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Sorry I'm thinking about old webbed sites again, but I was just havin a conversation on Bluesky about how the way social media is set up to force artists to churn shit out so fast just to be seen that we don't even slow down enough to really look at what other people are making, and just...

I think the way deviantART was set up was way healthier. By DESIGN. What do I mean by this? Well, think about how things are now. Every major social media has a dashboard people scroll that is endless. That is the main way you encounter art, supposedly by people you follow. It depends honestly. On instagram that's a fuckin' rarity, but I digress.

You have a dashboard, and let's say you only have a little bit of time to look through it. When the time's up, you close the app or tab or what have you, and everything that you didn't see in your scroll now might as well be gone forever. You probably won't ever see it, unless the poster reblogs/reposts/bumps it in some way, during a different time of day when you're more likely to catch it. Algorithms that force constant posting for a boost are bad enough, but so is the fact that everything is missable.

Now take ol' deviantART. It's flooded with AI bullshit now, but BEFORE then, in the ancient times, it was a collection of galleries and real peoples' artwork with a functioning search. Let's say you find some artists you like, and follow them.

Instead of a dashboard to scroll, you could go into your watch list and BAM. There it was, a collection of EVERYTHING the artists you followed had posted since the last time you checked. All there for you to look at at your own leisure. The artist could post at whatever fuckin time they wanted, and they'd only have to post ONCE, and you could still have a chance to see it without having to go to their individual page.

If you wanted to find new artists, no problem! There was the front page with featured works, or recent works- there were sections people could post to based on type of art (traditional, digital, etc.) and if you liked any kind of fandom, you could search AND sort those searches by popular/recent! It required a little bit of agency to go look for other people in your niche, but it wasn't difficult by any means. And some of my best and longest lasting friendships were started on dA by me finding fanart I liked and commenting on it! Or by participating in community-ran events like OC tournaments!

Like, I know instant gratification is a tough thing to beat, but I think if we found some way to just slow back down a little, maybe communities could be a thing again... I dunno. Or maybe I'm just an old kook. Or maybe both! Who knows?

But yeah somethin' somethin' gallery sites are way healthier than twitter for artists.

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reblog this and put in the tags something you watched that terrified you as a child. i was so scared of the hot sauce in spongebob that i refused to be in the room when it was on

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okay now I'm curious and I dunno if this is really such an archaic foreign thing to young people today or if I'm just out of touch

Please reblog, I'd love to see a lot of responses!

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Animal Crossing: Wild World (Nintendo DS, 2005)

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Mario Party DS (2007)

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Obsessed with characters who portray themselves as worse than they are. Who are lying to everyone including themselves about it. People generally assume if someone's lying about themselves they're trying to look better but sometimes they're trying to look worse. They attribute agency to where they had none, add intent to accidents, try to convince everyone that this is something they did instead of something that happened to them.

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I once asked my dad about Doomguy's outfit, i.r.t. the cutout for his abs, and he said it was so the demons would know that a squishy mortal human was killing them

And I immediately thought of how female pirates supposedly undid their outfit to show their breasts while they fought people, so that their opponent would know they lost to/were killed by a woman

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made myself draw all organization xiii members since ive never done it before

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No shame in using the safeword (quitting a fic that doesnt do it)

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wait other post cancelled. mutuals. when r ur birthdays.

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what doesn't kill you makes you stay on tumblr for 13 years and counting

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yes, their close platonic relationship in canon is important to me specifically because it's both close and platonic

yes, I also ship them romantically, or as part of a romantic poly ship

I refuse to lock myself into a single interpretation of a fictional relationship when there's multiple interesting ways to view it. I can do both

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Man if you did that bullshit as a kid where you fake asked someone out to embarrass them or said your friend liked them I hope that shit haunts you somewhere inside now. I hope you know that never leaves the person you did that too. I've been out of school for 8 blessed fucking years and I still do not believe people when they say they like me or are attracted to me. Doing that shit straight up makes you a bad person. You completely destroy someone's ability to perceive themselves as loveable.

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