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Artists Removing Accounts: Hot Take
5 years ago
Opinionated spider decides to post an emotionally driven hot take on the internet.
Like that's never been done before or has never gone poorly for anyone lol.
Real talk tho this is something I’ve been slowly getting more frustrated and upset by over time as it continues to happen more and more, I’ve been meaning to make a post about it at some point but I didn’t feel like it was worth making a journal until now.
The Rant:
Recently I've come across a lot of artists profiles that have been voluntarily removed and have had all their art taken down. Some of these artists were quite popular and have been very influential to me over the years. Some of these artists were from forever ago like waaay before I was even on the platform, artists that were very important to me and inspired me to want to draw and post stuff. I've been noticing artists erasing their work and their profiles more and more as of recent and I just found out today that another individual had removed and taken down their entire profile very recently and it's just infuriating to see.
I understand removing your work if the fact that your profile and art existing is causing you conflicts in other aspects of your life, or if your art is problematic or you begin to view your art as inherently problematic. If I ever remove my profile and all the things I've drawn it will be because it being on the internet was causing me issues elsewhere.
But it's not the same as "I’ve moved on to other things so I am now deciding to erase everything I ever made" or "I don't like my old art because I can draw it better now so I am going to selectively erase 3/4 of all my old art that I don't like so no one can ever see it ever again." Like some things people draw are really important to people or are even some of their favorite drawings ever and to just erase it from existence for forever just because you feel like it gets me genuinely angry. There are things that are impossible to find now that personally to me were very influential or inspiring or important or were some of my favorite drawings and to see that they were completely destroyed for no good reason other than “Oh, ya I’ve moved on from all that so I erased everything because I felt like it” genuinely makes me angry and upset.
I went to go look around on another site and found old pieces I enjoyed and went to go search them up and found that a good number of those artists have erased their accounts and all their collective work. It's just frustrating to see all of these artists that I looked up to forever ago and even recent artists now that I really enjoyed just destroy everything they made even though they didn't need to or seemingly had no reason to do so.
If you want to move on then just move on to other things, but you don't need to destroy everything you've left behind and leave all those people who followed you and cared about you and your art upset and angry by destroying everything they followed you for.
I try not to ramble or give opinions on here but this has been something that genuinely frustrates me a lot and it’s something that’s been irritating me all weekend.
I just needed to go on a bit of a rant because this has been building up in my brain for a while now and just today I learned about another artist that recently did this so I wanted to get it out.
Again, if I ever erase my account along with all my fetish art it's going to be because it's causing me problems. Even after I leave FA someday in the future I will still leave everything here for people to find or look back for because I know people enjoy it and it might be important to some people.
I would be interested in anyone’s opinions on this topic if anyone has any, I know I’ve been bad at responding to journal comments but I would be interested in replying to some about this topic.
Like that's never been done before or has never gone poorly for anyone lol.
Real talk tho this is something I’ve been slowly getting more frustrated and upset by over time as it continues to happen more and more, I’ve been meaning to make a post about it at some point but I didn’t feel like it was worth making a journal until now.
The Rant:
Recently I've come across a lot of artists profiles that have been voluntarily removed and have had all their art taken down. Some of these artists were quite popular and have been very influential to me over the years. Some of these artists were from forever ago like waaay before I was even on the platform, artists that were very important to me and inspired me to want to draw and post stuff. I've been noticing artists erasing their work and their profiles more and more as of recent and I just found out today that another individual had removed and taken down their entire profile very recently and it's just infuriating to see.
I understand removing your work if the fact that your profile and art existing is causing you conflicts in other aspects of your life, or if your art is problematic or you begin to view your art as inherently problematic. If I ever remove my profile and all the things I've drawn it will be because it being on the internet was causing me issues elsewhere.
But it's not the same as "I’ve moved on to other things so I am now deciding to erase everything I ever made" or "I don't like my old art because I can draw it better now so I am going to selectively erase 3/4 of all my old art that I don't like so no one can ever see it ever again." Like some things people draw are really important to people or are even some of their favorite drawings ever and to just erase it from existence for forever just because you feel like it gets me genuinely angry. There are things that are impossible to find now that personally to me were very influential or inspiring or important or were some of my favorite drawings and to see that they were completely destroyed for no good reason other than “Oh, ya I’ve moved on from all that so I erased everything because I felt like it” genuinely makes me angry and upset.
I went to go look around on another site and found old pieces I enjoyed and went to go search them up and found that a good number of those artists have erased their accounts and all their collective work. It's just frustrating to see all of these artists that I looked up to forever ago and even recent artists now that I really enjoyed just destroy everything they made even though they didn't need to or seemingly had no reason to do so.
If you want to move on then just move on to other things, but you don't need to destroy everything you've left behind and leave all those people who followed you and cared about you and your art upset and angry by destroying everything they followed you for.
I try not to ramble or give opinions on here but this has been something that genuinely frustrates me a lot and it’s something that’s been irritating me all weekend.
I just needed to go on a bit of a rant because this has been building up in my brain for a while now and just today I learned about another artist that recently did this so I wanted to get it out.
Again, if I ever erase my account along with all my fetish art it's going to be because it's causing me problems. Even after I leave FA someday in the future I will still leave everything here for people to find or look back for because I know people enjoy it and it might be important to some people.
I would be interested in anyone’s opinions on this topic if anyone has any, I know I’ve been bad at responding to journal comments but I would be interested in replying to some about this topic.
I understand if people move on and such, but at least keep the work up like an archive or even, a base point as to what they'd like to improve on. There is nothing, nothing more angering than a good artist leaving and destroying their works that people love. Even worse too, if they did commissions.
Lastly, another thing I find more concerning is this whole damn year. 2020, people are dropping like flies and crisis after crisis hits all of us. With that being said, it puts the pressure on everyone else to improve or get good at their work if a good artist leaves.
My closing statement is: If it's not fun, why the fuck did you do it to begin with?
Was our bird friend?
I not why they delete them really, if gives they problems i understand and stay in accord perfectly, disapointed but perfectly due are their accounts but lastly the people post things like "i feels like i need do it" or directly they not posted a explanation to their watchers.
Is horrible see that art that impuse us to enter in the furry fandom in general not only in specific fetiches just when you go to teir accounts see... Nothing.
For the past 4 years I've been making offline backups of my favorites to preserve the artwork I enjoy. Both to safeguard from artists wiping their gallery and the possibility that FA won't be around forever. Plus I can do neat cataloging with metadata I scrape to make it all searchable. I still find the occasional deleted submission when counting the pages I need to backup. It does make me wonder what was lost... But on the bright side there's still lots of beautiful and titillating art to be found.
IDK I’ve just been recently discovering artists that had deactivated and erased their work that I cared about and it’s upsetting.
To see all of these artists that had motivated and inspired me to draw on here as well as artists that were still around that made me feel involved in a community that was having fun making stuff, to just see them erase their entire existence for “reasons unknown” or “unreasonable reasons” is incredibly upsetting. It’s upsetting from the perspective of both as a creator and as someone who was invested in that person and their art. I’m just extra grumpy about it right now because I found out another artist that I really liked and had drawn some really inspiring stuff did this recently and seemingly without reason. Like they were still drawing stuff up until not too long ago but maybe I just missed their explanation as to why they removed everything. All I know was that they moved on from FA and decided to deactivate their profile and erase everything and it sounded like it wouldn’t have been an issue to leave everything up.
Either way I know it's going to continue to happen over time and I just needed to rant this out at some point or my brain was gonna explode lol.
I do get curious though when I see profiles with high page views and watchers and no artwork, wayback machine helps with that most of the time though!
That’s super upsetting for people.
It’s super upsetting for me.
So I understand why people would flip out at an artist for erasing all of their old work while continuing to make more of the same art but “new,” but I think the term “selfish” also implies the artist owes anyone anything when they are posting their art for free and doing it for fun or attention. But I do think it’s incredibly ignorant and rude to your followers to just erase everything and pretend it never existed when your entire following was literally built by that body of work.
But I don't agree. Speaking from my own POV (because that's the only one I can speak from, being, you know, neither telepathic nor God), my art is in a very real sense an extension of myself—it's my voice, visually. As long as a piece is up, as long as people are viewing it, then I am saying a thing.
So if I make an art piece I no longer agree with, or if I decide that this fandom isn't me anymore and I want to leave, then I think it's well within my rights to be able to wipe my library. (Hell, in the EU, this right is codified in law. Not sure how much I agree with that—it has some nasty ramifications for free speech, and I consider myself a free-speech hardliner—but I think the idea has some value, as a social standard at least.)
Even if you're the most beautiful storyteller in the world, if you're tired, I think you have the right to shut up.
but that's my fetish-artist hot take in response to another fetish-artist hot take, the word "problematic" is problematic, have a wonderful day
"if I make an art piece I no longer agree with" falls under that umbrella of not personally agreeing with or being ideally uncomfortable with things you've created.
"if I decide that this fandom isn't me anymore and I want to leave" is a separate discussion tho and is my main issue with artists erasing their work. If you want to move on that's totally fine, if there is no reason outside of "I am done with this community and want to move on now" then it's super uncool to just erase everything you've ever made especially if it's important to others and doesn't create issues or personally affect anything in any negative way.
It’s entirely within an artists right to remove their gallery and profile I’m not saying they shouldn’t be allowed to.
It's cool.
While I don't completely understand what's their motivation to delete their account, I try to make the most of it.
It doesn't stop the fact that it's incredibly disappointing tho, but there are still new artists out there that have only just started out and also artists who have yet to even begin starting out!
We'll just have to wait and see what the future holds I guess lol. XP
This is literally an issue I have with streaming platforms and digital libraries, entire works can be removed at corporate whim. Entire series and games can be wiped from existence or denied access to "just because." Imagine your favorite piece of media being taken down and erased from existence for forever just because the original lead director has "moved on to other things."
These things are important to people, and while it's entirely within their right as a simple fetish artist it's really not cool to just erase everything you've made and put out there for people to enjoy and become attached to. Yes it is their decision but the validity of that decision should be brought into question even if it has a minor affect on others. I feel dismissing this with "there are plenty of fish in the sea!" makes it sound like the things they drew and peoples attachments to them sound completely disposable and is an easy way to dismiss and ignore the actual legitimate issues that can be brought up and discussed, especially if one might possibly feel personally attacked by this viewpoint.
imagine if we got rid of the old star wars films or music or books for the dumbest of reasons.
this is why I hoard anything I genuinely like because someone can have a tantrum and pretend they never existed in the last 10 years in the span of 60 seconds, if someone tells me they dislike that I amass their artwork I will politely tell them off as ive had artwork ive liked just quietly poofed
Personally I've never deleted a single thing ive ever posted lol and I've also felt very sad before at an artist leaving the internet without any reason posted beyond "dont like this art anymore and i just want everything to disappear"
However, at the end of the day, an artist has full control of their work, and unless its a commission or something, should have the full ability to display/ remove their work on any platform anytime they please, for any reason they want (even if there is no reason at all). Of course people who knew their content are allowed to feel emotions about it after!! But I personally don't feel right to have any judgement on what others do with their art, at all.
Still, I think people should be able to remove their work whenever they want. It's still their work and they can do whatever they want with it, no matter how much other people like it. They might have a good (personal) reason for it.
plenty of lost media all down the bitrot blackhole.