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Renormalize Commenting
a year ago
Heya, sorry for the rant.
Has anyone noticed like the huge decline in comments on this site? I can’t explain why but it just feels like peeps are less comfortable with asking stuff or compliments on pieces. Is it cause like third party bots like telegram are veering away traffic from direct interaction for the sake of convenience?
Idk I feel like we should do more commenting, go compliment an artist’s work today! Human beings are social creatures, I’m sure whoever you make the comment to will appreciate it (ok but like dot make a weird comment ofc).
Do you agree? Happy to hear thoughts :>
Cheers,
Teeb
Has anyone noticed like the huge decline in comments on this site? I can’t explain why but it just feels like peeps are less comfortable with asking stuff or compliments on pieces. Is it cause like third party bots like telegram are veering away traffic from direct interaction for the sake of convenience?
Idk I feel like we should do more commenting, go compliment an artist’s work today! Human beings are social creatures, I’m sure whoever you make the comment to will appreciate it (ok but like dot make a weird comment ofc).
Do you agree? Happy to hear thoughts :>
Cheers,
Teeb
I try to comment more often too nowadays but first i was too shy for it haha
I am always happy to see nice comments ovo
Maybe my brain don't want to work for this x3
Let me comment back to normalize what a bloody conversation is
#NormalizeCommenting
That paired with quite a few people not being comfortable with public interactions, sometimes there's just nothing to say. Sure, one can compliment the art, but then what. Commenting "nice art" on every art piece feels weird, and coming up with unique comments about details in the art feels creepy to me for some reason.
But yeah I feel that social media has kinda made people just like and move on. The thing is artist/art sites aren’t the same thing, the art takes priority and you maintain a gallery rather than a post disappearing into the abyss. I wish people would appreciate that more.
It's so exhausting and dejecting. ;n;
With how many posts and journals that get sent from my watch list, only those I feel 'deserving' of the effort can be met. At the same time, posting a comment on a given piece of art opens oneself up to being looked at. Some folk don't want their interests to be shared. Others do.
Why bother spending a few minutes writing out what you like about a piece when, to the average user, you can let someone you know like within a second and then continue on with your day? It's ingenious psychological programming at its finest. We only have so much time in the day, after all. It's not the end all be all answer for it, but it's a heavy contributing factor, I feel.
Though I fail to see why people can’t fav AND comment, surely you found something worth mentioning in the pic to favourite in the first place ?
FA at the end of the day isn’t a social media space where your content gets eaten by a black hole after a couple days. We have a unique space where galleries are commonly observed and we can interact with them at any time. I think commenting on older pieces should especially be more common.
It can sometime sbe hard to think of something to say that isn't just "nice art" or something similar with more or less words. instead they could just fave/like the pic and keep moving.
another thing is a lot of people dont like horny and "creepy" comments on their art (creepy is in quotes because what most people consider creepy doesn't fit) even though the art itself is nsfw and in many cases even baiting for horny comments. example being a picture of a character presenting their bits with a caption or saying "What would you go for first?" or anything similar. and then you answer in a pretty normal way and get blocked for it. not everyone thinks to check the persons front page to see what type of comments are ok, and a large portion dont say it anyway. regardless its stupid IMO to get mad about nsfw comments when you're posting nsfw art that is also asking for comments
But yeah… horny comments are inevitable on a platform like this and many people have altering tolerances. I definitely don’t go out of my way to block people I just call them out in a reply. Though some topics do kinda get those more than others, I think that’s on the person who commissioned/made the arts onus to realize that. It also matters what community you’ve built up with previous art/pieces. I think I’m in a pretty good place myself.
As for other people, when I do get comments it’s usually just a emoji and nothing else. And anything I post that isn’t porn gets nothing.
For a while I was working on alt universe version of Star Wars where the Empire are communists to see what reaction I would get. I was happy to get one comment from a tankie who objected, but otherwise there wasn’t much discussion. And I actually put in a lot of thought into how the a commie-Nazi empire would be plausible.
I think the problem with audiences is that it reinforces what you commission/draw to hte point that diverting from that path is a negative feedback loop. While it might not seem like people care about anything other than the nsfw stuff it might be because thats the audience you've built up from other pictures etc.
If you have to much fun and get to animated , it makes people uncomfortable, and it gets you labeled as problematic and gets you put on "Lists" where people you probably like & follow, or never talked to start blocking you.
Or there are harmless people that like to give critique, or just like like to say random things like fefquest did above. And alot of people have negative reactions to that.
Or something thats happened to me 3 times, and now I NEVER want to give advice or my opinion on some things....someone vented about how tough it is to be an artist. And I gave them the harsh reality that the market is pretty flooded so its extremely hard to stand out. And not everyone can afford to commission every artist charging over $100
And I got in trouble for that, being called an asshole and such.
So it makes me more reserved, or I kind of no detach and avoid anybody venting or asking for advice to get noticed.
Because I learned alot of people just want to hear a cheatcode, for instant success, or want to hear its not their fault.
When it comes to critique people can get very defensive, especially if its really stressful and something kinda throws a rock at the rose-tinted glasses. I think its important to remember that art is the entire wellbeing of certain artists and that it can be extremely painful accepting that it may not be possible to sustain on their lifestyle.
Or its just personal opinion because they like what they like...which is whatever.
But yes, sometimes people are being weird, and other times the artist just gets super defensive. Sure, to be fair they didnt ask, but hearing good WITH bad is important for growth.
Sadly not everybody can absorb that.
And sure, I will admit I am still hyper cautious about things I say in some spaces and on certain topics like I mentioned.
It comes from the mindset that its already hard enough to keep and maintain the artists I have now, because their popularity eventually takes away my ability to commission them later. But then if Im getting blocked, then my Pool of artists to commission continues to shrink.
And then it sucks not to be able to fav and comment to show my appreciation. Like someone said above, sometimes its nice and makes someones day.
I like to be that person sometimes.
Sometimes they get weird, but even then, personally, I love animated and quirky comments.
I find them amusing, and hey, just means they are a fan. And I hope that energy gets shared with the artist.
Possibly the only Comments I get that I dont like, are those who wanna get super personal and talk about marrying my character and/or Breeding them and giving them Puppies.
Thats so far the only breech of my Tolerance. Fantasize about my characters, sure, but dont paint some future that they will hook up with you and have your kids.
I have similar opinions as the others, but I'd like to add that the comments popular artists get vs non popular ones are very different. With the latter, people expect to leave a well formed comments, more than an emoji or 'nice', but in popular artists posts, there are tons of comments that are just simple words. Maybe seeing that you are the only commenting adds a pressure, and seeing that there are 30+comments maybe makes it easier?
Yeah there's plenty of social pressures which have been debated above, I dont mean that people suddenly have to comment all the time. Just a little bit would go a long way, especially for artists/writers starting out who need some positive vibes!
It's something I should really work on, but I could say that with a lot social interactions to be honest.
It gives me a feeling like people do see the work I put out. And I think it would probably be the same if I would comment on someone else's post.
Whoops, I double posted accidently o.o;
...Which is hypocritical of me to say because I rarely leave comments myself, mostly because I'm very socially anxious and never know how to put my thoughts into words. I'd like to get better about it.
The more kinky the nsfw art is the more likely i'll talk about such and depending on the uploader they might join in and have a fun convo about said kink(s) featured in the upload. It has happened quite a few times when I commented and always fun when it does happen.
Otherwise I don't really comment toooooo much. It depends on the uploader really.
Some people comment on FA, some on Bluesky, quite a few in Telegram, almost nobody in Twitter. There is a serious lurking "issue" in the fandom. Not like an actual issue, but between the amount of people who don't want to engage and just look at the pretty stuff, and the amount of people that would engage but have social problems and don't know how or get anxiety, the remaining few is what you see.
On top of that you have weird comments, or people who are just like "Nice 🧡🧡🧡" and... the amount of comments that you can give any more engagement than a copypasted answer or a reaction emoji is kind of small.
Nowadays with Twitter you can't just look at anything, its all locked behind an account (I would know I deleted mine lmao).
I also want to re-state that I am in love with your Murkmite species. Really big on corruption themes here!
I really hope this doesn’t come too much out of left field. Normally, I don’t leave a lot of comments on the site often, but I saw his journal about that very subject here and I’d like to share my thoughts on this if you’d like as I do not leave comments for multiple reasons and thus sharing these reasons can shed some light onto why I personally refrain for them as well as some general reasons why others don’t comment as well. I also like to believe I have an interesting perspective as both an artist and a viewer of this site, which both have unique reasons why I refrain from comments myself, so I hope you you’re willing to hear my input on this. But, if you feel this comment is in any way unsolicited or unwarranted, and it has also been a week since this journal has been posted so you might consider this discussion not relevant anymore, but in any case, feel free to hide it if this is unsolicited or isn’t welcomed or my long response bothers you in any way. :)
Before I move onto the topic, I’d like to briefly point out that a lot of these things are purely my experiences and observations, so please don’t take these as 100% certified facts. Most of these are just my personal observations and experiences, so please keep this in mind as I don’t want to sound like I’m passing these off as 100% true. They’re just my observations from my experience as aforementioned, wether they’re true or not, I’m not one to go off sanctioning that they are, I’m only here to share what I have concluded or think. :)
Anyway, this is a very particular and interesting thing I’ve noticed I’ve noticed over the years. Rather then one singular reason, I think there’s a few notable reasons why this has happened and why comments are slowly getting less and less frequent here and other sites as well.
Before I get into the parts of my comment that are personal experiences I’ve had myself or noticed, I’d like to give a few paragraphs on a more generalized overall observations I’ve noticed. This is also where I feel I don’t have as much hands on experience that I’d like to cover before I get to the more meaty personal experiences of why I don’t comment often myself. Let me just say that while I have almost zero social media presence and thus don’t throughly have any experience on it, I still have noticed a lot of trends lately that probably can be took into consideration for the lack of commenting. So I hope I can add further to some of the more general reasons why this lack of commenting is happening as well. :)
The first general reason I’d like to share is that I have long noticed a lot of people do not have long attention spans. It’s quite astonishing really to see how many people will lose attention within five minutes to even just a minute. You can find notable evidence of this short attention span everywhere. For example, I’ve always noticed that “popular” music genres such as rock, country, meal, rap, pop, etc that I don’t listen tends to stay within the 3-4 and if daring, five minute mark. Sure, music itself takes time to compose and composing a 19 minute song is much harder then a few three minute songs as you’ll have to add more new material to keep it from being stale. (I know from experience, but I still prefer a longer song since it allows the song to really milk everything it’s featuring.) But another thing to consider is that people generally “click off “ at that three minute mark as boredom beings to set in. So as such, most of those popular musical genres keep their songs short partly because of short attention span people have, combined with the more work it takes for a longer song being another deterrent in itself.
I think what really exacerbates this short attention span is short form media, the two biggest culprits being Twitter back in 2010s and TikTok for the current day 2020s. First off, Twitter is I believe one of the first to introduce the “character/word limit” on posts. Twitter has famously had a 100-150-200 character or word limit. (I don’t recall how much or which one exactly, I never used the site myself.) As such, this prevents people from posting more through and longer responses. Naturally, this can curtail people into writing and reading shorter posts and not be as “exposed to” longer posts per say. If they were more exposed to lengthy paragraphs, they might theoretically be more tolerable to them. But since they’re always exposed to shorthand one 150 word paragraphs at best and one liners at worst, when they get a long 3,000 or even a 1,000 word comment, they’re unsure of how to reply or find it unsettling as it’s not what they’re used to. So most people now are used to saying very short one liners or one worded comments like “cool” “this is very hot”. because of staying within an echo chamber that encouraged and enforced short replies.
But with the rise of TikTok, man did this cause it to be even worse. Now video media got the Twitter treatment as due to from what I heard, TikTok only allows very short video clips and the site feeds you this content in a curated, tailored fashion. Once one clip is done, the next short clip plays, then the next, and then the next, and next, into an infinite “next up” list until you just put down the site. I can’t say this is actually how the site works because I absolutely refuse to go on there, the bad feedback loop is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to bad things I’ve heard about that site. But still, this constant p, curated, spoon fed short content that’s only a minute long , causes you to only pay attention for a minute and then recycle, further making attention spans worse. It doesn’t help that YouTube is now pushing for its “YouTube Shorts” ripoff... Ugh. :/
Once again, a few things might be erroneous with these facts here as I never used Twitter nor TikTok and have no intention to, so please feel free to do direct research about it if you’re unsure about anything I just said. :)
But point is, I believe this leads to people preferring shorter media. In fact, a lot of Youtubers point out that their statistics say that most people click off at the 1, 3, 6 and 10 minute marks, so it just goes to show, most people don’t watch the longer videos til the end. However, I much prefer longer form content engagement. I have always found it weird and rather sad when a Youtuber jokes about/thanking the viewer for making to the end of a hour and half video because I personally never understood this sentiment and I actually find that they make this joke in the first place to be very saddening and disheartening of how most people interact with content. I clicked on the video, I obviously wanted to watch a hour and half video about a topic, otherwise, I wouldn’t have clicked in the first place and would’ve made note of it to watch for later if it interested me and I didn’t have time to watch it fully at the moment. But as those statistics say, most people don’t watch til the end. I rarely click off a video and that’s only when I’m super bored of it and it wasn’t what I was expecting. So it’s sad that people who actually enjoy the topic, don’t watch the video to the end. :(
Heck even on comment posts or journal posts on sites like these, I have noticed a 75-80% chance of seeing these “damn didn’t mean to write a novel” or “I’m surprised people read all the way down here” or “I don’t know if anyone will read all of this but thanks if you do” on the rare time someone makes an even moderately long comment or journal. So it’s kind of obvious people are scared to make long posts, comments or media because they fear most people ignore it. And whenever I see these remarks, I don’t get the sentiment personally as I love reading longer comments and journals myself. But even I occasionally make a lesser version of the statements like those as I’m aware most people dislike long comments. :/
I’d like to shortly mention that something I never understood, which is people switching over for Twitter or TikTok. It’s not a gallery like FA or YouTube is, is a feedback stream and your creations and posts get lost in the massive dump site that is the streaming feed. So it just goes to show that people are so complacently used to the shorter media feedback drip they receive that they are even willing to lose a permanent gallery in order to have that short form media feed. It’s just sad really. :(
Anyway, another reason as some people already mentioned on here briefly, is that I think there’s a massive migration happening at the moment. So many people here are moving to sites like Telegram, Discord, Twitter and whatnot. Some are even siphoning off their content and slowly making those other sites have exclusive pictures as to try to ween their audience from here to over there to their preferred sites. After all, they’re missing out on that exclusive art, got to get over there then so they don’t miss it! Eventually, some artists might or already only accept contact from Discord or Telegram, etc. And this does make me a little upset as there were some artists I was looking to commission only to see they only accept contact on one of those sites, which after reading that, I just move on as I personally choose to refuse to engage with those sites. So just a small note here about that as it is as aforementioned, siphoning off people from here to other sites where those artists want their viewers to be following them from.
Another particular reason I’d like to cover is the content you post likely will cause one to get more or less comments and favorites then others. For example, I’ve personally noticed in my time here that solo NSFW pictures of females on here tend to garner much more comments, and are much likely to have more thought out descriptive comments about how beautiful she is and her features are and what not while a solo NSFW of a male doesn’t nearly get much appreciation. And the comments a solo NSFW piece of a male does get, they’re often the short “he’s hot” “cool nice” etc. In fact, I actually can’t recall seeing even a modestly descriptive comment on a solo male picture. Not to mention, a solo female piece can also easily surpass views and favorites as well within a day or even hours, even if a NSFW male picture has been on the gallery for even a week or month longer from that same artist. Why is this? Well I think a good chunk of commissioners/viewers on here, despite the stereotypes saying otherwise, are likely heterosexual or bisexual guys with a female preference. So this will skew the comments and views toward those who would rather see a girls pussy and breasts then a guys ass or cock. Not to mention when there is a heterosexual art piece on here, I have seen it quite a bit of how much of the appreciation is only focused on the female and usually the only universal comment the guy gets is “how lucky he is” for being with the female. So he only gets the “damn, he’s a lucky guy.” sentiment. I mean, just yesterday I read a comment saying how someone would do anything to take the place of the male to fuck the female the male in the picture was fucking., and yes in a different picture of the same two characters having sex, they said “sheesh that’s a lucky guy”. So from my observations, females will win you more favors in terms of viewership and comments.
And I’d like to briefly add on that I’ve also long noticed female adoptables sell much more often and there’s a higher demand for them then males. So far, I haven’t had a problem with needing to outbid someone because I wanted a male character despite everyone else is fighting over the female ones. Sure I’ve only bought three characters from adoptables admittedly as I am a big ogre about standing by on making my own stuff, but my point still stands, I’ve not seen a bid war for a male adoptable when a female is present there with them. Only times where a male does get more frequent bid wars over him is with male exclusive artists as there’s no females to partake in, so only those after male characters go there. Still, this is just another bit of proof that females garner more views, appreciation and attention then males.
I also want to bring up kinks briefly as another point of interest as to why one may not get a lot of comments. I recently gave a survey to the artist I bought those three adoptable characters from, of what I thought of their YCHs, which I haven’t bought any from. I mentioned to them that they exclusively made their YCHs catered to their own incest and foot fetishes. Now I did firmly tell them that anyone who tried to tell them to stop making those fetish YCHs altogether in order to cater to them can fuck off as they are as the artist, is not obligated to please the audience. But I did tell them that maybe expanding their horizons to having more general NSFW themes without any kinks attached can garner more interest alongside continuing to host the YCH that feature their kinks. And sure, feet and incest are two of what I consider the “twelve cornerstone standard fetishes” on here, so they’d still get a lot of traction. But as I told them, not everyone likes feet or incest and having general NSFW theme YCHs hosted alongside the ones he wanted to do with his fetishes in mind, would help get interest from those who don’t like those kinks he does. So once again, your kinks can make or deter people from commenting on ones stuff. And I have noticed you have a thing a for corruption and goo stuff, which while one can argue it is one of the cornerstones, being a subset of hypnosis as corruption is making them unwilling and abide by another’s wishes, I think the goo aspect and maybe the corruption aspect of it might be more weird or unsettling respectively for some people. So aside from the people who also share this interest with you, you probably won’t get a lot of comments on those pictures that feature it from the general population. (I do want to quickly point out that I am not judging you here or anything just in case that it comes across that way, I also want to mention that I am also not encouraging you to cater to the audience either as you should post and commission what you like, not what others enjoy. I’m just stating ones kinks can filter out people who will comment on ones gallery.)
I do know for sure that when I get around to having my own gallery up and running on my real profile on here that despite being very vanilla compared to the average person on here, there are some people who will immediately click off pictures of mine that feature a particular kink as a lot of people won’t like it and would find it painful and/or very weird to look at, especially for the male audience here, since it’s not a very common kink people have a thing for here. And the few instances it does happen here, I’ve noticed its a heavily and extremely heterosexual dominated kink where it’s almost always a female doing it to a male, and that there’s hardly any pictures of it involving another male doing to the guy instead. So trust me, your kinks will definitely have a share on how much attention you get, it just matters wether they’re one of the “twelve cornerstone standard fetishes” here or if it’s a more weird, uncommon and/or outlandish one. :)
And lastly in terms of content, SFW, mostly SFW profiles, or those artists and commissioners who focus on world building significantly, also suffer greatly here. People mostly come here for nudity and pornography, so if it isn’t featuring a girl with her tits out or a guy presenting his ass, people won’t be as likely to view it. Yet ironically, I’ve personally noticed that the people who most withstand the test of time on being active here, outside those who aren’t artists themselves, are often those who put way more thought into their characters and maybe their worlds. These people often have their characters be more then sex machines or have put thought into how their worlds operate. So while they won’t get as many comments sometimes, they’re more likely to stick around much longer as I noticed in my observation that’s there’s a general three to six year filter for this site. People come here for some porn, stay a while and once they get bored, they move on. So many people I’ve seen who were active in 2018 are not active or barely active here anymore. So sure, the porn will get you more attention, but most people who are only here for that rarely seem to stick around. It’s kind of a phase for them it seems.
For an example for this SFW stuff being ignored , I saw a map someone made of their fictional world last year and it didn’t get any comments and not a lot of favorites. Going back to it, it currently has 319 views yet zero comments or favorites as of today. Another one of the maps they made did have 443 views and 3 favorites and one comment that just said “interesting”. Yet most of their other pictures that feature a nude solo or sex scene get a lot of favorites and comments. So it kind of goes or show how much people aren’t willing to look at things other then sex.
I can tell you that when I get myself in gear on my real account here and start posting my art, I’m sure a good of chunk people aren’t going to be interested in the landscapes, spacescspes, flora sheets, star maps and planet maps I will have as a main staple in my gallery. People just usually aren’t here for that. (and I really don’t care, I’m posting what I want.) They’re probably only to be interested in the nudes and sex scenes I draw more then anything else. :/
For the last of the general reasons I’ll be discussing before I move onto the personal reasons, I also think grammar simplification is a another cause for this lack of commenting as this can imply that shorter is more effective, efficient and quicker to convey a point. There’s always these new “hip terms” that fellow people of my generation like using that I have absolutely zero have idea what they mean and if I do, I often don’t use them or find them weird. (Seriously, why is “thick” spelled “thicc?” I don’t get it.). Sure abbreviations have always existed like VIP, ASAP, TBA or AKA, but I’ve noticed ever since the 2010s, our language has gotten abbreviated enough that I often find myself encountering a term I’ve never heard before every month or so or need a refresher on what the heck it means when it pops up again. (I literally had to finally look up what the heck SMH meant last week as I kept seeing it pop up all over this site, so yeah, it’s gotten pretty bananas at how much I don’t really engage with the “new hip” terminology and personally refuse to do so.) So due to a lot of people using these new shorter terms, they can write less with only a few letters, shortening a few word phrases to four letters. In turn, this encourages people to shorten their thoughts rather then fully express them in detail, which means they’re not going to as likely to comment if a simple favorite says and does everything for them. :/
Anyway, with those generalization observations I’ve made out of the way, now onto why I refrain from commenting much myself, which I hope might be more valuable insight and more related to your journal. :)
Personally, the first big reason I refrain from commenting much myself is that I noticed a lot of people don’t like long comments nor do they like an overly long descriptive 4,000 word comment about why I like a picture. In fact, I actually recently got a note from an artist asking me to refrain from gushing over the pictures I commissioned since it takes too long to read and they’re too busy and don’t have time for it. They even mentioned my description for the commission was even too long despite that I had the prompt clearly sectioned off for different aspects of the commission like canvas, poses, references, important notes and background. Now, I want to make clear that artist wasn’t mean about it, they just gave me a friendly notice about it and I appreciate him being upfront about it rather then holding their tongue back and not make me aware of something that was bothering them. But I think this is an example of how some people don’t like reading longer repossess for whatever their reason might be.
Unfortunately this is a problem, because I myself, am naturally a long commenter and a long description writer. I write long in order to make sure people can understand my thoughts. And unfortunately, due to being misunderstood and too vague in the past, I kind of feel I need to always explain myself in fear of my opinions, views and thoughts potentially getting misconstrued as something else or leaving important information vague and this causes to raise questions, cause bewilderment or cause someone to take it at face value of it is what it is without any further context. I also personally prefer a longer response from others in return too since it makes it easier for me to understand someone better if they also explain themselves further then a few sentences as I might be unsure of what they meant. But I don’t and won’t force people do this if they don’t want to, I’d just prefer if they did, that’s all. :)
As such, I kind of keep my comments and opinion on my own gallery as to not make people feel unsettled or intimated by the lengthy repossess I tend to have and to not make them feel the comment came out of left field, unsolicited and weren’t asked for.
However, I do want to bring up that there was a surprise one off incident that happened back a few years ago when I was still active on DeviantArt. I left a very through description of a character someone designed and gifted me.for an character design exchange group that I used to participate in. I got a really interesting reply that they were actually surprised and loved the detailed response I gave. But as cool as that was, one of their friends actually responded to me as well and wanted to thank me themselves for my comment as in their own words.
“This is very out of the blue but, this is the best comment I have seen on this site for the longest time.
No one ever seems to talk about art on this art site and really explain what they like or don't like. I just started my art course and the amount I discuss art with people on real life now has made me realize how little time people devote on deviantart to critiques or even just commenting on what they like.
Even though this isn't on my artwork, but my friend's, I just want to thank you for taking the time to say so much.”
So I have gotten the rare praise before for my length repossess as that comment clearly says, but it’s exceptionally rare. But I think that comment just goes to show that some other people have noticed that there is a drought of throughly thought out critiques about art. And as an artist, this does bother me when people feel that leaving a 4,000 word comment critiquing a nude solo or sex scene is considered “weird” nowadays and I’ve even seen someone said “You don’t talk about the artistic merit of porn and if you do, that’s weird as that’s not what you’re supposed to be focusing on and makes one wonder why you even viewed the picture in the first place.” So there generally just seems to be a lack of conversation about art itself. Of course, I don’t want to and won’t force artists to talk about art if they have no desire to, but when I get my gallery in order, I’ll definitely make sure people should feel comfortable making critical assessments of my art, characters or world. :)
Second notable reason I don’t comment often: I don’t want to budge in my opinion on things since a lot of people I’ve seen from experience can get very upset when you start instilling your thoughts on their stuff. I have always been an upfront and blunt person and thus sharing my thoughts on a piece or character or anything can really.cause people to get uncomfortable or cause tension. I’ve even received a ban warning from an admin of that group I participated in on DA several years back that my thoughts were considered “condescending and rude” and people weren’t happy about my honesty and bluntness. After that, I kind of realized I should probably keep my thoughts to myself as to not have the potential to ruffle any feathers I might do when sharing my thoughts.
Because of past experiences, I decided to try to rework how I share my thoughts. So in the rare times I do feel I want to leave a comment these days, I almost always include a “if this is unwarranted or unsolicited or weren’t asked for, feel free to hide my comment ” mention in all lengthy comments I make from now on as to give clarification to the artist or viewer/commissioner of art that “hey, I want to share my thoughts, but I am respectful and don’t want to step on any toes, so if you feel my thoughts bother you, hide my comment.” I’ve even done this with this very comment here to help ease any tension that if this does indeed bother you, you’re free to hide it. I also tend to add emoticons to add more context of my own emotions or to assure them I don’t mean it to be taken badly or anything,p so people don’t get the wrong idea due to how internet communication can be tricky to assess people’s feelings through worded text.
Third reason kind of ties in with the aforementioned second reason. I personally feel lot of people are scared to comment in fear of the artist getting upset or bothered over their comment or others jumping down that persons throat for posting a comment the artist doesn’t like or they themselves find disrespectful towards the artist.
Unfortunately this fear is not unfounded and I myself, have this fear indeed due to how many instances I’ve seen of followers of an artist, or the artist themselves, getting salty over the critical comment. There has been a lot of things I noticed that started to make me realize people can’t take criticism nor do they appreciate/tolerate views different from their own nor want small comments they find distasteful. But I don’t think this itself is the worst offender. No. I think the worst offender here is I personally believe that artists are unfortunately put on pedestals, an untouchable perfection that one must not dare say anything bad about them, or else you’re going to get punished for being a critic of them and their work by what I call their “loyalist followers”, those certain people who only see their artist as perfect and immune from criticism of the lowly people who dare share those aforementioned criticisms.
And unfortunately, I’ve seen his WAY too many times to not believe this is the case.
For example, a couple years ago, one of the artists I haven’t interacted with had criticism on one of her pictures. She’s an awesome artist and I love her art. But on her pictures, she got a comment that told her that the picture in question is a bad drawing because the proportions of the legs on the character are really huge and is not sexy and then criticized the huge nipples on the characters breasts.
In wake of this comment, three people responded. The first was the artist which she said. “I draw the way I and my customers like it. I didn’t ask you for criticism.” Okay, fair enough. If you don’t want criticism, that’s fine, but you’ve could’ve been much more polite about it and not with the deadpan tone that your response gave off. The second comment was spoken in another language. When translated it said something along the lines of “Sorry for the criticism, but you are a stupid person. Pay attention to your inadequacy, I’m sorry you haven’t seen a women who has such big nipples as apparently girls avoid you and the only way for you to see a naked body is to watch porn, which mostly stars people with very similar bodies. But in real life, there are big legs and nipples.” While I can’t guarantee what is said exactly as I do not speak that language and had to translate on Google which isn’t reliable for word for word translocation, it was very clear that it was very much a personal attack on the person. So I am sorry, I can’t stand by this comment for flat out being a jerk and making an attack like that. The last comment said “This isn’t constructive criticism, it’s confrontational, horrible “advice” with a load of personal, opinionated BS directed to a successful freelance artist. Think before you write.” Once again, I can agree this somewhat, it is indeed their opinion and I do think they could’ve done more to add more positive stuff about their comment rather then only the negative aspects. But you are also being in your own words, a little confrontational and I’ll add a little overly defensive in my opinion, so you could’ve been a little little more polite about it like the artist could’ve been.
What did I think of the criticism myself? I do mostly disagree with the criticism as bodies come in a variety of shapes and sizes. However, I myself was personally critical of the characters overly large breasts compared to heir very small torso holding them up. Not to mention, they were a very round c dome shape and didn’t “sag down” to make what I think should be more U shaped breasts due to the size and weight of them. Plus, her torso should’ve been a little bigger to compensate for these large breasts. In any case, how it was handled I felt was wrong by the artist and her followers, where the artist could’ve said she didn’t want criticism in more friendly tone then the very deadpan tone she did do. Meanwhile the followers could’ve been less confrontational and defensive and also be more polite about it. But both of them didn’t. Why? Someone dared to critique the artist they admire and they didn’t take too kindly to it. And this was just a an artist who was just starting to get moderately popular at the time. Imagine how many more would’ve happened if they had 30,000 watchers or something. :/
For another example of this “artist on the pedestal” stuff. One popular artist on here had been criticized for how all the characters faces look the same, the content they draw is bland and uninspiring, the fur is drawn too shiny like polished chrome, how their eyes always look puffy and are always teary and in the commenters own words “and the same wet, teary eyes looks like they’re always fucking during an allergy attack with giant enlarged pupils like they took a fat hit or two of heroin”. Now, maybe that last part was a little too harsh, but, I actually agree with them 90% and I wasn’t a fan of their art for those reason that person stated. (They did excellent posing, decent anatomy and great coloring/shading though, so not all bad things. And I do disagree about the part about the content being bland and uninspiring, so only 90% agree with the criticism there.) However, this comment quickly got berated by the “loyalist followers” of that artist and several comments berating them commenced. After all, someone was bold enough to say “I don’t like this artist and this is why” so therefore, they got shunned for speaking their mind about it and several people jumped down this persons throat for it.
I could list a lot more examples, but I don’t want to bog this comment down with more of them, so I’ll move on now. But it just goes to show that if you dare speak your mind to an artist about their art, you’re going to attacked by their “loyalist followers” and maybe by even the artist themselves. So for people who want to give some constructive thoughts or share reasons why they’re not a fan of an artist, they kind of keep quiet about it in fear of the riot that will follow. I am definitely this way myself.
For example, there is a very popular artist on here that I frankly don’t give the high praise that others have for them. Sure, their poses are great, the lighting is great and they draw something else that’s also good, but I’ll omit what it is as I think it might be too much of a telltale of what artist I’m talking about as a lot of people say they’re the best artist to draw that aspect. (I don’t think the best I’ve seen, but they’re still good at it.) I can understand why they have 50,000 watchers and I respect that and hope their audience keeps loving their work. But I personally have qualms with their style that dissuades me from liking their work too much. I don’t like how they draw backgrounds as they’re never detailed enough for me and are just very blurry mess of brushstrokes made to resemble a background from a distance. The characters themselves only look good when viewing the picture from far away and once you zoom in, it gets all “painterly” which I don’t like. This is not as bad as the backgrounds, but still bothers me for the lack of details. And not to mention I don’t like how often they make arms and legs way too bulky and they often don’t look right half the time. Yet I don’t ever, ever dare show my face and boldly say this to that artist on their page as I’ll have a landslide of people berating me and maybe even the artist themselves doing it as well. I am scared of having an army of people go after me for my honest criticism of saying I’m not a fan of that artist. So I won’t ever say it on their gallery in fear of the vitriol that will follow because this artist is often considered by many the “best artist” on here and the “master artist” to many, yet say anything that dares shine criticism on them, you’ll get punished for not worshiping them like they do.
I get it, some people don’t want to hear bad things about their work or didn’t ask for unwarranted criticism of their work. And I do think that if an artist tells you to stop criticizing their work, it’s respectful to heed their wishes. It’s their work and their art, so they have the right on how they handle criticism and I won’t interfere with that. But it is of my opinion that there is a huge taboo and unsaid rule surrounding giving negative feedback that I really don’t like. It makes it an echo chamber where only the positive must be spoken of, if not, there’s a massive backlash when one dares to not follow everyone else’s praise. And it is also of my opinion how these artists kind of subtly encourage these “loyalist followers” to be mean, confrontational and hateful by not confronting these people and saying something like “hey, thank you for defending me, but you could be a little more polite, less confrontational with them and I don’t approve of you being rude to someone being critical of my work.” So when the artists don’t confront these problems their audience has, they kind of keep persisting as the audience sees it’s okay to do it as they aren’t being told to stop.
Anyway, back to topic, this atmosphere of “no negative criticism” around artists does prevent me from giving out feedback that is anything but positive praise in fear of being the next to be buried in the landslide of artists’ “loyalist followers” who worship them like perfect deities you must not dare critique. And I feel a lot of people have this very mindset too, keep quiet or you’ll be next on the chopping block. And because artists either directly or indirectly encourage these followers to be this way, that only exacerbates the issue much more and just allows this atmosphere around criticism to carry on unnoticed at best and outright encouraged at worse.
For the second last reason why I don’t comment often, I am a very asocial and solitary person In real life, I can’t stand being around people, I choose to be solitary and I think friendships/relationships are a burden rather then a blessing in my opinion, so I choose not to pursue them as they get in the way of my life. (But if you enjoy them, I am not telling you to follow my life choices since it’s your life and I won’t tell you how to run it as it’s not mine to choose nor run, so if it came across that way, I assure you I’m not.) So naturally, I do refrain from talking in general due to just how I am in real life.
However, paradoxically, I am way, WAY more loquacious and wordy online then I’ll ever be in real life. So I am much more open to discussing things as I feel there’s no physical presence of a person if that makes sense, as it feels like I am just writing a journal or comment to a survey then a person, which makes it easier. (And yeah, I’m aware there’s a person on the other end, but it feels different and I prefer it.) But that being said, there’s a big limit on this. If it isn’t something involving my gallery/character/world or about my artwork/other creative pursuits I probably won’t respond. Sounds selfish, but I am a selfish person, so if it doesn’t involve a topic I interested in, I’m probably about not going to talk about it with someone on my page. It’s just how it is. And this a also means I’m not likely to take the initiative and post a comment because of this as well.
In short, how I respond to comments and questions are usually if they pertain to my gallery, my characters, my world, my work or something else I initiated such as posting a journal asking my audience about something. So if a comment is asking about personal information or trying to “cozy up” with me, I’m going to ignore it. Being online talking to someone, ordering art from me or me ordering art from someone else doesn’t make me friends with someone. It’s like talking to a store clerk, you do your business and that’s it. Just because you talk to someone doesn’t make someone friends. So if it’s irreverent to my gallery or I didn’t initiate it I’m not likely to respond.
But this fourth reason is mostly for receiving comments myself and what prompts me to respond to them or not. As for being the initiator of comments, that is much less common and there has to be something that compels me to even comment. But being in line with the first three aforementioned reasons why I refrain from comments above, in short, the main reason I refrain from comments overall is that I think I have to feel I need permission to solicit my opinion by the person who posted something. For example, this journal is a perfect example of it, you’re asking about opinions and views for why commenting is not as common these days. So here I feel I have more room to share my thoughts as you’re giving permission to express them on your page here. Even then, I still add that if you feel my opinion isn’t welcomed or is unsolicited, then I tell that the comment can be hidden. So this need for permission does considerably factor in wether I post a comment to someone or not.
However, I still have one last reason why I refrain from comments that I haven’t talked about yet, but I think this is the more interesting and most unique reason here. As being an artist, there’s a very special reason why I also refuse to comment, but this reason especially relates to commenting on people’s characters. Even if there’s a character who is really cool and awesomely designed, I keep my mouth shut and don’t comment to them for two big reasons.
The first I already discussed but will briefly state again, I feel scared to even comment on it in he first place, which I’ve already throughly covered my reasons plenty in the several paragraphs above here. I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot by posting a 6,000 word critique of how awesome the character is as I’ve already mentioned, some people are weirded out or intimidated by long responses which I have a habit of doing. (If it isn’t obvious by this very comment here.) So once again, being timorous to comment is a big factor here and I’ve already discussed the few reasons I’m so reluctant here already so moving on to something I haven’t discussed yet and I think is more interesting as it comes from being an artist myself rather then just a commissioner/viewer here.
For the second reason I refrain from posting a comment on a character I like is that as an artist, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m “fishing” for commissioners or views. Sounds odd, but let me explain. Unfortunately, I’ve seen several artists “get popular” by collaborating with popular artists and I’ve seen commissioners “get popular” by frequently commissioning popular artists. I feel this is super wrong and I don’t like it. I personally want my views and audience come from genuine interest of my work, not because they saw my name on someone else’s page. In fact, this very account I’m using here is meant to be a “repellent” to people who see this profile. If they try to follow me on this account they’re following an empty gallery, so people will see this and say “okay, this account is rather empty, I can’t follow this.” And even if they still do anyway, they’re still following an account that is merely used for commissioning other artists and remains an unfruitful addition to their watch list. That way, these people who see my characters in others work can follow or enjoy my work because of my work rather then seeing me commissioning other artists. I want the interest in my stuff be genuine, not because I was on the coattails of a popular artist I commission., which whenever possible, I try my best to remain an anonymous commissioner for that reason. I don’t even favorite anything with this account either as to not cause artists to try to find me who I haven’t commissioned as I don’t want them following me just because I favorited/enjoy their art or I commissioned art from them.
In fact, a few days ago, there was this super cute and awesome character someone officially posted. I loved the design and thought it was the best character out the characters they had so far and they already had two great characters. But for the two reasons I aforementioned, I won’t tell this person that. I don’t want them to see my comment as “creepy” for describing how beautiful and adorable the character was are in 6,000 words. I also don’t want them to think that I’m trying to “reel them in” by making a positive comment about their character so I can be commissioned to draw that character. As such, for sake trying to uphold my own ethics as being an artist, I would rather have these people I really love the character deisgn of, to come to me instead even if it never happens, as then I wouldn’t feel guilty or manipulative of trying to have them get me to draw their character, albeit that isn’t what I intend for my comment gushing over their character. But in fear it might come across that way, I refrain from the comment altogether. Because, if they suddenly ask me to draw their character after I gave a nice comment about the character in question, I will feel upset and felt I manipulated someone into being a new customer of mine by virtue of “being nice.” and don’t want to get the impression I’m avaricious for attention or money.
As such, in short, as an artist, I feel hesitant to appreciate someone’s character in fear they might take it as me trying to coax them into getting a commission from me. Sure, from what I’ve seen, a lot of people don’t see it this way and are happy to offer their character to the artist when the artist asks and compliments how they love the design, the character and whatnot. In fact, in the many instances I’ve seen this, I actually can’t recall someone ever saying they felt coerced into commissioning an artist by the artist praising their character and the artist saying they’d like to draw it. But to me, I’ve always seen it this way and while most don’t seem bothered by it or even see it this way, I do. So I wouldn’t feel right if I gave some praise to someone’s characters, even if omit that “I’d like to draw them myself” part most artists add in. To me, it strikes me as manipulation of using flattery to get a new customer. So I don’t comment about it and if I really, really like a character, I keep quiet and just hope that they might come to me one day to draw their character, even if that never happens.
Before I end this entire reply here, I do want to give a small tip beforehand if you yourself are disappointed by your comment count and thus that might’ve been the reason you prompted to write this journal. A tip I should mention that can be achieved without catering to others interests to get noticed or catering the popular choices of what most people like and enjoy in order to reel in more attention.
When it comes to more “avoidant” artists or commissioners like myself, I noticed too many artists or commissioners “give the cold shoulder” and don’t reply to any comments on their posts. Thus, this discourages people to not comment as if they’re not getting a response, then they feel less motivation to even post one. You’ve probably seen a few artists like this, where there’s a lot of comments on their work, but comments from the artist replying to someone is often unheard of. And usually, the comments slowly get less and less over time the longer the artist is around as the artists audience understands they’re not getting a reply, with the only people who keep posting comments being the ones who don’t care about a response and just want to share a brief sentence about their enjoyment of the picture. So in short, comments get scarce as if the artist doesn’t engage with them, so people aren’t as willing to comment then.
Even a solitary person like me thinks this is wrong in my opinion as it’s bad for business. I think that it’s important to engage with your audience to at least a small degree as otherwise, they might not stick around if you’re just ignoring them. And sure, I understand firsthand that it takes time and effort to reply to everyone, something us busy artists are aware of. And replying thank you to all the one liners and small sentence comments is kind of tedious and redundant. But even just commenting to to the few people who do say something you think warrants a reply or an questions that pop up can easily tell people that “hey, there’s a chance that my comment can get replied to as they’ve notably replied to a few others in this picture I’ve noticed. Not every one, sure, but some.” So if people see that the artist does frequently or even every other time, replying a comment or question, this can spark people to be more motivated to leave a comment or question in hopes that you might respond to it. In fact, a few artists I noticed seem to lack any audience activity on their accounts due to this very instance, giving the audience here cold shoulder and lack of even minimal engagement with their audience. (And it definitely doesn’t help for two or three of those artists cases that they were also flat out jerks to their audience as well.)
When I get my real profile here in order and get out of the massive 5-6 year art slump I’ve been in, I will try my best to reply to comments as to signify to others that they shouldn’t be scared to comment and that I am indeed reading them, which can help encourage them to write comments more often. I do prefer a comment over a favorite as someone explaining to me why they like or dislike a picture is much more helpful then a favorite. Why do you like the picture? Why did you favorite it? What did you enjoy most about it? Which a favorite doesn’t answer those questions. So a comment is more enjoyable to have then a favorite or view in my opinion. Even a one sentence comment is better as it takes more time to actually write your thoughts out then just pressing the favorite button.
And as I can tell by this very journal, you do follow this tip already. I’ve looked briefly at your gallery and noticed you show much more engagement with your audience then most on here. Every one of the few pictures I just randomly clicked on to check for this shows you replying to comments, so you’re already doing what I advised. But I just thought it was imperative to point this out upfront here just in case you haven’t noticed this yourself as sometimes one can be unaware of their own habits. So wether you’re already aware of it or just realized it now, I do hope this does help provide some small advice if you yourself were upset about your own comments on your page being scarce. :)
Anyway, I really hope you were once again not bothered by this response and that you don’t mind this as I thought I’d like to share my thoughts on this as this isn’t a topic a lot of people are aware of or don’t mention at all. I hope I made my points here clear and that they’re not confusing for you, but if they are, feel free to ask if you’d like. Once again, if this comment bothers you at all or comes across as unsolicited, feel free to hide it. I just felt I should give my two cents here since this is a topic I feel I had some experience on and I hope I’ve provided you some answers. :)
Regardless, thank you for your time and I hope you have a good day. :)
While I have not gone through it all, I generally agree with most of your points. Theres plenty of great sfw artists like rogueliger and felfi who are super successful and have very large communities. I think the main reason FA doesnt have more SFW artists is due to its reputation with more SFW peeps sticking to twitter. For the topics getting more or less likes, I think its all about the community you build up and what their preferences are. If you are like me and commission literally every subject under the sun it results in different groups/interests watching and interested in your work which can sometimes clash.
Frankly in my personal opinion, getting a comment tells me I've successfully engaged someone in the pic or material. I try to invite people to respond with small stories or quips to the pictures etc. To me a favourite is just someone pressing a button and moving on and views as just someone who glanced at a pic. I know the people who comment are invested in what I do and I appreciate every time it happens!
And I want to assure you that there’s no rush to read it all in one sitting if you aren’t able to. But if you have more thoughts whenever you read the rest, feel free to mention them later, but only if you’d like too of course. No need to if you don’t have a desire to. :)
Anyway onto the the points you brought up here.
In relation to the successful SFW artists. I’m not saying SFW artists can’t be successful, I’m merely pointing that they just have a lot more cut out for them to be successful then the NSFW artists since as both of us mentioned, I mentioned people tend to go here on FA for naughty stuff, hence giving this site it’s naughty reputation that you have mentioned yourself here. So some people might be deterred from making an account on here, especially if they’re one who is extremely uncomfortable with sexual material or are rather famous and don’t want to be associated with a quote on quote “porn site”. So, I can understand why some people would choose a different site than this one for hosting their work.
And yes, I do agree with you there. I do think that whatever you post a lot of will generally become your core audience.. I’m just saying I noticed that there’s subject matter that is definitely more popular, what people generally enjoy better and what is more commonplace interests as an overall generalization. But if you’re solely building up only a specific topic, you’re going have your own audience be those who specifically follow you for that one thing. For example, the point I made about the males getting much less attention compared to females is definitely not true for artists who exclusively draw males. In fact, a couple years ago, a male exclusive artist actually got quite a bit of complaints and backlash from their audience about them drawing I think their first heterosexual scene for a comic and people went apeshit about a naked female, let alone a sex scene involving her, being drawn by the artist. It was admittedly a little amusing to me to see the dumpster fire that comics comment section was, but I did genuinely felt sorry for that artist who had to put up with that crap every week a new page came out and I give them props for not just saying “you know what, since you guys are acting like spoiled brats who can’t handle where I’m taking this comic's story, no comic for you then” and they diligently kept working on it. So yeah, if you focus on one particular thing and then suddenly draw something that isn’t what most of your audience enjoys, people are going to complain or dip out of that “unusual for your gallery” thing you posted due it not being what the audience you’ve built up enjoys.
I wouldn’t say I’m the “commission/draw everything under the sun” type as I am more selective with my interests, both with my own art and especially for commissions which I’m spending my money on, so I’m not going to spend money to get things that aren’t fully of my interests as I’d be wasting money in my opinion. As I’ve mentioned in the original comment, you can probably assume from me taking about spacescapes, flora encyclopedia sheets, landscapes and star maps that I’m a science fiction person with a more focus on natural alien settings. And you’d be correct. (Just noticed I forgot to mention alien species sheets in the original comment) But I do want to say that there would definitely be conflicting interests in my gallery since I technically have two main settings for my stuff, one that is relegated to pertain to my interests, the alien science fiction setting I call the “canon setting”, and one that is relegated to pertain to other people’s interests that is just an alternate version of earth that I call the “non canon setting” since I’m an ogre about the stuff in the former canon setting remaining untampered with by others, so in order to prevent people from lusting after the characters of mine that I’m not okay with people getting their own characters together with, I have the non canon setting for that where I’m not nearly as having that “hands off” attitude as I am with the canon setting. But while the conflict of interests is there, I do know that any one person who follows my gallery is going to stick around for at least one of, if not both settings or just my art or character designs in general. :)
And as I’ve mentioned in my first comment, I did say that I personally view comments as being better and am more appreciative of them since it shows someone took the time to write something in response to the picture and as aforementioned in the first comment, they explained to me why they liked a picture. A favorite just doesn’t answer some questions of why someone likes the picture whereas a comment can. Why did they like it? What did they enjoy about it? These are questions that a favorite can’t answer, only a comment can potentially do so. :)
To most people, a favorite is like what you just stated: just a simple button press to move on. Personally, I think I am more picky and show more restraint then most about hitting the favorite button. When I do favorite something, I do take the time to appreciate the picture to determine wether I want to pinboard it to my favorites selection. As I don’t often comment, I do think the favorite is next best thing. In fact, on my real profile on here, I think I have less then 60-70 pictures I’ve favorited ever since I registered it back in 2016/2017, so I am a lot more picky about wether I’d favorite a picture or not. I also haven’t been active on my real profile too, but I do tend to only favorite things I really like instead of anything that I moderately like. For example, instead of favoriting all the artwork in an artists gallery because I love their art, I’m only going to favorite select pictures of I think is exceptional and some of their best pieces and pieces really cater to my interests.
Even if I do show more restraint on the favorite button then others, I do think your point still stands that it doesn’t matter wether how much or how infrequent an individual favorites something to an artist or commissioner because the favorites all kind of just get lumped together as a algorithm statistic while a comment flat out isn’t. So favorites do indeed just feel like platinum version of views so to speak where it’s just a different view type where instead of telling you every view the picture get, favorites shows you how many of those views enjoy the picture and not much else.
And 100% agree with you on the comments being a way to tell if you’ve successfully had a picture that made someone want to engage with it more then usual. But as I’ve pointed out in my original comment, there’s more personal reasons why me, and others as well, might refrain from posting comments, even if some of us really want to, it’s just the negatives outweigh the positives too much. I’d love to comment more often, I just I feel too risky in my bad experiences and in my observations of others reactions to comments.
Still though, thank you very much for reading regardless. :)