It makes me sad coming across abandoned accounts </3

This may be too personal to answer (publicly or otherwise), but will Eclipse be rejoining us?

It's been a long time.

Abandoned or shut down accounts :(

ha?

Yeah, actually there are a LOT of good artists that basicly vanished over night without anyone knowing what happened.


And it gets even more gut-wrenching, when after YEARS you find out, they are on the "I was here" list...

I have the problem of artists I like not being around anymore when I came here.

Sad thing is they don't even give a formal goodbye.

For many artists life hasn't been kind to them. They either have a life altering scenario happening to them, or, they simply gave up. Things like Inflation, war, or lack of funds, or they passed away suddenly and couldn't tell anyone what happened.

Or they gave up. The internet fandom hasn't been kind to them behind the scenes, and decided to leave without saying goodbye.

I dunno if it's worse for them to just have vanished, or for them to have received the infinity sign next to their name. At least that has closure.

yeah. a lot of them either disappeared with no word or moved to twitter or the other site.

Yes. A lot of people do move on, grow out of fandom, loose interest, get busy, disappear..... it hapoens

Attrition as i call it

The process of time, unfortunately.

I'm gonna miss a few of them

For sure!

Yeah folks just go.mia.. annoying,

For reasons, I'm sure. But doesn't make you miss their art any less!

Or them

Congrats, we're old, lol.

Only as a number. I refuse to feel so internally lol

I'm sure they all have their reasons to go, just as the rest of us all have our own reasons for sticking around. 😉
My guess would be the latest rise & increase of AI-generated artwork holding back lots of traditional legitimate artists from posting any further artwork, out of fear of getting Frankensteined to death by these AI-created anti-artist cheaters. Or perhaps a few just wanted a fresh change for the best OR the recent changes/updates to the TOS caused a lot of artists to crash out and try posting/sharing their art to other websites instead of FA? Maybe some artists acted out of line and got banned by the admin staff? A few could even be straight-up deceased... 😢
Like I said, there's a bunch of reasons behind why your following list is devoid of as much action as it once incorporated before. Dang, this journal of yours is somewhat provoking... now I'm super-curious to see how my following list is looking! I feel as if there has been a LOT of ceased activity from many favored artists I've admired for years. Maybe a bunch of 'em jumped the FA bandwagon and decided to join Bluesky, Twitter or simply start their own Telegram/Discord channel(s)?

Whatever the case may be, I'm just glad to see activity from your end on here. I'm also a bountiful +follower on IB!

Good thing you follow on here. Not sure how active I'll be on IB at this point lol

But appreciate the following :D

Oh, buddy, I know... I read your IB journal you left a couple days ago in regards to their lame-ass updated TOS/rules over the proper & improper use of stock/screenshot backgrounds... its been affecting a lot of other artists as well, which is a shame to witness. 😞

Aww, of course - my pleasure!!

Yeah, I'll fully admits it's a fucking stupid move. But hey, they get to have all the Ai they want I guess lol

All the more for them to bathe in!
I will never, ever stand for AI-generated art OR those who willingly choose to work with it.

I will admit though, it CAN have uses. Just... not in generating artwork and writing FOR you.

Programs like Prowritingaid and Chatgpt are wonderful when it comes to help in writing edits.

Writers should never, ever try to edit their own work. We're too good at missing things because our brains place what we want to see, versus what's actually there. Dropped words, spelling errors, misplaced commas, periods, etc.

So in the end, it can be a useful TOOL. And that's where it should stay!

Heck yes, I couldn't agree more! Shame on those who blatantly and shamelessly profit off AI-created artwork with vast impunity.

My cousin is a defense attorney with a law practice out of Stockton, formerly out of Mountain View. I'd say she's fairly prominent at her job! She's been at it for years. Anywho, more than lately she has been using ChatGPT to produce professionally-edited legal documentation for her clientele. From the way she described her experiences in working with such AI-driven software, it seems like a very resourceful tool, especially for those of us who work with crucial data such as web coding and detailed story edits. I'm still on the fence about whether or not I'll give it a chance with a story or two of mine, though... it would take a LOT of convincing for me to give in to such a thing.

To revise and then re-revise the revision, that's how I've always ALWAYS pursued my stories. 😆 Maybe that makes me a bit more old-school than most?

And stories should have revision! Even after I run my writing through the program used and apply the fixes... I read them again... and then revise AGAIN lol

Its a never-ending struggle!! Out of curiosity, do you face a similar circumstance when drawing/creating visual artwork? Or is the urge to revise anything and everything mostly consistent with storytelling to a fair degree?

I'm still here, just not as active. I have been noticing that too.

Glad you're still here.

I know the feeling. Take for example gigan800. He was doing wonderful work, then suddenly poof.