I did thanks for watch in public shout for a while and after that, I deemed it not worth it anyways and stopped.
But the reason I go to people page after watch or fav is actually because I'm telling myself "Hey, this mean that this person liked my thing, they like this kind of stuff so they probably have stuff I don't know that I will like in their fav or even their gall", and most of the time I end up being right. I discovered many artist I still love today because of that :)

Well, yeah I understand that. But I feel like, again, leaving a public shout is just rude, and you can do the same in a note. I’ve only privately messages people a handful of times because of a watch, usually because they’re an artist I really like or they’re my friend. I refrain from watching a lot of people back, as well. My watch folder is pretty small as I really only watch artists I’d like to commission or the artwork is fantastic in general. I watch most of my friends as well, of course.

True. I should do that.
But cleaning 2k+ people and a lot of time it's people I really like, well, it's REALLY long. I've being doing it everyday for 3 month straight a little bit and still.

I always go on peoples pages after they watch or fav my stuff, but never leave shouts. I go through their galleries and maybe other favorites that they have, so I can see what else they like. I've made a couple really good friends that way, because sometimes I even note them compliments on their galleries. ^^

Right, I feel like that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Also keep in mind a lot of these “thank you” shouts are copy/paste, which adds to the suspicion for me.

I am a nobody, if anyone favorites my works you bet your ass I'm snooping on their profile. I'm a sucker for validation, and looking at a profile to see that it's a person and not just a hoarder or troll is just a great feeling. I will not however demand more attention, so I rarely speak to whoever has taken the time to check out my work...

Understandable. I think every one of us does that, don’t worry it’s not just you. X3

If someone watches me, I will check out their profile...but a lot of the time, it's because I wonder why they hadn't FAVED anything of mine before the watch. It...confuses me when someone watches me without faving anything first. "Why did they watch me? What is it they liked?"

I get what you are saying, but I don't tend to fav a lot of things because I'll get in a whole. Next thing you know, I just added 30 favs and cluttered up my folder.

I understand where you’re coming from here, but let me explain my interpretation of a watch. A watch is like a subscriber on YouTube. It means they want to see more of your content, and want to be updated when something is posted because they like it that much. That means a lot more to me than a favorite, which may just be a few posts that person likes.

I look at it like this. If someone watches me, that usually means that they have similar interests, and a lot of times, their art is worth a watch back. As far as shouts, I kinda stopped doing it because I feel like it clutters up the shouts and what they were really meant for.

Yeah, I agree. I don’t think shouts were meant for this, as stated above in my post.

In good part, I think it's just people following this website's social customs. The practice would fall out if it was disadvantageous to the person doing it, and I suspect that it can serve as a form of usually-unintentional promotion (perhaps how it originally developed), but by and large, I think it's done because it's how the etiquette is.

Maybe, but I don’t know if it’s “unintentional”, as people choose not to do it. It’s one of those things where you don’t really know if someone’s really doing it for self promotion or are just being nice.

Anecdotally, I've never seeing a person saying that they do choose to leave shouts, only that they don't. This supports the idea that it's the imitation-borne default, and, more importantly, suggests to me that there's more effort involved in choosing not to do it, than choosing to do it--that is, that people usually won't have to consider using shouts as advertisement in the first place, because they leave shouts already. It is completely possible that someone could make a conscious decision to start or continue leaving shouts based on its value as advertisement, but I think that, so long as leaving them is the social expectation, and so long as the artist in question is not very popular--I would suspect someone who gets 20 new watchers a day and leaves a shout at the page of each one of them--it's not usually disingenuous.

(The question of whether an artist does do this as a way to get new followers is separate from the question of whether they would. The only thing that's spread faster than the Coronavirus in the last few months has been the "leave a journal and you get an extra slot" genre of raffles, which I find a dishearteningly obsessive and mechanical way for an artist to maximize their watch count, or, worse for my opinion of them, their income; and a sort of sale of the soul with regard to the respectability of the people who follow through with those instructions to get the extra slot. But my first point stands nonetheless.)

And as with all "polite" things, leaving shouts is done in most part to get the person on the other end to like you, and an artist, who, on this site, is normally very interested in their reputation, might take this into account, if not fully consciously; but that's different from advertising to third parties.

Comment hidden because FA was running slow and I posted it twice.

I just feel like it’s disrespectful anyway, even if it is part of the so called “etiquette” of the site. People have decisions, and the copy/paste “Thanks for the watch!” just seems really disrespectful. Not only is the statement not genuine in any way (if it’s copy/paste, as most are), it just clutters the shouts section. If you can help it, don’t post it. It really makes me mad when I scroll through a talented artist’s shouts to see that it’s not filled with compliments, but just “Thanks for the watch/fave.” If you’re going to do something like that on profiles, at least make it unique. I don’t think the intended purpose is nefarious, no, but it takes away from why you clicked on that person’s page in the first place. It’s not what the shouts section was intended for, period. And if the purpose was to get someone to like you, why wouldn’t you just put “Hey, I saw you favorited one of my works! I’ve got some more things that I think you may like” rather than “Thanks for the fave.” I use the shouts system to compliment other great artists, not thank them for a watch. It’s inherently rude if you look at it with an open mind, and the more I think about it, the more it gets to me. Just to give you an idea of what I mean by “inherently rude”, let me associate the shouts section with the comments section of YouTube. A comment section on YouTube is supposed to be where conversations about a video take place, or where someone compliments or complains about a video. Don’t you think it would be rude if you went onto someone’s YouTube video who liked one of your videos and said “Thanks for the sub” or “Thanks for the like”? If that doesn’t make sense, what about social media? What if someone likes your tweet? You don’t go to their page and publicly post “Thanks for the like!” You see what I mean? It’s just inherently disrespectful, and it makes me mad to see that it’s so common here.

for me its a bit weird because when you say thanks for the fav, you are just assuming that they like your work. when it can be that thats not the case. in my case not all the pics that i fav are pictures that i like. its more like a save gallery

i post shouts because i genuinely appreciate that someone likes what i post and I do like meeting new people