Introduction:

Being an artist online kinda sucks lol

#minecraft #journal #Hoodponies

As an artist, the structure of the internet does not favor you, nor does the people, with the regrettable invention of AI art, to the slop that is the algorithm, to just the individual person, as an artist you are not favored or respected in this current internet climate. One of the examples is social media, they never favor artists for more reasons than one. The algorithm never favors us, unless we obtain a big following or a decently sized one, but unfortunately with that we have to rely on the algorithm. It's certainly not impossible to use and if you understand the structure (or lack thereof) it can bear some fruit. It is no wonder that with all the issues mentioned that artists are screaming for an improvement of current social platforms or an alternative outright. In this entry I will first give a part of the solution specifically good websites for artists, then I'll talk about the problem, since the solution is what I think is most important. Cara - Instagram but based and specifically targeted to artists, doesn't allow AI art AIDS. Art Station - Fantastic for having a professional portfolio, though can be intimidating for some. Newgrounds - Holy Shite this one is fantastic, personality, classic internet, truly cares for artists. Edgy & a good place to post art in general. Above all else...having a personal site is my ultimate recommendation, which I'll make a more detailed blog post about. What I DON'T recommended Deviant Art - Full of AI eye rape, owned by wix, requires subscription in order to have something simple like 2FA (shalom bro wtf)! Instagram - Reptilian... I don't even post art on instagram, just random photos I take, refuse to use it as an art problem (reasons will be explained soon). As for twitter or X (I refuse to call it X I'm not that autistic) I neither advise against it or for it, despite it's toxicity and cancer inducing bi-pedal ape-like organisms it's not the worst place to post your art, unless of course you want it stolen from AI tech-bros who want to train a model of your art. I just remembered that the gooning community enjoys twitter, in that case avoid at all costs. Tiktok is another hard one, because I have seen a more net-positive with it compared to other social media, still bad, but not the worst I've seen, but it's tiktok...Chinese spyware...no thank you. Art based subreddits are also an option to post your art too, but I would say it's terrible for a portfolio, maybe if you want advice yet though most of their advice is shitty. All of this can be said for 4chan except that their art advice is good. How I like to describe the differences between 4chan & reddit is that 4chan are intelligent people who act like stupid people while redditers are stupid people who act like smart people. There are other websites like pixiv which I have yet to try & do have interest in trying, but ultimately I would limit the amount of social media sites you post on. Of course having tons of social media has it's perks but I find the negatives to far outweigh the pain of management of all these platforms, while of course building more meaningful connections with the platforms of choice is also another reason why I would recommend fewer socials, as well with the following reasons. -Less targets the right audience for your choice, ie, art station great for visual artists while mastodon might be better for niche communities. -Simplifies analytics and growth tracking -Saves times and recourses, what I mean is that juggling multiple platforms requires significant time for content creation, posting, and interaction & can also mean investing in various tools to manage posts, analytics, and advertisements, which might not be feasible for a single person or small team. -Maintain Consistency, for example fewer platforms makes it easier to post regularly and maintain a cohesive brand presence. If an artist is strategic about the platforms chosen, it will be able to achieve goals more effectively while maintaining your sanity and creativity. Of course, there are far more different social media outlets that artists can use, such as behance, dribbble & mastodon, but some of these are specific to a certain kind of art or fill a niche. They are also hard to judge because I don't use them nor do I intend to! I mentioned that I think the ultimate source of advertisement, creativity expression, and badass factor is having your own website...but please, for the love of everything good and holy don't use wix or square space, just pirate adobe muse or learn code then post your site to neocities. Wordpress is also a decent option. There are plenty of free code templates one can use if they wish to "hand code" a website. These are some general recommendations for social platforms as well as my thoughts on them. Let's get to the problems...then back to the solutions!