Remember once upon a time when people would put up journals and it would just be that the first x amount of people to post would get free art?

Or when they would be a little trickier about it and they started putting up certain requirements to getting the free art so that only people who paid attention and read carefully would get the art.

Still some people would be like: "Hey! I'll draw free art for people. Post refs and whatever characters I like will get drawn~"

Those were all okay things. I liked those things. Then some day some idiot decided it would be a good idea to use free art to self-promote.

"LOL HAY GUIZE. POST A STUPID JOURNAL NO ONE CARES ABOUT ADVERTISING THAT I AM GOING TO GIVE OUT FREE ART. I'LL PICK THREE PEOPLE FROM THE ENTRIES TO DRAW LOLOLOL"

So then everybody started doing these journals. All the goddamn time. It's really annoying.

Just ten somewhat popular artists posting these will end up filling my journal inbox with endless spam. Because for each of these artists, assuming...say...50 people decide to go for it... that's a lot of useless shit.

Ten artists giving out three pictures each and getting a minimum of fifty people posting journals about this to get an entry. That means there will be at least 500 journals nobody wants to read for just thirty pictures to be drawn. And every time someone posts one of these journals, chances are someone else reads them and decides they'll enter as well.

IT NEVER ENDS!

I used to enjoy going through my journal inbox. There would be quality journals and they would be easy to spot and make FA fun. But now this shit is just getting out of hand and pissing me off.