Bull Shxt: Not Quite a Thread/ More Like a Post.

[BIG OLAF]

What, most artists are terrible people who cares... @_@

Imagine tumblr but replace glorifying non-special things as if they're special with glorifying non-special art as if it's special.

Boy, are they. I never really noticed until a couple of days ago.

I mean, goddamn, most of them are just the circlejerkingest motherfuckers you've ever seen, drawing each other "gift art" and just slapping their dicks together and having a merry old time, and denouncing 'just some fans' and saying that they don't deserve "special treatment" (even though no one was asking for special treatment; they were just asking to be treated like humans with feelings, go figure).

Going on public tirades about how non-artists should just sit on the sidelines and let them have all the fun isn't exactly the behavior of someone I want to support, so I'm just dropping all of them, except maybe one or two who are actually really chill, reserved, and enjoy actually interacting with the people who made them popular.

Shit, I know that if I was a big-time fancypants art guy, I would make it a point to talk to each and every one of my supporters, not just ignore them as background noise to how fuckin' awesome I clearly am.

[NoiseHERO]

I remember a long time ago one of the artists on DeviantART befriended me on Skype just to try to tell me off about my artwork. She was like 12 from the UK....

I befriended a nice girl named Jini. We spoke a lot on Skype and it wasn't bad of an experience at all. But then shit happened and I gave up the DA life and cut all ties with everyone there. I wasn't making any progress towards trying to get people to commission me and God knows I needed the money.... But fuck that my style isn't what the people want.

I tried to make other friends on DA but they're not gonna notice just me amongst the thousands or hundreds of people leaving comments and messages. It's cool though. Cos lots of drama on that website....and once you become popular they wanna try to instantly seek out your weaknesses and exploit it to the world on Encyclopedia Dramatica. In other words they troll you until you snap. Is that even a thing anymore?? It really depends on the person....

I could probably go on for paragraphs and bodies and oceans of text on nepotism, dA being a horrible place, oversaturation of all artforms thanks to the power of technology and the internet making it harder to stand out and "why the fuck is my little pony popular."

But I'll run into too many things to branch off into and this is quick rant thread.


@ circle jerking/no X allowed clubs in general:

We'll never evolve past banding together to form a comfort zone of people who think the same as each other. Even people who hate it do it without realizing it, in some way shape or form, otherwise in the perfect world everyone would be friends with everyone for no reason. So there's no point getting completely butthurt about cliques and nepotism. But the smaller/less filled with emotionally unstable people they are, the better it is for people IN it and OUTSIDE of it. Especially when you level up the ability to hang around multiple different crowds instead of just one.

[Chrysheight]

Lol, I'm an artist. I think most of them are like that. To be honest, I create art for me, that's why most times I don't take commissions. If I like something, I'll make art of it, it's more for me anyway.

But yeah, they tend to be real pricks. Especially when it's their best work and they just aren't that good. Like I could go around being like "Oh hey, I made my signature, it's the best work in the world." No. I don't care. I like it. If no one else likes it, feel free to tell me what I could do to make it look better.

If you don't talk to the people that support you and think you're too good too, you should die in a fire. The people that support you are the reason you're able to think you're fucking awesome as an artist. Lose sight of that, you're shit and not worth the time.

But I agree with you guys. Most artists are terrible people and they should be ashamed of themselves.

[Ami]

erm yeah, so not feeling hella bad about my art production now .___.

Anyway, found out that the reason why I haven't been getting any mail to my new place in nearly a month is because IT WAS NEVER IN THEIR SYSTEM. WAT. I had the confirmation paper and the bank statement that they took the money out to do it and everything :C. But hopefully now that's settled.

And on the way back home, some chick decided to try and avoid a speed bump that would only take like 2-3 seconds of her time by going all the way over to my side of the street, nearly hitting the car I was in and going back into her side. And then have the balls to give that 'it's your fault" look. I'm staring at her wishing she gets pink eye or something.

I'm really am trying to be more spoken at my job, but it's so hard when you got two people who think they know everything and keep digging at each other during meetings to the point that no one else acknowledges I have something to say. It's like these two shouldn't even be in the same room because meetings get derailed so much .___."

[Outrider]

I'm struggling to figure out what's wrong with artists who group together and become friends. What's so weird about two people who like to draw or paint or compose music or whatever to become friends? What's so weird about a group of people who like to draw or paint or compose music or whatever to become friends?

Some of the comments here seem very much like: "I like your stuff, so you need to let me into your hangouts with your group of friends." Which is kind of crazy?

I mean, an elitist clique is bad, but a group of friends is cool. There's a difference there, and a lot of it comes down to how you treat people outside of the group.

If you're a creator of any kind of content and have a following, you gotta be friendly to your fans. But you don't have to be friends with all of them. Treat them with respect, be grateful for their support, but it's not like you owe them an invitation to your birthday party.

Here, as in most things, the best rule is to not be a dick.

Maybe that wasn't the intention of the past couple posts? I dunno, without specifics I'm having trouble parsing what the actual dick behavior is.

Probably the most important thing, though: if you're an artist, you shouldn't be telling other people to NOT create. (Well, even if you're not an artist, you shouldn't say that.) Even if somebody is doing a crappy job with their game or music or comic or whatever. Everybody starts out crappy! Everybody needs practice! If you're telling people they shouldn't be creating, they'll never get better!

Criticism should be constructive, not destructive, y'know?

[Sayara]

I think the issue Olaf is trying to bring it up is like...

Um
Lets say you me and Rock are all artists (wait we are) and all 3 of us are really close and do things withourselves exclusively without bringing in any one else's opinions or suggestions. Like the 3 of us are a giant wall that nobody can enter or even be acknowledged.

Basically


Im friends with alot of people whom are artists and often time we'll chat about stuff or they'll take stuff from me and inspire with it or vice versa. (See me and qox) or reblog their stuff if they post something particuarly cool. Or something. Again gotta be in the popluar shit for that kind of groupling situation

[CelestialBlade]

I'm not really an artist myself, but I think there's a lot of factors at work that aren't very well understood until you're in the situation. Sure, it's a dick move to blow off fans of your work and such, but you're certainly not obligated to be friends with them, and I think gift art between artist friends is a natural occurrence. Every hobbyist has a community, and you wouldn't expect, for example, someone who's never shot a gun before to expect to be included in the NRA.

I don't think some people handle fame all that well, too. I'd wager a lot of artists that become popular started out just making art for themselves and it caught on. Sharing work online doesn't necessarily mean you're looking for a following, you just want to share with the world something you're proud of. I don't feel like that obligates you to anything. But even if you're bad at handling fame, at no point is it okay to do things like blow off criticism, treat fans like trash, or act like you're the best ever. That behavior exists, but I personally haven't found it all that widespread.

But like most things, I don't think it's very fair to judge or draw conclusions about it without having been in their shoes. And it's extremely rare that an issue like this is strictly black-and-white. It's interesting to think about though, how people handle fame that never expected it.

[gigawuts]

Yeah, it's not that they're friends; it's that they're exclusionary. They seek out, and want to be sought out, only by other artists. Everyone else is just plain inferior.

For some, that's the only qualifier they care about. Not what kind of person they are, just that they're a good artist. Being an artist gets the person's foot in the door and everything else is secondary. Not being an artist keeps the door closed no matter what. They pad each other's egos and ignore anyone who can't (or won't) show off art as pretty as theirs.

When people do this for anything other than being an artist it tends to be referred to as bigotry.

[Outrider]

I'm not really an artist myself, but I think there's a lot of factors at work that aren't very well understood until you're in the situation. Sure, it's a dick move to blow off fans of your work and such, but you're certainly not obligated to be friends with them, and I think gift art between artist friends is a natural occurrence. Every hobbyist has a community, and you wouldn't expect, for example, someone who's never shot a gun before to expect to be included in the NRA.

I don't think some people handle fame all that well, too. I'd wager a lot of artists that become popular started out just making art for themselves and it caught on. Sharing work online doesn't necessarily mean you're looking for a following, you just want to share with the world something you're proud of. I don't feel like that obligates you to anything. But even if you're bad at handling fame, at no point is it okay to do things like blow off criticism, treat fans like trash, or act like you're the best ever. That behavior exists, but I personally haven't found it all that widespread.

But like most things, I don't think it's very fair to judge or draw conclusions about it without having been in their shoes. And it's extremely rare that an issue like this is strictly black-and-white. It's interesting to think about though, how people handle fame that never expected it.

Yeah, I think that pretty much sums up my feelings on this.

It just concerned me that we seemed to be mixing up "people trying to prevent others from becoming artists and joining artist communities" and "artists who happen to be friends together doing stuff that doesn't necessarily include you or other fans". One is obviously not okay while the other is just normal human behavior between friends.

In my (very brief) experiences doing artist stuff at conventions and stuff like that, I could almost always trust for more popular artists to be friendly if I came up to chat with them and supportive of me being an artist, but I was also aware that they weren't going to just suddenly invite me into their group of friends simply because I was a fan.

[gigawuts]

You fail to distinguish between artists and non-artists however, which is exactly what the artists in question were doing (and then refusing to acknowledge non-artists as anything besides a potential cash flow, viewing them all as moochers without getting to know them, similar things).

What you're talking about isn't what was being discussed.