart artists... the hidden bad thing of twitter is a deadly combo made of "number stats, algorithms and art-as-consume-good".
Algorithms are on every social network, but not in art galleries... the algorithm exposes you or not depending on what you post, when you post and how often you post. Another big problem is number stats: artists on twitter are often "ranked" through their numbers. This makes 100k artists more interesting than 10k artists (even if we all know it's NOT so, not always at least), but the main issues caused by numbers are toxic competitivity and cloutchasing. In the first case, you risk to ruin your art hobby by comparing yourself to other people's result. In the second case, you might have to do with (sadly many) people who befriend you in order to get exposure and dump you away once got what they needed (art, exposure, introduction to bigger artists) and this becomes a problem when you start to gain popularity. The last big con is the fact social networks tend to propose art as a consume good. Indeed, the average user spends one second on each post. One second to decide if to interact or not with your piece. This causes quality to be a secondary thing on socials, because you have no time to see all the nice details you've put in your picture. What creates clout in socials is something immediate (memes, trends, etc) or relatable (some kind of comics, slices of life, etc...). Last thing -but that's a Twitter only thing- is the fact Twitter has no good gallery features. It's hard to browse and sort art
Said so: NO. Art galleries are a thing and social networks are another thing. Art galleries have a different environment, way to be. It'd be more correct to say they support each other somehow!
But again, that's my analysis and it's somehow a bit subjective! Share your thoughts below! :D
What makes people go "socials > art galleries" is the bigger exposure and higher chance to get noticed, known and to know other artists (or customers)...which is actually great! I -myself- I experienced this on Twitter and I also could know many other artists long before reaching them here on FA, because it's somehow easier to spot similart artists... the hidden bad thing of twitter is a deadly combo made of "number stats, algorithms and art-as-consume-good".
Algorithms are on every social network, but not in art galleries... the algorithm exposes you or not depending on what you post, when you post and how often you post. Another big problem is number stats: artists on twitter are often "ranked" through their numbers. This makes 100k artists more interesting than 10k artists (even if we all know it's NOT so, not always at least), but the main issues caused by numbers are toxic competitivity and cloutchasing. In the first case, you risk to ruin your art hobby by comparing yourself to other people's result. In the second case, you might have to do with (sadly many) people who befriend you in order to get exposure and dump you away once got what they needed (art, exposure, introduction to bigger artists) and this becomes a problem when you start to gain popularity. The last big con is the fact social networks tend to propose art as a consume good. Indeed, the average user spends one second on each post. One second to decide if to interact or not with your piece. This causes quality to be a secondary thing on socials, because you have no time to see all the nice details you've put in your picture. What creates clout in socials is something immediate (memes, trends, etc) or relatable (some kind of comics, slices of life, etc...). Last thing -but that's a Twitter only thing- is the fact Twitter has no good gallery features. It's hard to browse and sort art
Said so: NO. Art galleries are a thing and social networks are another thing. Art galleries have a different environment, way to be. It'd be more correct to say they support each other somehow!
But again, that's my analysis and it's somehow a bit subjective! Share your thoughts below! :D
If you rather be more active on there because numbers and stats are that big to you, cool. but post SOME at least to somewhere else like FA or a similar art gallery (or your own web side). something where fans can more easily see just your art and animation and story works. That's all I ask.
Social media isn't bad in of itself, but it sucks as an art gallery since it is almost like reading someone's entire life story when you just want to see their portfolio and admire what they made. Like, can you imagine being an artist recruiter and then the artist is like "just check my Twitter for my art" ? I feel like that is the fastest way to get rejected.
And if the artist does want to compile their art, they too would need to wade through their ocean of tweets just to get what they need, not even knowing if it is still there or if it had been deleted by Twitter itself.
1) If your account gets banned on social media you won't lose EVERYTHING you ever made over your lifetime.
2) If someone wants to find more of your stuff it's much more convenient for them if it's all in one place that's easy to browse.
3) Google will be able to actually find your art.
Then just use Social Media sites to announce that your stuff exists.
I personally prefer storing a complete set of all my art on my own website so I never have to worry about losing my account for any reason or tripping over an arbitrary new rule or policy years later. If my website goes down, I can just put it up again by hosting it somewhere else. Nothing gets lost. It doesn't have to be fancy, it just needs to be complete.
Very close to what I was going to say, pretty much why the idea is DoA for me.
I call myself in too. Sometimes I feel bothered not much by the numbers themselves but by the way they make people behave
People who say "Tumblr is dead" are basically admitting that they were only there to look at porn.
Yeah there's lots of great photos, illustrations, etc still being posted on Tumblr today (which I love) but I (and many others) do miss that adult art space.
EDIT: Not to mention it uses a fucking algorithm to figure out if a picture is porn or not, which leads to a lot of false-flagging because artificial intelligence is an oxymoron. A lot of people left (or got banned) specifically because of that.
but i heard it's being a thing again somehow and I was even considering to make a new blog there :)
This hasn't happened to me in over 2 years.
Their porn filter tends to randomly demolish both sexy and non sexy art, so people lost any trust in the platform. Why spend time uploading a lot of art to a site that will frequently delete things at random with no warning or reason?
Twitter is only really good at advertising art (and there's obviously issues with that too). Any artist who cares about their work actually reaching an audience long term should always maintain a gallery on a gallery-focused site or two.
The only thing it can be good for as far as I can see is for getting your stuff out there in some ways, or for connecting and sharing with other artists.
They're also a vampiric surveillance capitalist enterprise that exists only to suck up your data and sell it or otherwise profit from it.
I'll see myself out now...
I commission art, I will share on social media, but I always keep a profile with the works I have commissioned and a few databases in different forms for the high-resolution files should I ever decide to sell the character or shut everything down.
And yes, the interest overlap is important! It's why I try not to rely too much on fanarts, because fanart usually bring people who are interested in THAT character, THAT style and THAT movie/game only, and don't care about your own stuff (In my deviantart days, I was quite popular as a sonic artist, but few people cared about my own stuff)
And exactly! Art on social became a consume thing. "Post at least once per day or you won't be seen". Which isn't possible actually unless you do fast squiggles.
The good thing of twitter is that through the dynamic you already described... it's easier to meet similar people somehow! But you have to be careful to cloutchasers especially if you have a good amount of clout at your back (And I start having a considerable amount, even if I keep forgetting it or not paying attention to numbers).
And I agree with sikfock666
IMO it's harder to get noticed on social networks than it is on conventional art sites since on places like Twitter are so diffuse that people usually go with who's the most popular and has a bigger follower count. No-namers like me don't stand a chance.
Onto the journal I think you raise a good point that it all feels like there's a lot of competition and cloutchasing when it comes to social media sites, and that they're two different beasts entirely. The last few times I did try on Twitter, barring the fact that it's easy to get swept up on the current news happening there, is that I always feel I'm in direct competition with others and the only way to really get a spotlight is either through just making content that people already know/what's trending than something original. Unless I'm making an Amoogus/FNAF Gregory/Beastars/etc. meme then I'm already feeling 10 years out of touch with everyone else. XD
aaand totally agree with the competition part
If that's my option, see ya!
So, yes, actually.
Now on the subject of Social Media vs Art Galleries...
Social Media can be good for posting art because of the clout and numbers that the content gets.
But it's also bad because of how distracting it is and how it gives you a false sense that you have to compete with others to get more likes, rts on your art. This causes so much self-destructive behavior in artists like comparing themselves to others. That's how social media is in general. They only show you the good parts of people's lives, abilities, etc but not showing much of what people go through behind the scenes. Art galleries are much more catered to artist's needs but social media brings in more potential fans and revenue more because of how open it is to everyone.
also i completely agree with you on socials. The whole thing's been intoxicating me too :/ It's true, i met many people there, but still...heh
and you know... people bring people and when a place gets more users people go there because they want clout
I think artists moving solely to twitter are doing both themselves and their fans a disservice. There are many artists I would commission, but they're on twitter only and I don't use twitter, so they lose out in the end.
Honestly diversifying is the best option.
Also, they rarely consider that socials might go kaputt in no time for many reasons...outdated, no more cool, bad audience, faulty algorithm, or even political reason.
Look now! Russia banned Twitter... I can't imagine the damage for the russian artists who worked only on twitter
Well, FA has the advantage to be quite stable despite the DDoS attacks in past.
I'm on FA since early 10s (had another account before this one) and i can say it responds to the saying "Slow but sure".
Out of curiosity! Have you ever considered a GUI radical restyling? A bit like what happened on DA?
BTW if you're looking for volunteers, I have professional experience in responsive design and PHP/SQL coding, and a lot of free time.
as i said many times "if even a quite old-structured place like FA survives, there's more than one good reason"
If by any chance one day we'd see a sort of new deviantart with social dynamics like twitter and a biiiig big exposure, do you think people would stick with it?
Honestly, I'd say the same! They both serve different purposes; social media may often be better for direct interaction but more "classic" gallery-sites (like FA; or DA...) are way better for looking at someone's collection of drawings (whether their own or commissions etc). Even if someone used their twitter purely to share art, browsing the media-tab is pretty annoying compared to looking at e.g. a gallery on FA.
Come ho più tempo infatti vorrei mettermi a studiare qualcosa per far roba tradizionale come si deve (acquerello, gouache)
Ma zoo o no, beccamose pure così pe fa quattro chiacchiere :D
Sempre meglio le stampe, a quel punto
What I see most from people using Twitter is them saying they use Twitter because they are more likely to get paying commissions from Twitter, rather than it being good as a gallery or portfolio.
this doesn't fix the fact that to be relevant on twitter you have to post at each cost, even sacrifying quality
Twitter has a horrible layout that prioritizes spit-second dopamine rushes and the only way to get recognized on there is through either sucking off popular artists or causing unwanted controversy along with it's horrible compression rates and lack of actual features for compartmentalization, so you have to dig through 69,000 reaction images just to find a specific piece of art from an artist you like.
DONT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON HOW THEY DEBOOST PATREON/COMMISSION TWEETS.
Should I even mention anything about how Instagram is horrible for artists as well?
I'm always wondering what I'm doing wrong. So I can't really say the difference between Twitter and any art galleries just because I don't have visibility. But in a personal use and perspective. I hate going on Twitter, I try to use it and interacting with others... but for me it's the worst one, mostly because you don't have the "space" to interacting with anyone. You can hardly explain yourself on Twitter because the character limits. And it's worst in french (Yeah in french there more letter to put in a word so being brief is an acrobatic exercise). So when it's about posting an art stuff and want to explain something you can't because of that limite or you multi-tweet it... but who will read it then ? They just want the image and it's all it matters. I guess I'm alone for this kind of stuff, but I always love reading description from the artist to see what they thinking about what they doing. Sometimes is just a meta thing sometime is an insight of what is going on.
But thanks for asking I have my own question about that part : " In the second case, you might have to do with (sadly many) people who befriend you in order to get exposure and dump you away once got what they needed (art, exposure, introduction to bigger artists) and this becomes a problem when you start to gain popularity. "
If I'm looking to have more people looking for what I'm doing is it really a bad thing to asking to some other artist some help to exposing themself ? I mean the algorithm suck for helping beginning good artist. Even so sometime, it's been years of work and the algorithm wouldn't really help it. I still thinking having people ready to help another one is the best algorithm because they can really put in front some artist who needs it. As long as it's asking it politely.
Most social media pages really suck at managing and searching older content. I usually treat any art i post to twitter as being lost to time a few months after if i don't put it into my more permanent galleries.
Whereas in galleries like fa here, you still have the art organised in a 2-dimensional grid. especially on the desktop. It allows for much more posts on a single screen.
i do find interesting art memes and cool artwork on places like Twitter
but not before scrolling through peoples’ idiotic posts of sheer stupidity
i’ve found alternatives like PixIv that showcases far better artwork to be inspired by
Twitter has been fairly beneficial to me when posting art; but not to a degree where I feel I’m growing anything resembling a significant presence
art sites will never be replaced with shallow social media hubs like Twitter
Art galleries, by contrast, are all about that depth of thought and emotion, and experiences that can only really be enjoyed with insightful analysis and discussion. What they stand for is utterly anathema to what social media's all about, so anyone who honestly believes the latter will replace the former doesn't truly grasp what either one is for.
And sites like FA are much better designed for real interaction and friendship building.
I much prefer art galleries like Furaffinity, Furrynetwork, DeviantArt, etc.
I come here to look at cute artstuff and nsfw, not bad takes and drama.
Twitter and other sites like it do not encourage good art, they encourage cheaply made art which can be pumped out in higher quantities. A lot art in the art scene these days has become highly simplistic, generic, and repetitive-looking to the point where almost every new artist has the exact same art style because their main platform is IG or Twitter.
I also post my art onto twitter too, but it’s not a replacement for galleries and it’s not what you should be pandering to.
Regardless I feel out of place around the under 24 crowd, I'd rather hang around mature adult furs and artists, and galleries usually makes that easier since it's easier to distinguish groups.
Artists are not just "the average content consumer". Artists want to share art with similar people, learn from others, exchange tips advices and all... What might happen is a comeback to the origins because "fed up of socials"
So, until then, my answer is no. But hey, there's room for improvement, but then maybe it won't be a social media site anymore.
And eh, follower ranks. I don't wanna say anything.
maybe, i dont know, because a social media feed is not a fucking art gallery?
and then you have "no minors" morons trying to police everything because twitter has a under 18 age group - which i dont know - suggests you should keep the art on FURAFFINITY where its always been
and then you have all the other retards that dont even know what a furry is or are kids less than 17 years old attacking and cancelling people because they dont like an image you posted that hurt their fragile simplistic sheltered rainbow haired feelings.
My only wish though is that FA wasn't so outdated and archaic and full of spaghetti code and security issues and that FA's staff was less corrupt, or just have the community adopt a new furry site altogether.
many people are getting back to tumblr, at least sfw and semi-sfw ones
The only way twitter should be used by an artist is alerting people when they post their next pic, or open for commissions but not to actually post their art there.
And even then only in limited capacity.
Twitter is fine for seeing art as it is posted, but wanna look back? Goooood luck. Then again, the site doesn't even show stuff as it's posted half the time!!
if twitter banned nsfw they'd say "meeh twitter is dead"
also yes. i DO know twitter hides posts and i hate it
It also feels like it's easier to get interactions on twitter, as a note. I do like talking with people and seeing what goofy jokes and memes they have to share. People seem to be somewhat shy on FA.
But
if someone were to insist on seeing my art as a gallery, I'd send them to FA before I'd send them to twitter because my main twitter account is going to be flooded with the most random out of context things.
This is a really silly gripe, but I've never been able to find a time to share my thoughts: There are times when I just want to be able to follow the art, not every single thing the person does. The thing I loved about Tumblr was the simple and useful RSS feed setup - you could follow everything on their blog, but if they use a tag for their art, you could just have that tag in your RSS feed. Simple.
Twitter doesn't let you do that. Their RSS feed is weird and always changes. For a while you could choose to only follow their media posts. Occasionally, Twitter slipped in promoted tweets into your RSS feed, which felt intrusive. The RSS feed function died for a lil bit, then when it came back, you could only follow people's entire feed - so you were seeing their media posts, their own tweets, and every single retweet they made. It's very difficult to sift through since I have so many artists I wanna keep up with, haha. There's also times where they just randomly change something about how their API(?) works, which causes RSS feed functionality to completely die out for a few days until the feed readers patch their app.
RSS feeds, or something like it, really is a good way to make social media stuff work, as a viewer.
(PS. Loved your black cat❤️)
FA has a lot of problems. So does Twitter. But they still do the job. Still, it is probably best not to keep all your eggs in one basket, which is why I have a DA gallery and accounts on Telegram, Discord and Facebook.
But it makes it harder for me to reach out to people with those crowding around you and not letting any newcomers in
Questioning where to go to get more exposure but also what you really want from your art?
It's great to post but what and where? The more I watch my favourite artists the more I know about myself as an artist, I just need to focus on something that really fit me.
1. I like comments on my work.
2. I like to stand out from others in the community.
3. I like having a growing and understandable audience.
4. I like having the possibility making money with my art.
Twitter sure is a great way to share your piece but I see it more as a newspaper ads than an actual exposure in an art gallery. I have made my own website so I can be sure I'll post my art in a gallery but sometimes I wonder if I'll also want to post here on FA to get more audience and feedbacks. I have to say I'm sad about DeviantART Eclipse right now because I have lost most of my followers there but FA don't seems to change at all as a good art gallery community media. I still focus more on my own anthro art style so I should try to come back? I feel puzzled a lot those last years on internet and it make me feel sometimes dizzy but what if this could only be simple as Mochiri and Radywolf do? A FA account and a Twitter account, that's it. 😅
Twitter gives you exposure and popularity in exchange of originality and your mental health.
Deviantart is dead for good at this point. Only those who have a biig big follow on there are still use it :\
Furaffinity might not be the best thing in the world, but it never failed enough hardly to just lose everything and I doubt it will. It just needsa graphic restyling imho
Popular Deviants use to have 20,000 watchers so sure they still have some in there to support them and still enjoy the "alive" side of DA. TTvTT
I keep up doing my own stuff by myself for now, planning how I will post my artworks and where to communicate with my audience. Sure I'm not visibly known here yet but I need to focus in producing this year a bit more to progress.
Also they use a dumb, lossy image compression standard for posting. Everything I see out of Twitter is so fuckin grainy.
Twitter is supposed to be a place to interact with other people not to comercialice and spamming with art on every tweet.
I know that many people have moved there but I witnessed that the algorithm makes them quite complicated to new people to be noticed.
Also if I want to search for certain picture, it can end on a huge struggle since the lack of forms to search for a specific image also scrolling on their "gallery" is a pain in the arse due to the long list of pictures, retweets and random things, not to mention that it has a delay to load the page.
With the most sincere respect but sometimes it tends to frustrate me to see a lot of spam tweets and retweets of the artist with random and pointless comments or sometimes uploading photos that I have no interest on seeing them.
But most importantly, I want to clarify that I have nothing against Twitter and I highly prefer of the artist uses both places to post art but the only thing that I cannot stand on is the extreme toxicity that has this site, at least some peoples are realizing the truth about this site and the problems that are there.
Algorithm keeps into consideration only the response of an user, and that's a thing that doesn't rely on quality, mainly
I don't like how artists abandon their legit art gallery site accounts in favor of social media, that is lazy and irresponsible. I hope they'll learn from this problem, but I can't ask for them. I know some of them cannot return, and that's fine.
Twitter Activity Syndrome (shortly: TAS), named after the popular example of social media, Twitter. I used to call it "more active on Twitter" mentality, back then. Now I call it...
S.M.A.S.: Social Media Artist Syndrome
I've been researching it since 2020. There are many cases of this phenomenon.
Twitter doesn't even give you a thumbnail gallery, which is the bare minimum to be able to see the extent of an artist's work. Without it, you can't be sure if you're seeing everything. Twitter does have a very nice widget on the top right for displaying most of an artist's recent work in a very easy way where you can just arrow-key between their posts quickly, but it's secretly unreliable because it leaves out some posts or art for completely mysterious reasons seemingly unrelated to content or subject, and completely stops before displaying anything old. There's also no way of knowing if the person posting something is the person who made it because most people are just sharing other things they found. Unless an artist is very careful about what they post on an account it becomes almost impossible for anyone else to separate original creations from any other cool thing that person saw and uploaded.
I think social media sites are better suited for announcements than storing anything.
I have one Twitter account that I use solely for project updates, kind of like FurAffinity journals if they had pictures.
For what it's worth Twitter has done an impressive job of keeping every post I've made, but the only reason I even know that is because I was able to downloaded an archive of everything I posted on it.