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Rant About "Artist Beware" and Problem Artists
8 years ago
Greetings,
Hi! Hope everyone is doing well. I had a busy week, which seemed to get busier as it got closer to the end of the week. It's all good.
As some of you know, I don't commission much art. One reason being: Money is a little hard to come by lately. Two months ago, I commissioned an artist for my "fursona." I've known the guy for several years, always appreciated his artwork and noticed he was good with his turnaround time. I've commissioned him before and he came through. As someone who does commission, I know life gets in the way, things happen and we can't get to working on them when we want to. But after he sent me his PayPal invoice, there was radio silence. I reached out to him on social media, checked in with him and asked about the status. If he wrote me back with something like, "I can't get to it right now," I'd totally understand. Nothing. Earlier this week, I reached out to him again (nicely) on Telegram and asked, "How is my commission coming along?" I noticed he read my message, but when I logged out and logged back in, the mostly one-sided conversation disappeared." I thought, "That's odd. I don't normally delete conversations like that." Then it hit me: I was blocked.
People have asked me to out this artist, which I haven't and won't. I know he has personal issues, which I won't get into -- I mean, we all do. It's also against FA guidelines, so I'm not giving it a second thought. Instead, I'm privately going through back channels with PayPal in hopes that I resolve the issue.
I've vented on Twitter about what happened, was told of a few "Artist Beware" sites that disclose and monitor problematic artists. I've been in the fandom for nearly 20 years, but I haven't bothered to check these sites. I've checked out a few of these so-called "artists," and checked out evidence of their wrongdoing.
One is that a lot of these artist scammers have some personality issues that go beyond mere intent to steal or defraud; that many of them clearly don't see that they're at fault in what's an apparent breach of contract. One pays for services that are supposed to be rendered, the services aren't rendered. Commission agreements are fairly straightforward. While I think disclosing these artists is a service to the fandom, the line is often blurred between bringing scams to light and witchhunts, and I see an awful lot of witchhunts that have ended up in doxxing and worse. I wish the "Artist Beware" system was more streamlined to a point that you report a person like you report a telemarketer. You provide the basic information, how much money you lost and what you did to try to resolve the issue with no fanfare. It's just a database. There should be some sort of Better Business Bureau for furries. I think it would do well.
Anyway, those are just my thoughts. Have a good rest of your weekend!
LS
Hi! Hope everyone is doing well. I had a busy week, which seemed to get busier as it got closer to the end of the week. It's all good.
As some of you know, I don't commission much art. One reason being: Money is a little hard to come by lately. Two months ago, I commissioned an artist for my "fursona." I've known the guy for several years, always appreciated his artwork and noticed he was good with his turnaround time. I've commissioned him before and he came through. As someone who does commission, I know life gets in the way, things happen and we can't get to working on them when we want to. But after he sent me his PayPal invoice, there was radio silence. I reached out to him on social media, checked in with him and asked about the status. If he wrote me back with something like, "I can't get to it right now," I'd totally understand. Nothing. Earlier this week, I reached out to him again (nicely) on Telegram and asked, "How is my commission coming along?" I noticed he read my message, but when I logged out and logged back in, the mostly one-sided conversation disappeared." I thought, "That's odd. I don't normally delete conversations like that." Then it hit me: I was blocked.
People have asked me to out this artist, which I haven't and won't. I know he has personal issues, which I won't get into -- I mean, we all do. It's also against FA guidelines, so I'm not giving it a second thought. Instead, I'm privately going through back channels with PayPal in hopes that I resolve the issue.
I've vented on Twitter about what happened, was told of a few "Artist Beware" sites that disclose and monitor problematic artists. I've been in the fandom for nearly 20 years, but I haven't bothered to check these sites. I've checked out a few of these so-called "artists," and checked out evidence of their wrongdoing.
One is that a lot of these artist scammers have some personality issues that go beyond mere intent to steal or defraud; that many of them clearly don't see that they're at fault in what's an apparent breach of contract. One pays for services that are supposed to be rendered, the services aren't rendered. Commission agreements are fairly straightforward. While I think disclosing these artists is a service to the fandom, the line is often blurred between bringing scams to light and witchhunts, and I see an awful lot of witchhunts that have ended up in doxxing and worse. I wish the "Artist Beware" system was more streamlined to a point that you report a person like you report a telemarketer. You provide the basic information, how much money you lost and what you did to try to resolve the issue with no fanfare. It's just a database. There should be some sort of Better Business Bureau for furries. I think it would do well.
Anyway, those are just my thoughts. Have a good rest of your weekend!
LS
because if it takes months to verify people may fall for it during that time;
if it's really fast unless it's extremely obvious something might get missed
What we really need in this fandom is a legitimate, 3rd party, fandom based escrow service that will agree to mediate between artists and commissioners.
It's time we stood up to poor business practices in this fandom!