#Get AI Platform Creator

[tmnt-obsessed-ace]

That feeling when you have to pretend to agree that the AI generated art of tmnt that your mother pulled up doesnt pook like absolute dogshit and its "so cool" even though who knows how many poor artists got their work stolen to feed the AI machine that your mother wants to use to make money and you feel your soul dying both as an artist and a tmnt lover and as an artist

[redlenai]

Man, Webtoon sucks.

How come they have this guideline

"Intellectual Property Rights: You must own all of the copyrights and other intellectual property rights to your uploads, and your User Postings must not infringe on the copyright, trademark, or publicity right of any other party, or you must have sufficient ownership or other intellectual property rights required to upload the User Postings consistent with these terms.

Yet when users, aka readers and creators alike see AI content, gacha, avatar generators (Picrew) and others being posted in Webtoon Canvas, its allowed?

Honestly it doesn't feel safe that anyone can just shove other creator's works into an AI generator, grab other people's works in general, especially when its obvious it is done without the consent nor permission of said original artists, and several of them don't even approve for its usage that way. Oh sure thing, they can't monetize from it but surely they can be within other creators, oh, they so much want artists and original content so they can later profit out of it if it matches with their brand and bring into new users on their platform but God forbid showing the least of decency to protect it from thiefs, plagiarists and more.

The more they fill Webtoon and other platforms with AI and other stolen, plagiarized or traced content (And even worse, developing their own engines with our data), the more artists will simply walk away. It is happening with Meta, everywhere they want to implement or allow AI, artists will complain, authors will complain, writers will complain. We are all complaining at the moment, and honestly, this makes me want to start telling my friends and other creators to leave Webtoon because they keep on adding to their list of constant direspect towards Creatives.

This issue happened with the Webtoon LATAM staff when I reported an AI generated series. I foound out about it because its "author" was sharing it in a facebook group, guess how that post was going? AWFULLY, every artist suggesting the person to switch to writing a Novel, hire an artist or draw the comic themselves, especially if they even want to see some kind of income for their so called "Great novel of 20 volumes that has been on the work for more than a decade"

[inkskinned]

i don't mean to sound ungrateful, but as a content creator on this site, there's a part of me that's like. they absolutely just stole my work.

i'm not, like, unaware that tumblr has been shuffling downhill for years now. sometimes i play with the idea of switching platforms, turning myself into the shark. i often get tens of thousands of notes - i could be "doing numbers" on a platform that actually pays me to do so. i could have statistics that i could use to sell myself, i could rebrand and make content pay-to-play and make brand deals. i could have the other life, i mean.

but i don't want to. i like the quiet nature of tumblr. i like that it still feels like i'm writing poetry, not like i'm fulfilling ad spots. i like the community, and that i can sometimes still take someone by surprise and write something that really speaks to them. i like the tags and reading things like oh of course it's fucking inkskinned i love you inkskinned you gay mess. my girlfriend recently told me that people tag things "inkskinned" because they assume it is similar to tagging "creative writing". that's wild. i made this word up when i was 19, and have always assumed people tag me in things so i read it (and i often do). i have nothing but love and gratitude for you all, for this tiny scoop of family.

and i haven't made any money off it. i had opportunities, and i turned them down. i could have sold this thing like a thousand times. i thought about moving my work elsewhere - over and over and over i thought about it. i weighed each option specifically. but my tumblr felt like ... it's for you guys, only. if you're still here and reading this, you deserve to do it for free.

tumblr has now, most likely, skimmed my work (and yours) in order to make money. i will never see a single cent for that violation. something about landlords, i guess - my work pays their rent.

i just lost my job on valentine's day, and am working on scrambling for solutions. i am writing this to a blog that they will probably scrape with AI. and like, what number to do you think it was? do you think it was only a couple hundred thousand? no way it was close to a million, right? my time, effort, energy - it belongs to someone else now. how many silver pieces for them to completely sell out their user base.

and it's kind of like - funny? when it isn't very-sad. because i personally don't know what to do, ya know? i might as well move to a different platform, where my efforts are ai-scraped but could eventually pay me. where i know my privacy is the cost - but it could result in actual money. anyway. i need to figure out how i'm paying for meds. i need to email like six people about COBRA benefits.

my work is powering someone else's AI. it will be a beautiful fabricated poem, made from words i've already said.

[getvalentined]

[source]

So, in spite of suing multiple other companies with the assertion that scraping user content for generative AI training is illegal, Long Rodent has decided that the dead bird is going to do the same thing! Natively! On-platform! To train his own new generative AI engine!

With this in mind, I cannot impress this vehemently enough:

If you are on Twitter as a creator of any kind, it's time to pack up your work and GET THE HELL OUT.

[art]

Creator Spotlight: @jdebbiel

Deb JJ Lee is a non-binary Korean artist based in Brooklyn, NY. They have appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times, NPR, Google, Radiolab, and more. Their award-winning graphic memoir, IN LIMBO, about mental illness and difficult relationships with trauma, released in March 2023 from First Second.

Below is our interview with Deb!

Have you ever had an art block? If so, how did you overcome it?

That implies I am over my art block, but I’m still in it! I think about Kiki’s Delivery Service a lot and how she had to stop doing a thing, and that you can’t really force it, and you have to let it come back to you. It’s a pretty humbling moment, realizing there is more to life than just drawing. I’ve been trying to consume other content like reading or watching movies—anything that is not drawing-related—and to trust that it will come back to me. I think not being afraid to do the small pieces before committing to the big pieces is helpful. Because big pieces are what I am known for, I dig myself into a deeper hole, thinking that each piece has to be bigger than the last one. So yeah! Relaxing and doing the small things before overcommitting to a big piece is the best way to go about it for me.

Which 3 famous artists (dead or alive) would you invite to your dinner party?

I feel like these are all artists that I have second-degree connections with! Jillian Tamaki, Victo Ngai, and Tillie Walden would be my picks!

What are your file name conventions?

…What file name conventions? I mean, I don’t have specific file name conventions, but I actually have a public Google Drive archive! But I usually put “djjl_whatever-the-title-is_final,” and I would always know it’s the final and legit version.

What is a recent creative project that you are proud of?

I did an illustration for the whiskey brand Johnnie Walker. It’s so wild because I only had four days to finish it, and it usually takes me a week and a half if I rush. And honestly, it’s probably one of my best pieces from this year, which is funny. It was for the Mid-Autumn festival, so I made it as Korean as possible.

How has technology changed the way you approach your work?

I only use my iPad to draw everything now, and if I want to pretend that I have a steady workstation, I’ll use my Cintiq. I still am not as comfortable on the Cintiq as I am on Procreate, but it’s still pretty solid and nice. That’s the good part about technology. The bad part about technology is how AI art has been messing things up for me. I’m currently in a lawsuit about AI art as a class rep. Some of my stuff got turned into AI art late last year, so I have to give a deposition at some point. 

What is a convention experience that has stuck with you?

Honestly, they’re all good! I feel like Lightbox Expo has been really nice because it’s truly been a convention for artists. I feel like that’s where most of my audience is, and they’re all around because their purpose is to be better at art. That’s where a lot of original artists do well because they’re getting art they’re inspired by, not so much fanart. I like the Lightbox Expo because it encompasses the pure love of art very well. 

Top tips on setting up an Artist Alley booth?

Use a Y axis, not just your X axis! Take advantage of it! Branding is also something to think about. It is definitely something I’m getting better at. Having an assistant is also very important. I’ve also heard that 8.5x11 to 12x18 inches is usually a good size for prints, but I also provide postcard-sized prints because sometimes people don’t want to commit to a larger size. 

Who on Tumblr inspires you and why?

You know this is so funny. I’ve been following @alicexz for over a decade on Tumblr and other platforms. I’ve followed her work since high school, and we’ve only recently become peers. I found her, and we met for the first time in real life, and she recognized me. And then I found all my drawings from when I was in my Alice phase, back in high school, and I was like, “Yo, this is when I was trying to be you so badly!” and she was cracking up and was like “Wow, this is so good!” It was such a sweet moment. I wanted to take a picture of her holding my drawing up. It’s really nice because now we’re peers.

Thank you so much for stopping by and sharing, Deb! Be sure to check out their Tumblr blog over at @jdebbiel.

[thebibliosphere]

I’ve talked about this with some friends, but the whole Spotify/audiobook drama legitimately makes me want to cry.

If you are unaware, earlier in the month, Spotify, who now owns FindawayVoices -- an audiobook distributor and one of the only major rivals to Audible on the creator end -- announced that their ToS would be updating.

The ToS updates were horrendous and basically allowed Spotify to make royalty-free translations of our works, as well as create derivatives, and basically just fuck us all over and feed all of our hard work into AI.

The backlash was so swift that less than 12 hours later, Spotify sent out a panicked “Sorry our wording wasn’t clear!” email with a promised update. Less than 24 hours later they issued a statement walking back the changes to the ToS, and have since been pulling a “we never said that, you misread our unclear verbiage” when in reality the verbiage was very clear (Not Spotify trying to pull a “gaslight gatekeep girl boss ✌️”), they just didn't expect to get dragged out into the metaphorical court of social media and get publicly annihilated with authors withdrawing their work from the platform and customers canceling their subscriptions left right and center.

Anyway, the walk back was acceptable enough for me to not feel the need to remove my work entirely from FindAway -- which is good because I would have lost access to the global audiobook market if I had, not to mention global library access. Which, again, is good. A significant chunk of my audiobook earnings comes from Libby, and I’d honestly be lost without that $20 every month. (we get paid quarterly but it breaks out to about $20 a month.)

What the walk back was not good enough for, was for me to trust them to keep streaming Hunger Pangs on their Spotify streaming service. Because quite frankly, I don't trust them not to pull some more ToS bullshit, and this is the part making me want to cry.

Why? Because I’m going through my royalty reports, and for the single month of December 2023 alone, Hunger Pangs was streamed so often it earned $400.

In one month.

That's more than I earn from Audible in a year.

That's more than I earn from kobo, b&n, libby, libro.fm and several author distributors combined in a year.

I’m going to scream.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Why Millennials aren’t leaving Tiktok

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW NIGHT (Mar 22) in TORONTO, then SUNDAY (Mar 24) with LAURA POITRAS in NYC, then Anaheim, and more!

The news that Gen Z users have abandoned Tiktok in such numbers that the median Tiktoker is a Millennial (or someone even older) prompted commentators to dunk on Tiktok as uncool by dint of having lost its youthful sheen:

https://www.garbageday.email/p/tiktok-millennials-turns

But "why are Gen Z kids leaving Tiktok?" is the wrong question. The right question is, why aren't Millennials leaving Tiktok? After all, we are living through the enshittocene, the great enshittening, in which every platform gets monotonically, irreversibly worse over time, and Tiktok is no exception:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

To understand why older users are stuck to Tiktok, we need to start with why younger users relentlessly seek out new platforms. To some extent, it's just down to youth's appetite for novelty, but that's only part of the story. To really understand why people come to – and leave – platforms, you have to understand switching costs.

"Switching costs" is the economists' term for everything you have to give up when you change products or services. Switching from Ios to Android probably means giving up a bunch of your apps and purchased media. Switching from an airline where you're a high-status frequent flier to another carrier means giving up on free checked bags and early boarding.

In an open market, rivals have lots of ways to lower these switching costs (it's an open secret that you can call an airline and say, "Hi, I'm a 33rd Order Mason on American Airlines, will you make me a Triple Platinum Diamond Sky-Baron if I switch to Delta?"). Of course, big incumbents hate this, and do everything they can to increase their switching costs, finding ways to impose high switching costs that punish disloyal consumers who have the temerity to go elsewhere.

With social media, lock-in comes for free, thanks to the "collective action problem." Getting people to agree on a given course of action is hard, and as you add more people to the picture, the problem gets harder. It's hard enough to get half a dozen people in your group-chat to agree on where to go for dinner or what board-game to play. But once you're reliant on a social media service to stay in touch with friends, relatives around the world, customers, communities (say, rare disease support groups), and coordination (like organizing your kid's little league car-pool), the problem becomes nearly insoluble. Maybe you can convince your overseas relatives to switch to a Signal group, but can you do the same for your small business's customers, or your old high-school pals?

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/29/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms/

Taken together, switching costs and collective action problems make platforms "sticky," and sticky platforms inevitably enshittify.

Platforms, after all, generate value. They connect end-users with each other (say, little league parents) and they connect end-users to business customers (you and your small business's customers). That value needs to be parceled out among end users, business customers, and the platform's shareholders. A platform can make life better for business customers at its end users' expense by increasing the number of ads (hello, Youtube!), and it can make life better for its shareholders at its business customers' expense by decreasing the share of ad revenue given to publishers or performers (oh, hello again, Youtube!).

From a platform's perspective, the ideal state is one in which end users and business customers get no value from the platform, because it's all being captured by the platform's shareholders. But if Youtube interrupted every 30 seconds of video for ten minutes of ads and paid the video creators nothing, both users and creators would ditch the platform – and advertisers would follow:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dab8sKg8Ko8

So platforms seek an equilibrium: "what is the least value we apportion to end-users and business customers without triggering their departure?" Maybe that means giving more value to end-users (for example, keeping Uber fares low by suppressing wages), or to business-customers (crowding more ads into your social media feed).

Every business – including brick-and-mortar, non-digitized ones – wants to find some kind of equilibrium between the value going to its suppliers, its customers and its owners, but digital businesses have an advantage here: digital systems are flexible in ways that analog, hard-goods businesses are not. Digital businesses can alter pricing, payouts and other dynamics from moment to moment – second to second – and make a different offer to every supplier and customer. They have a bunch of knobs, and they can twiddle them at will:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Well, not quite at will. Businesses face constraints on their twiddling. If they get too greedy, users or business customers might weigh the cost of staying against the switching costs and decide it's not worth it. But the more expensive – the more painful – a platform can make leaving, the more pain they can inflict on the people who stay.

In other words, there's two ways to keep a customer or supplier's business: you can make a better service so they won't want to leave, or you can make leaving the service so painful that they stay even if you mistreat them.

There's three ways a digital company can make things worse for their customers and users without losing their business.

First, they can eliminate competition (think of Mark Zuckerberg buying Instagram to recapture the users who'd fled Facebook to escape his poor management):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

Second, they can capture their regulators and avoid punishment for trampling their suppliers' or users' legal rights (think of how Amazon has raised the price of everything we buy, both on- and off Amazon, through its "most favored nation" deals):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

Third, they can use IP law to prevent competitors from modifying their services to claw back some of that value (think of how Apple used legal threats to block an Android version of Imessage, blocking Apple customers from having private conversations that included non-Apple customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

Companies can't just use this tricks at will, of course. Antitrust laws can block companies from making anticompetitve acquisitions or mergers. Regulators can punish companies for cheating their customers, workers and users. Technologists can come up with clever ways of modding or reconfiguring existing services with "interoperable" add-ons that let users bargain for better treatment by refusing to accept worse:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

Day in, day out, the decision-makers at tech companies test these constraints, twisting the knobs that shift value away from users to shareholders. Their bosses and boards motivate them with "KPIs" that dangle the promise of huge bonuses and promotions for any manager who successfully enshittifies part of the company's products:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

Decades of pro-corporate, pro-monopoly policy has loosened those knobs. 40 years of lax antitrust meant that companies had a lot of leeway to buy or merge with rivals – that's changing today, but it's tough sledding:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

As sectors grew more concentrated, they found it easier to capture their regulators, so that they no longer fear punishment for price-gouging, spying, or wage-theft, so applying the same amount of torque to the "break the law" knob cranks it a lot further:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

Once you've captured your regulators, you can aim them at your competitors. A monopoly-friendly policy environment has transformed IP law into a bully's charter, allowing powerful companies to strangle would-be competitors who dare to offer their customers tools to shield themselves from enshittification, like scrapers, ad-blockers and alternative clients. Big companies can crank the enshittification knob all the way over and know that smaller rivals knobs won't turn at all:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/20/benevolent-dictators/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

At one point, bosses faced one more constraint on knob-twiddling: their workforce. Many tech workers genuinely cared about their users' welfare, something bosses encouraged as a sneaky trick to get techies to put in long hours without exercising their leverage by quitting rather than destroying their lives to meet arbitrary deadlines. These workers would fearlessly slap their bosses' hands when they reached for the enshittification knob, threatening to quit rather than allowing the products they'd given so much for to be enshittified. Today, after hundreds of thousands of tech layoffs, tech workers are far less like to challenge their bosses' right to twiddle, and far more likely to get fired if they try:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

All this means that tech bosses don't have to change their approach at all, and yet, their services will grow steadily worse. The boss who twiddles the enshittification knob in exactly the same way as he did a year or a decade ago will find it turning much further, because his customers are locked into his platform, his regulators won't protect them, the same regulators will stop his competitors' attempts at countertwiddling, and his workers fear losing their jobs too much to speak up for their users.

That's the contagion that produced the enshittocene: the forces that constrained companies (competition, regulation, self-help and labor – all melted away, allowing every company's MBA-poisoned knob-twiddling leaders to shamelessly caress their knobs with every hour that God sends:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

Which is why people want to leave platforms. When a platform loses its users, those users have weighed the switching costs against the pain of staying and decided that it's better to bear those costs than to stay.

So why have Tiktok's younger users found the costs too high to bear, and why have their elders remained stuck to the platform?

For that, we have to look at the unique characteristics of young people – characteristics that transcend the lazy cliche that kids are easily bored, fickle novelty-seekers who hop from one service to another with unquenchable restlessness.

Whether or not kids are novelty-seekers, they are, fundamentally, a disfavored minority. They want to do things that the platforms don't want them to do – like converse without being overheard by authority figures, including their parents and their schools (also: cops and future employers, though kids may not be thinking about them as much).

In other words, kids pay intrinsically lower switching costs than adults, because a platform will always do less for them than it will for grownups. This is a characteristic kids share with other supposedly technophilic, novelty-seeking "early adopters," from sex-workers to terrorists, from sexual minorities to trolls, from political dissidents to fascists. For those groups, the cost of mastering a new technology and assembling a community around it is always more likely to be worth bearing than it would be for people who are well-served by existing tools:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/21/early-adopters/#sex-tech

Pornographers didn't jump on home video because of its superiority as a medium for capturing flesh-tones. Home video was a good porn medium because it was easier to discreetly get into the hands of porn consumers, who could, in turn, discreetly view it. The audience for porn in the privacy of your living room is larger than the audience for porn that you can only watch if you're willing to be seen marching into a dirty movie theater.

Every new technology is popularized by a mix of disfavored groups and neophiles, who normalize and refine it – and yes, infuse it with their countercultural coolth – until it becomes easy enough to use to become mainstream. As more normies drift into the new system, the switching costs associated with leaving the old system declines. It gets easier and easier to find the people and services you want in the new realm, and harder and harder to find them in the old one.

This is why tech platforms have historically experienced sudden collapse: the platform that gets more valuable and harder to leave as it accumulates users gets less valuable and easier to leave as users depart:

https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2022/12/05/what-if-failure-is-the-plan.html

If you're a Gen Z kid on Tiktok, you experience the same enshittification as your Millennial elders. But you also experience an additional cost to staying: as late-arriving adult authority figures become more fluent in the platform, they are more able to observe your use of it, and punish you for conduct that you used to get away with.

And if you're a Millennial who isn't leaving Tiktok, it's not just that you experience the same enshittification as those departing Gen Z kids – you also face higher switching costs if you go. The older you get, the more complex your social connections grow. A Gen Z kid in middle school doesn't have to worry about losing touch with their high-school buddies if they switch platforms (they haven't gone to high school yet – and they see their middle school friends in person all the time, giving them a side-channel to share information about who's leaving Tiktok and where they're headed to next). Middle-schoolers don't have to worry about coordinating little league car-pools or losing access to a rare disease support group.

In other words: younger people leave old platforms earlier because they have more to gain by leaving; and older people leave old platforms later because they have more to lose by leaving.

This is why Facebook is filled with Boomers. Yes, their kids bolted for the exits to avoid having their parents (or grandparents) wading into their sexual, social and professional lives. But the reason the Boomers were late joining younger users' Facebook exodus – or the reason they never joined it – is that they stand to lose more by going. Facebook deliberately cultivated this dynamic, for example, by creating a photo hosting service designed to entice users into uploading their family photos while disguising how hard it would be to take those photos with them if they left:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

The irony here is that tech has intrinsically low switching costs. All other things being equal, a new platform can always build a bridge to ease the passage of users from the old one. There's no (technical) reason that moving to Mastodon, or Bluesky, or any other platform should mean cutting ties with the people who stayed behind.

A combination of voluntary interoperability (where old platforms offer APIs to allow new services to connect with them), mandatory interop (where governments force tech companies to offer APIs) and adversarial interop (where new companies hack together their own API with reverse-engineering, scraping, bots, and other guerrilla tactics) would hypothetically allow users to hop between networks as easily as you change phone carriers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/19/better-failure/#let-my-tweeters-go

Tech platforms tend to offer APIs when they're getting started (to ease the inward passage of new users) then shut them down after they attain dominance (locking the door behind those users). The EU is tinkering with mandatory APIs through the Digital Markets Act (though bafflingly, they're starting with encrypted messaging rather than social media). Restoring adversarial interoperability will require extensive legal reform, which is getting started through Right to Repair laws:

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/13/oregon-passes-right-to-repair-law-apple-lobbied-to-kill/

The people who are stranded on social media platforms shouldn't be mistaken for uncool, aging technophobes. They're not stubborn, they're stranded. Like the elders who can't afford to leave a dying town after the factory shuts down and the young people move away, these people are locked in. They need help evacuating – a place to go and a path to get there.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/21/involuntary-die-hards/#evacuate-the-platformsr

[pillowfort-social]

Things we won't ever do (including, but not limited to):

- Sell user data to third party advertisers. - Sell user data to be data mined for AI.

Things we will do:

- Listen to our users and take measures against Generative AI. - Build the best platform for our users we can with the limited funds we have.

Why? Because our community is worth it to us. We have to do what we can to try to protect our community from the alarming acceptance of Generative AI stealing from artists, authors, and creators. Even if that means it hurts our funding (and don't get us wrong: we still really need funded to continue to exist) in the long run. We are very aware Pillowfort's existence is an uphill battle.

But you are worth fighting for.

[emeryleewho]

If you're worried about the enshittification of the internet completely killing your access to work by your favorite creatives (I've already seen a lot of artists I love state they'll be leaving Tumblr thanks to all the AI training), I want to introduce you to a handful of ways to circumvent the social media hellscape to stay connected to your favorite creators.

RSS Feeds

I'd argue that this is the best option. It essentially allows you to create your own social media "dashboard" by saving websites and getting updates when they post new content. Most websites already have these, and if social media goes down (or just continues to degrade), the best way you can access your favorite creators will be with direct connection to their personal websites. I'm still learning how to use these, but if you want to learn more, this article does a great job.

2. Newsletters

I know newsletters are a pain and it's annoying to have your inbox cluttered, but if there are creators you know you'd be remiss to lose access to, I recommend subscribing to their newsletters. I'd honestly skip the ones that share frequent content you don't need, but for example, my newsletter is updates only so I only send it out maybe every few months when something big happens. It's an easy way to stay up to date on info that social media buries. Of course, if your faves are writing up blog posts & insights that you want to read in newsletter form, consider subscribing to those as well, and don't feel like you have to subscribe to *every* newsletter to make it worthwhile. You just want to make sure you can still be reached by the creators whose work you really don't want to miss.

3. Ko-Fi/Patreon

I don't think a lot of people realize you can follow people on these platforms for free, but because they have paid options, they offer more direct access than social media sites whose algorithms will just erase people you love from your feed altogether. This one isn't the best alternate since a lot of content may be behind a paywall, but if you just want an easy way to be sure you'll still have access to updates from people you want to support, this is a usable way to compile creators in one place and most creators will post updates for free so you should still get those.

So yeah, these are my suggestions. If you're just on social media casually and you just like the easy access to content but don't particularly care about individual creators or specific projects or anything like that then you probably don't need any of this and that's fine. If social media is continuing to work for you then feel free to continue enjoying it without worrying about alternatives. I just want people to have a fail safe if you, like me, are realizing that this shit is getting completely out of hand and everything you once wanted social media for is quickly becoming inaccessible.

Anyway, I highly recommend tuning in to people's personal websites, but I doubt most people have the energy to check each individual website so RSS Feeds are great alternative. Whatever you choose to do, just try to diversify enough that no one company can completely kill your access to your faves on a whim and remember that the closer to direct communication you can get to with creatives the better.

[genericpuff]

All the cool kids use ComicFury 😘

Hey y'all! If you love independent comic sites and have a few extra dollars in your pocket, please consider supporting ComicFury, the owner Kyo has been running it for nearly twenty years and it's one of the only comic hosting platforms left that's entirely independent and reminiscent of the 'old school' days that I know y'all feel nostalgic over.

(kyo's sense of humor is truly unmatched lmao)

Here are some of the other great features it offers:

Message board forums! It's a gift from the mid-2000's era gods!

Entirely free-to-use HTML and CSS editing! You can use the provided templates, or go wild and customize the site entirely to your liking! There's also a built-in site editor for people like me who want more control over their site design but don't have the patience to learn HTML/CSS ;0

In-depth site analytics that allow you to track and moderate comments, monitor your comic's performance per week, and let you see how many visitors you get. You can also set up Google Analytics on your site if you want that extra touch of data, without any bullshit from the platform. Shit, the site doesn't come with ads, but you can run ads on your site. The site owners don't ask questions, they don't take a cut. Pair your site with ComicAd and you'll be as cool as a crocodile alligator !

RSS feeds! They're like Youtube subscriptions for millennials and Gen X'ers!

NSFW comics are allowed, let the "female presenting nipples" run free! (just tag and content rate them properly!)

Tagging. Tagging. Remember that? The basic feature that every comic site has except for the alleged "#1 webcomic site"? The independent comic site that still looks the same as it did 10 years ago has that. Which you'd assume isn't that big a deal, but isn't it weird that Webtoons doesn't?

Blog posts. 'Nuff said.

AI-made comics are strictly prohibited. This also means you don't have to worry about the site owners sneaking in AI comics or installing AI scrapers (cough cough)

Did I mention that the hosting includes actual hosting? Meaning for only the cost of the domain you can change your URL to whatever site name you want. No extra cost for hosting because it's just a URL redirect. No stupid "pro plan" or "gold tier" subscription necessary, every feature of the site is free to use for all. If this were a sponsored Pornhub ad, this is the part where I'd say "no credit card, no bullshit".

Don't believe me? Alright, look at my creator backend (feat stats on my old ass 2014 comic, I ain't got anything to hide LOL)

TRANSCRIPTS! CHAPTER ORGANIZATION! MASS PAGE UPLOADING! MULTIPLE CREATOR SUPPORT! FULL HTML AND CSS SUPPORT! SIMPLIFIED EDITORS! ACTUAL STATISTICS THAT GIVE YOU WEEKLY BREAKDOWNS! THE POWER OF CHOICE!!

So yeah! You have zero reasons to not use and support ComicFury! It being "smaller" than Webtoons shouldn't stop you! Regain your independence, support smaller platforms, and maybe you'll even find that 'tight-knit community' that we all miss from the days of old! They're out there, you just gotta be willing to use them! ( ´ ∀ `)ノ～ ♡

[winchester-reload]

Directions: Fill each prompt ON or After each day listed (the 1st-15th of October, then again on the 31st for our bonus day), then post it on your desired social media platform using tag #suptober23. Be sure to include which prompt you're fulfilling in each post. You can write, you can make art. You can do both! You decide. Rules: All posts must be Supernatural-themed. Like, comment, and reblog others' posts. No hate will be tolerated, including actor hate. NO AI. Do not throw a photo in a Photoshop filter and post it as art. Challenge yourself to create. Noncon, incest, and hate will not be reblogged.

To include your work in the Suptober 2023 archive, you must ALSO post it to the collection in Ao3!

In previous years, I've worked diligently to reblog each and every post listed in the tag to include in an archive on tumblr. However, more than a few things have changed in the past six years, including my earlier creeping bedtime. This year, I'd like to move the archive to Ao3 for something more inclusive. That means this year, it's up to you to get your work in there! Authors: be sure to use tags so your stories are searchable! * Artists: mind ao3's rules for images. You may choose to include a clickable link instead of the art itself.

Posting starts October 1st, 2023.

Special thank you to my friends over on Patreon for their help with this year's list! Truly without them, this would not be happening. Consider joining to help support more events like this! For a text copy of the prompts go here! Join the Discord

FAQ's

Why aren't there 31 prompts this year? Because I'm changing it up to something a little less overwhelming for you and me. Fill all the days, and if you're still hungry for more, send me a message and let me know it wasn't enough so I can take that into account for next year!

I posted my work and you haven't reblogged it. What did I do wrong? Probably nothing. I may have just missed it, which will happen. The good news is, it's up to you to include your work in an archive this year, so be sure to do that! Also be sure to tag it correctly using #suptober23, and the day you're fulfilling.

I'm really busy in October, can I post it later? Yes! The collection won't close.

I can't write or draw, is there another way I can participate? Yes, you can support all the creators by liking, commenting, and reblogging their work. It's just as important as the things being posted. Also, I bet you'll soon realize you absolute can make art and write too! There's no skill level required to have fun.

How long do the stories need to be? There's no word length just be sure to make a good effort, and challenge yourself.

Can I include multiple days in one fic? Sure, but don't post early, and be sure to tag for each day both here on tumblr (if you're posting to tumblr) and on Ao3. In the past, people have used each prompt as a new chapter, and that works great for a cohesive project!

Can I repost the prompt list with my posts? Yep. Go ham. Use at will.

More questions for me? Send me an ask!

[erika-xero]

A small guide to commissioning artists: how to avoid getting scammed by people who use image generators

Because “Ai-art” is not art and everyone can use image generators for free.

Disclaimer! This post will include generated images which were originally uploaded on DeviantArt and Twitter by people who generated them. Some of these images are of erotic genre but censored out. I beg you, do not bully these people. This post wasn’t written to call anyone out, it was written to help human artists and their potential commissioners. While some of the “Ai-artists” out there may be real scammers, others are not, and I strongly believe that no one should be bullied, doxxed, stalked and no one deserve any threaths over some silly ai-generated pics. And - as always! - scroll down for the short summary.

Commissioning an artist in 2023 may be scary, especially if you are not experienced in working with artists and have a hard time to distinguish artworks from images generated by neural networks. But even now, with the tech evolving and with neural networks generating pics with multiple characters and fan art, there are still quite a few ways to avoid scammers.

The creator you are going to commission must have an established gallery

This doesn’t mean that you should not commission someone who is new to platform, someone who started drawing in 2022 or later or someone who didn’t upload their work online prior. Image generators actually forced some of the artists to remove their work from social networks. In addition, image generators can generate thousands of images within hours, which means that the scammers may have quite a lot of works uploaded. What I mean is that real artists grow. Their skills gets better over time – even if they are already established artists with huge experience. Their artistic approach constantly changes and evolve. It means that if there are hundreds of images in the artist’s gallery but their skill is always the same level and their artistic approach doesn’t change over time – this definitely might be a red flag. As an artist with a tendency to nuke my galleries on certain platforms (such as DeviantArt, VK and ArtStation), if I get asked to provide my commissioners with examples of my early artworks I will do it with no hesitation. 

You need to look through the artist’s gallery and analize their work

Searching for some decent examples on DeviantArt I stumbled upon a gallery which is four weeks old but already has 660+ deviations all of which look the same way in the matter of skill and artistic approach. While stylization may vary from image to image (some of the artworks look like typical anime-styled CG artworks from visual novels and others have semirealistic proportions), the coloring, the “brush” imitation, the textures on the backgrounds are absolutely the same on every image I analized.

There are a lot of images depictinioning conventionally attractive white or sometimes asian girls in this gallery, some of which seem familiar or resemble the characters from various media. Yes, image generators can now generate fan art. But what they can not generate is diversity. There are of course living artists who tend to draw only conventionally attractive white or asian people too, but now when the image generators gain popularity this lack of diversity automatically raise my suspicions. Drawing a crooked nose or dark skin is not hard and living artists who use references rarely fail at it. It’s image generators who fails this task constantly.

Here is an image titled as a commission. The person who uploaded it also have some content under the paywall and I do not see their images being tagged as Ai-generated too.

Remember the golder rule: spotting an Ai-generated image is the same as spotting the evil faerie in a dark folklore tale. Look them in the eyes. Count  their teeth. Look at their hands and count their fingers. Check if they have a shadow and if that shadow is of human form.The devil is in the details.

While this image may appear like a hand-painted artwork of the conventionally attractive girl at the first sight, however it has quite a few clues that may help you to realize that this artist is a scammer and his entire gallery is just a selection of most-decent looking images they managed to generate with neural network. This elven girl is insanely tall, and the shore behind her back, the stones, the grass and the trees are insanely small compared to her. The piece of jewellry is attached to her nips and it’s design makes no sense. What is the gold chain under her breast, which doesn’t seem to be attached to anything? Where does this piece of cloth hang from? Why does her head cast a triangular shadow on her arm?

Many details are easy to be spotted when an image is in high resolution. I do not recommend artists to post their works in high resolution online to avoid feeding the Ai-monster and also to avoid people using your works to produce pirated merch if they draw fan art. Yet in my opinion posting close-ups might become essential - because people who call themselves ai-artists are usually hiding the artifacts under filters and upload their image resized. So yes: avoid commissioning artists, who never post high resolution faces or overuse filters and blur. Because analizing the characters’ faces is now essential.

You may look at this picture and think: how is this possible for a neural network to create such a detailed image and not fail at it (if you also ignore the fact that the girl on the horse doesn’t have legs). Luckily, the person who uploaded it uploaded it in high resolution, so we can zoom in and... yeah.

The artifacts on these evil faeiries’ faces (especially eyes) and their hands speak for themselves.

Image generators have a tendency to either give characters extra fingers, phalanx or nails or hide the hands completely, if the person writing a prompt decide to to so. I do not know whether and how fast will the algorythm learn to generate normal human hands, but for now you should pay attention to these details to spot a generated image.

Like this randomly nakey fellow with two palms on a single wrist and with some extra fingers on their elbow...

...Or this Asuka Langley fan “art” I had to censor out, with her fingers twisted and crooked.

If you are up to commission an artwork and are in search of an artist who will actually do the job you absolutely must pay attention to small details on their works: the clothing, the jewellry, the tattoos, the anatomy.

While Ai-generated images may appear photorealistic at first sight, the neural network usually misses small details, creates artifacts and makes mistakes if there are too many similar objects or repetative patterns. For example, the infamous MidJourney Party Selfies depicting girls with roughly fifly teeth, extra collarbones and green watercolor spots instead of tattooes (and don’t forget to check the ginger lady’s hand). The hair dissolwing in fabric folds? Image generator. The clothing designs which makes no sence? Image generator. Jewellry dissolwing into character’s hair? Image generator. Moreover the image generators also make mistakes while generating interiors and architecture, since the algorythm is not aware of perspective and space and once again fails either at perspective and object size or with repetative objects and patterns. 

Like this image here: the bed, the window, the picture on the wall. The perspective on this image makes absolutely no sense: two walls and the bed all exist in different dimentions, while the character is once again of enormous height.

If you try to analize the background on this one, I swear, you can go insane. Look at the window and then look on the corner above it. 

There is also another red flag which makes it easy to spot a scammer: dozens of iterations of the same image, which usually happens with people who can’t choose the best image out of the bunch generated with the single prompt.

There are, of course, artists who do series of works, and sometimes these works may have similar ideas and themes, but they hardly ever look this similar to each other: they may differ in angles, poses, character designs and even the artistic approach (lineart, brushes, rendering and etc). The posting time is also important: drawing an actual artwork requires time and effort - for example, I need at least two weeks to finish an artwork with two or three characters and detailed background. So a bunch of ten similar images that are uploaded at the same time it is definitely a red flag. The ai-generated images have a lot of problems with anatomy, details, perspective and other basics human artists have to learn long before they become professionals. All while having glossy semi-realistic render which can only be achieved with years of practice. I’m not saying that there are no living human artists, who may make mistakes (everyone makes mistakes now and then, even the professionals who works in this industry for DECADES) or who choose not to give much thoughts to backgrounds while focusing on characters and rendering (it is okay too), but the combinations of various red flags listed above is something you definitely have to take in account while deciding whether or not you are going to commission an artwork from this creator.

Another example (this person openly admits that they use the images generators for funsies and I did not find him mentioning paywall anywhere). The image generator even imitated the watermark.

Red flags you may spot while working with the chosen artist

Image generators are tricky: they can generate multiple iterations of the same image, imitate WIPs and many more.

First of all, the artist should provide you with WIPs on every stage of work, not when the work is already done. We artists, do it for a reason. We need your feedback constantly, even if you grant us artistic freedom to chose the idea, the character pose, the medium and technique. There are always changes to be made, and we need to make them at proper stage: for example, change the pose or angle of your character while working on a sketch is thousand times easier than to do so while rendering the image. However, the minor changes are usually possible on the later stages (some of artists may require you to pay a small fee of a few bucks, others may not). While the living artists can easily change small details such as the character’s eye color (or other small design changes) not touching the rest of the artwork, image generators simply can not do so not rerendering the whole image. If an artist does not provide you with WIPs or only provide you with them when the work is done, if an artist refuses to make any changes  -  these may be interpreted as red flags. If an artist agrees to make any change, even the drastic ones, at a late stage, when the piece is almost finished - it is a red flag too. Ask for a small change every single time you need one. I know that there are artists out there who prefer to only provide their client with the finished image once it is done, but now when image generators gain populatiry his may be misinterpreted as if you are a scammer.

Here is a good example of image generators generating WIPs for an existing image: it might actually look scary both for many artists and many commissioners.

I know that some of the artists are panicking that the only way to prove that you really did the artwork is a timelapse recording but this method is not for everyone. Not everyone has a setup which allow them to record a timelapse for an every single commission (my laptop will simply explode if I try). Ask your artists which software/setup do they use, ask them whether or not they can provide you with a timelapse video, ask them which brushes do they use. I know that not everyone like sharing info on their pipeline but at this point it is essential to provide your clients with information on the information about your pipeline, tools and software. For example, if your artist works in Procreate (which is available in Ipad) they have all the timelapses recorded automatically. But please, mind that not everyone have such a privilege.

As a commissioner you can ask an artist for screenshots of their workspace with all the interface visible. If they refuse providing you with that or have a hard time answering the questions about the software they use it might be a red flag. I would also suggest you not to force your artist to draw everything on stream, especially if these streams are public, because there are already cases when people took screenshots of the work in progress, used the image to image generator to apply the shiny rendering to it and accused the original artists of plagiarism. It is a risk for artists and it is okay to refuse such a request. You can also ask an artist for .PSD file of the commission, but the artist have a right to refuse sharing it online for copyright-related reasons. The original .PSD file is a best proof of authorship in court for residents of many countries. Artists can still provide you with the resized .psd file with some of the layers merged or with the background/character png with transparent background without putting themselves at risk. Of course there are artists who draw on the single layer - but without a timelapse recorded this may indeed seem suspicious that the artist does not have a .psd file with layers at all. Always ask your artist to provide you with high resolution image when the commission is finished and fully paid for. There are artists who works on smaller canvases, but working on the canvas smaller than 1000px wide might be interpreted as a red flag, since it is easy to hide artifacts on a resized image. I myself prefer working on larger canvases, from 6000 pixels wide to 10000 pixels wide (300 DPI) because I had an experience with printing my images out to sell them at conventions. While I do not sell commissioned works as prints I still give my commissioners a right to print the finished images out for non-commercial purposes. Thus, I always make sure that it is possible to make a wall print of a decent size out of the finished product. Avoid working with platforms which do not support refunds. It must either be a payment system which support sending invoices or an established platform known and used among the art community (patreon, buymeacofee, boosty, Paypal and etc.). Most artists do not do refunds for finished works — which is absolutely a right thing to do - but sometimes an error might occure. I know people who accidentally paid for their commissions twice and the artists still had to do a refund. Yes, you must respect the artists Terms of Service, but ithas nothing to do with unrelyable platforms used to scam people.

To sum it up

Search for an artists with established galleries,which has a believable amount of works and the visible artistic progress/evolution;

Analyze the artist's gallery, carefully inspecting their work for anything that might be interpreted as a red flag. Excessive fingers, crooked hands, broken perspective, clothing designs and jewellry that makes no sense, extra collarbones, lack of diversity, excessive teeth, artifacts in the eye area, interior and architecture elements which makes no sense — all while the images being glossy, fully rendered as if the artist have decades of experience;

Avoid people with too many iterations of the same image in their profile;

Avoid people with too many images being uploaded at the same time (it is okay to upload a bunch of prevoulosly done artworks when you start running your account, but uploading hundrends of images every week for a long period of time is really suspicious);

Ask for constant WIPs. Give feedback at a proper time. See the reaction;

Ask for a small change when the image is almost finished: it is impossible for the image generator to do so without fully rerendering the image, at least for now;

Ask your artist which software and assets do they use;

Ask (if it is possible) for a timelapse recording — either if the commissioned work or at least of one of their previous works (if they had an opportunity to record it before);

Ask your artist for in program screenshots with visible interface and history (if possible);

Ask your artist to show you the layers of the artwork — at least character/background only layers (mind that the background might be less detailed/wonky at the places which usually are hide but the character's figure). Ask for a resized .psd with some of the layers merged or a gif animation of each layer being added on top — this is what I usually do;

Ask for high resolution file of the commissioned image once you paid for it and it is finished. If the artist doesn’t have it and claim to work on the canvas smaller than 1000 px wide and/or claim that they intentionally delete the original file somehow - this may raise suspicions. Of course a person can delete the file accidentally or have their hard drive crushed, but if you have already spotted some red flags while working with this artist it might be a sign of a person trying to scam you too;

Many of the stuff listed above might be interpreted as a red flag , but I strongly advice you not to judge anyone by one or two points from this post. For example, a person can draw on one layer and mess up the perspective on a drawing entirely! However, if you've played a bingo and suddenly won — you have most likely encountered a person who try to fool and scam you;

Avoid working with suspicious payment methods. If you never heard about  a platform before — google it and see whether or not other established artists use it. If not - it might be a scam;

And remember! People may use the images generators for various reasons: for fun, to create references of their characters to later commission reall artists artworks with said character (for example, the art breeder is a useful tool to create arealistic image of the character, even though I find it slightly limiting). Yes, image generators are unethical and trained on copyrighted data, but a person using it may not be aware of this problem. Not every single person who call themselves an “Ai-artist” has malicious plans to scam people or to gain wealth using their funny little tool. Sometimes they do it for fun and do not pretend that it is anything more that a game. Thank you for reading this far and good luck with your commissions!

Have a picture of an absolutely normal and realistic woman, generated by the neural network!

[robsheridan]

One year ago, my "Meat Gala" AI body horror fashion series, imagining demons from Hell attending the MET Gala, went wildly viral on social media (here's a Buzzfeed article/interview with me about it)

My subversion of the event's elite glamour with nightmarish gore that commented on the grotesque opulence of the 1% really resonated with people, and as the first AI horror art to go viral in this way it was the first exposure many people had to the dark side of what was possible with AI imaging. It also led a lot of very angry Christians who inexplicably thought it was real (enjoy the comments here and here), and it also led to terms like "body horror," "flesh," and even "Cronenberg" getting banned from MidJourney (I didn't even use the term "Cronenberg" in my prompts), sealing the work in a liminal space in AI art history, unable to be recreated or continued. Of course it didn't slow down my AI horror journey, and the spirit of this work - both visually and in out-of-control viral impact - continued this year with my Valentine of the Flesh body horror fashion series.

This series is also special for me because of the subsequent conversations I had with MidJourney's DavidH in which I argued against their censorship of horror art, and he revealed a depressingly vanilla view of "art" and "beauty" that he sought to curate with his platform. What I had discovered, first with VIIR and then with The Meat Gala, was that the algorithmic opinion towards artistic beauty which made MidJourney at the time leagues ahead of previous AI art tech, could be subverted to make stunning and wholly unique horror art. The elegant way those early versions of the software blended elements together like surrealist paintings was meant to ensure that any prompt result gave you something that looked like beautiful art, but what I found is that if you pointed it in the right direction, it would do the same thing with blood and flesh and bones and tentacles, to spectacular uncanny horror effect. In the case of The Meat Gala, the effect was even more potent, as elements of demonic body horror gore were twisted through lenses of beauty, glamour, and opulence. To me, I was making beautiful surreal nightmares, and I was floored with the potential I saw and the ideas it gave me. But David and the other MidJourney creators saw nothing but a perversion of their software. They were, in fact, shocked by my Meat Galaseries and worried that its viral spread was giving the wrong public impression of MidJourney before it had even officially launched. They didn't know their software could make something like that, because they didn't have the type of minds that had ever even thought to try.

In that moment, when I genuinely surprised and upset the creators of the software, I was able to let go of the nagging feeling I had that "I didn't really make this, the software did" and feel true ownership over my AI work. After all, if the creators of the software didn't even know such art was possible, it went against everything they created the software for, and they rushed to try to prevent it from happening again, then I had truly made something unique to me as an artist, that would have never existed from anyone else. It was a new type of creation, but a very real and personal creation nonetheless.  As much of a bummer as it was to find out the creators of the coolest horror art tool I'd ever encountered actively hated horror art, I was empowered and inspired to see what else I could pull out of each new liminal phase of a rapidly-progressing technology.

The Meat Gala series also led to a very cool art collaboration, resulting in something new I'm very excited about that I'll be announcing Monday May 1st, the day of the 2023 MET Gala. Stay tuned!

[upsidedownsmore]

ENTRIES CLOSED, reblogs turned off, thank you everyone for entering and sharing your wonderful works!!

A compilation of every entry piece can be found here!

The winner is @mugbearerscorner and the information has been confirmed in DMs!!

Roll proof:

A link to the full spreadsheet of entries can be found here!

I'm so so grateful to all the people who participated in this event!! I'm so happy with how well it turned out and I'm so so thankful to be able to host it!!! Love you all!! :) :) :)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GAUSS PRIME ACCESS GIVEAWAY!

* Provided by Digital Extremes! Info about the prime access here.

To enter, simply reblog with your art of ANY warframe giving a thumbs up!

Giveaway entries will close on FEBRUARY 10TH at 10:00pm CST

The post for the above drawing (with reference screenshot and wips) can be found here.

MORE INFO UNDER THE READ LINE, PLEASE READ IT IF YOU WANT TO ENTER

Notes:

This is not a contest! The winner will be decided entirely randomly, image quality will have no effect on chances of winning! Make whatever you can in any medium you want! (This can also include 3D mediums! The only thing I'm not including is unedited game screenshots/captura, though edited might be okay). Everyone can draw regardless of how good you think your own skills are!

Please submit your own drawing(s)!! Only one is necessary but you can make more if you want of course! Do not use any AI generation tools for your entry.

When reblogging it might be a good idea to enter some text either in the post or in the tags! It turns out reblogs with just an image and nothing else might not show up under the original post, which means I might miss your submission!

Only one entry per person, you will not get more entries for additional reblogs and/or drawings.

The goal of this is for the community to have a fun little gallery of warframe thumb ups in the reblogs, but again don't stress over how "good" your drawing is! As long as you have fun and submit something vaguely in line with the prompt you're good! (such as a wave instead of a thumbs up or an operator instead of a warframe, etc. Up to you how closely you want to follow the prompt!)

You DO NOT need to engage with me in any other way (likes, follows, etc.) to enter, just a reblog with a drawing loosely following the prompt!

This giveaway will only run here on Tumblr due to issues with bots and impersonation on Twitter. The issue of course is that the only way to submit images under a single post on Tumblr is through reblogs, but please know that I do not intend this to be a means of promotion. If people could submit images in the replies I would gladly take that option! If this post gets taken down I will look into other giveaway options.

As this is my first giveaway as a Warframe creator please let me know if I've made any mistakes!

Here are some example drawings that would all work, but of course whatever you want to make shouldn't be limited to this!

Inspired by @ritens, I will be assigning one unique number per individual and then throwing them into the random number generator on random.org. After the entries close and I roll the winner, I will update this post with the winner's name and a message saying that the giveaway is closed. Reblogs will also be turned off once the giveaway is closed, as I am only using reblogs as means of congregating drawing submissions under one post during the giveaway period.

Whoever's number get's chosen will be contacted via DMs here on Tumblr, so please make sure your DMs are open! I will be asking for your Warframe IGN and platform so DE can give send over your prize! If you have cross-save linked or merged then please tell me, though I will also be asking in DMs as well. If the winner doesn't respond within 48 hours or no longer wants the prime access pack, then I will roll a new winner with the same method but with the previous winner(s) number(s) taken out of the pool.

Topmost drawing without giveaway text:

Anyways good luck and most importantly have fun!!

[growmygut]

100% real fat. No AI here! 🤤 Help me get fatter! All proceeds go to paying necessary bills and feeding the TANK 🐷

[toomanywatchers]

My Thoughts on WatcherTV

Hi, I am here to put away my meme-making skills to express my genuine thoughts on Watcher’s announcement; WatcherTV. Before I get into it, this is for any of those at Team Watcher who might be seeing this message: Just know we love and support everything you do for us. Y’all truly do not get the credit you rightfully deserve. I hope with this change to a separate streaming platform you guys can create the content you want to make, pull in creators that you’ve always wanted to work with, and share voices/topics that may have not had the chance to shine because of YouTube’s heinous algorithm. I know myself, and many others, are excited to see what WatcherTV brings. For instance, I already watched Road Files and the trailer for Travel Season on the new platform. And guess what? I love it! I just love BTS-centric shows and seeing the vibes established on Travel Season. Along with more Lizzie/possibly-more-sightings-of-other-Team-Watcher-peeps content?!? If this is what holds for the future of WatcherTV- oh boy, do you already have me more on board than I already was.

I also send my sincerest regards too. We all know that the internet can be a negative space with many sharing their uncensored thoughts, and I hope none of you take the hate to heart. I also hope you can take the weekend to breathe, drink some water, spend time with loved ones, and celebrate this huge step you all are embarking on. I am truly excited to see what is to come on WatcherTV will be there with each step to support.

Now to my fellow fans of Watcher. I understand the concern and it is okay to have concerns. It shows that you truly care for Watcher as a company and don’t want anything negative to come about with this decision. BUT on the other hand, spreading hateful messages? Not. Fucking. Cool. It is quite simple to express concern in an appropriate/respectful manner. Remember, this is a company full of living and breathing human beings. Trying to justify “who is to blame” and pointing fingers is just childish. Guess what? No one is to blame, it was a company-wide decision that they all made and spent months upon months to create.

Yes, it does suck to see content that was free for years be moved to a paywall, but remember they are independent artists that have to pay employees, freelancers, locations, and themselves! Have we not been advocating for fair pay among creative individuals when it comes to WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes and then AI art taking jobs away from artists? If this is what the company needs to do to survive while not sacrificing the high-quality content they make for us, then we should give it a shot! Plus with the current discount available, the subscription is not that pricey for the amount of shows they produce! Literally for January and a bit of February, they were uploading 2 podcasts and 2 separate shows… that’s a lot of content! If you have never sat down to produce, direct, write, perform, edit, and all other aspects it takes to make a fine-polished YouTube video, it takes a lot of work!

To add to this, Watcher already makes content that far expands past what is recognized as normal for YouTube. They build individual sets for each show that is produced, and they travel all over the place for Ghost Files and soon-to-be Travel Season. It costs money to produce content and YouTube?- It’s just not how it was years and years ago. Views on long-form content have been dipping and with the over-saturation of sponsorships, I am assuming they are not making enough profit to sustain the business on the current platform. Also, monetization on YouTube has been a killer for many channels because of vulgar language issues and just being demonetized for no rhyme or reason. By moving over to a streaming platform of their own they can continue to create what they want to create, and make it without any restrictions or rules holding them back. Too pricey? Find some friends who also like the content and split the pricing evenly. Only want to watch certain shows? Then make a monthly subscription for the time that show airs. There are many solutions that you guys see as a huge problem, and don’t get me wrong I have my concerns. I shared those concerns briefly in my theory post about them still being a young channel, but I’m also unaware of the actual analytics and revenue that is currently being brought in currently to the company from YouTube alone. 

It’s a huge step that has garnered negative feedback from those spreading hateful messages about the company and to other individuals for supporting the boys *cough cough I see your messages and comments cough cough* is truly uncalled for. I will be taking a bit of a break from my socials as I wait out the storm though if I have the energy, I might stream on Twitch again and talk through this with y’all if you can sit down and have a civil discussion. As for now, it’s your choice if you continue to support. My goal is to continue to make funny little memes, and if I am allowed to I will be working on a crack video pt.2 after Travel Season premieres. Remember to be kind and to put yourselves in their shows. Just the boys even though they are receiving the brunt of the hate, but for everyone at the company.

Your local memester watcherina - Fritz.