I think this only becomes an issue if the owner of the character allows the popularity to get to their head.
As in if they start to act different than once seen or feel as if they are on a higher level than everyone else~

I'm surprised someone said this to you personally though, since I don't believe either of those examples describe yourself. Your character may be seen often, but who could say more art of a character they enjoy seeing is a bad thing?

Very true and I have seen some people who weren't popular become so abandoning their former friends. Also muthafuqa I haven't heard from you in ages

Hard Drive kicked the can and recently got my computer back up and running!
Have yet to reinstall skype however ^^; Though always on Telegram if you use it.

Believe I've seen that happen as well~ But also simply those who come out of the gate with such a mentality. An odd situation, but to each their own really.

I've actually had strangers throw insults at me for not getting art with them on a whim >>;

Wow, that's incredibly insecure of them.

Yo where's are art together? Gonna throw insults at you for days!

:P

Some point @.@
Once Darkmesna recovers from Uncle Sam yanking his wallet on April 15th

or the fact I lost my job so affording art isn't something I can do atm lol

See? we got problems. XDDD

Till then, when we recover!

I have to agree with the aforementioned comments; I don't think a character being popular is bad, nor do I quite understand why the person in question regards it as "stepping on" less popular characters. To me they simply kind of come off as a hipster; ie, I liked it before it was cool. It isn't you as a user or person who made your character popular, it was the interest of the community. Sure you've gotten a lot of art of viral, but if people weren't interested in him... still wouldn't be as popular.

And quite frankly, I think it's really awesome to have a character who is human/humanoid, or at least has that sort of form, being popular in this community.

I'm pretty surprised he made it this far tbh. I mean it's a furry community so I never expect a human to be popular or blame them since people come here for everything anthro lol

Popularity on its own isn't bad, but I've seen a lot of characters that end up being changed for popularity's sake. I can think of one artist who swore that they weren't going to compromise the purity of their OC, until she became popular and they started drawing all sorts of cheesecake and nudes. Personalities can become less important, and sometimes people become more "elitist" once their character becomes popular, only wanting art from and with certain people.

It's not bad to be popular, but it is kind of bad to care more about being popular than who the character was meant to be.

Well I'll never change Viral to cater to others I can promise that. Viral has and still is based around my tastes and will continue to be. Had him for over 12 years now and outside of his hairstyle evolving and getting a stylish outfit not much about him as changed since.

I agree with the aforementioned comments. As soon as the popularity corrupts your conscience the character itself loses value. Personally this happens a lot to people who whore out their characters.

popularity doesn't ruin a character imo.. it's what's done with a character that usually ruins it. Like Butterfly said, and this is quite common, when people take a character and completely adulterize it for a prolonged period of time and abandon the character development.

There's been a number of characters in the fandom that I admired at first, but they just bombarded their audience with smut after smut after smut (nothing wrong with smut but jesus christ have some moderation) and we pretty much never get to see the actual "CHARACTER" being portrayed beyond a mere sex puppet. And at that point the admiration just dies.

to me it sounds like someone jealous your character has a level of popularity that they dont.