tbh I miss having crappy little roleplays with my friends with our lame little OCs when we were young. They all grew up and I just stagnated, it seems. I also notice it's harder to gain those kinda of friends, like I once did, and frankly I'm kind of scared to as an adult. I don't even know if I could find folks my age willing to do that stuff with me at this point-- and would I even have the time?
@remiquise
Sometimes, I feel the same way.
Deep down, I think I’m still that chūnibyō kid who loves cool, flashy, but also kind of cringey characters and storylines. But I guess a lot of people are like that too—they just learn to hide it as they grow up.
BTW, your characters are cool. 
@wolflu66 I'm sure there are plenty out there that feel the same and feel like they can't express it. I just wish it were the folks I already know. I already knew what to expect outta them (and vice versa); it was comfortable. But alas! It's kind of why I started writing, I had no one else to make stories with so I thought "Aight, I'll do it myself then." Haha
And thank you, I assure you though, I had to go through years of overly cringe to reach the point of "cool" hah; your characters look neat from what I've seen of them floating around the forums too. 
AAAAAH THIS. I think that looking back, the 2013 Tumblr "female nipple" ban was the point where this kinda isolation started. It's not that every community I has was NSFW but a huge swath of content at that time got banned and I just kinda stopped for a while, then when I wandered back AI art hustle bots had become well established. It's like, these communities can contend with censorship or enshitification to some extent but not both... It's funny too because I don't really think of my stuff as aiming to be NSFW, but the fear of something being content-banned makes it feel less comfortable to just make stuff without worrying.
It's sucks to feel powerless but also it is a little better to know I'm not alone!
I think I'll try to make a point to hang here more! I was on a bit to get to those first 25 subs but wasn't really using it to socialize properly. Given some kinda annoying dynamics on DeviantArt (where I usually try to interact) I'll try to start being present here!
This is fixable! I have awesome RPs with my friends and their more developed OCs every week. TTRPGs are good fun for adults! Find yourself a peer RP group (or be the dungeon master. I am the dungeon master in my group)
RIGHT!? Me too! I feel like as adults we have to like, justify our shit by making it nice and cohesive and build a following or whatever. I kinda like that I'm a little better at some stuff from those days and I do feel a genuine drive to follow through with my own plans as a creator, but I hate the feeling of every interaction being transactional and the feeling that every person wouldn't mind if every other person's work just fell off so they have a chance to stand out. It was way more fun to be like YEAH THIS IS MY OC SHES FROM THE DIAMOND VILLIAGE I MADE IT UP WANNA PUT HER IN A LOVE TRIANGLE WITH YOUR HALF SHINIGAMI LONG LOST SIBLING OF THAT CANNON CHARACTER... Like, I'm not gonna do that on account of all these standards we developed on the way, but it's was fun and worth mourning the loss of.
ALSO ALL OF YOUR ART SLAPS @wolflu66 i subbed to your comic back a while ago and it stuck out as something I actually wanted to read. I love your use of color and your character designs! @remiquise you gave me some good advice on horror art and I was like oh heck gotta learn from them! @jwabeasley your style and world building are so ethereal and cute at the same time and @justincarbunkle I love your cute and cartoony style-- it's one I've never been able to do tbh and @kyupol you are really prolific in creating things that you feel need to be made
These responses have really cheered me up and helped me feel seen!
Yeah, AI-generated content is appearing literally EVERYWHERE now, and now that "dead internet theory" is starting to make a whole sense now.
When I was browsing Pixiv recently, literally 99% of the artwork I saw on there was AI-generated, and it really sucked.
In the past, I used to see absolutely nothing wrong with AI imagery (especially when it was in its infancy and it was still a new thing). It was cute at first when it was more of a new and niche thing, but now that I see how much it has basically taken over many art platforms and is drowning out "real" human art on these platforms, my views on it have changed. Most AI images look like shit anyway.
But what I hate even more is AI-generated YouTube content. If I hear one more AI-voice narrating an entirely ChatGPT-written script over generic stock footage clips, I SWEAR TO GOD.....
Ahem...anyway, I don't mean to veer too far off the topic, but yeah.
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Edit: On the OP's subject, yeah, the Internet can feel like a super-lonely place sometimes, considering there are so many people but one doesn't truly know how to interact with them all. I deal with loneliness and depression IRL, so I definitely want to socialize and stuff more, even online, but its easier said than done.
Lol I have 2 weekly RP groups but like it's funny because the way I play in those and engage with them feels really different from online RP communities... if I'm seriously thinking about it is probably how the nature of in person tabletop actively discourages side conversations between players (because its rude, obviously) while online play by post or just a proliferation of collaboration and art trades in the same agreed upon world encouraged a lot of brainstorming in often changing small groups that would then present to the greater community and then get added on to by other individuals and groups. It's honestly so hard to reproduce without infrastructure and the enshitification of these platforms means that even if these communities exist, they don't get as big or active because they get lost in the noise/algorithm
That is definitely not a tangent! I think its directly applicable to the loneliness! I was talking to my person about this because it's been irritating me, but the platforms that feel "lonely" now are the same accounts I've had for almost 20 years. If you look at the friend/follower/mutual count it hasn't changed and tons of them are real people I've met at cons over the years. Like, the people who you'd want to interact with still exist, but their posts aren't put in front of me and my posts aren't put in front if them. No one wants to be isolated, but the mechanisms are straight up broken.
For sure - I never had a good experience with play by post, even with good friends. The conversations would always get bogged down even with the best of intentions. In person or video conference D&D works much better.
My limit on art trades is time! Wish I had about twice as many hours in each day!
I used to play a lot on different online RP communities ~2008 when I was a teenager. My time for those is too limited to get back in even if they were still good but you're right that the internet is full of meaningless, frustrating noise right now. I'm better off making IRL friends than any public community.
It seems like every time I'm invited to a D&D group something happens and it always falls through. It's happened 3 times now. Though my coworker said his group was changing their D&D meeting day and implied I might be able to join now that it won't conflict with my writing group (who knew Thursdays at 6pm was a popular time). So who knows maybe this time-- maybe not. Not entirely sure how serious he was since I'd basically have to be babysat; I have no clue how these games function. Also not sure how willing his friends would be to have someone new join since they've been a group for years.
And I definately don't know enough to DM lmao
Like, to be fair, I definately have some kind of inner need to make things a lot more cohierent than when I was younger, but like that doesnt mean "no rediculousness and no fun". I like a little cheeseiness, even now. I don't even mind a little "mary sue" energy in my "fun"-- though I try not to get too rediculous for my posted stuff, not everything needs to be for an audience.
Oh yeah, week days are the secret golden key for D&D lol. I've always had luck on Mondays and Thursdays on being able to get a solid group together that consistently can play.
Most people are super cool with brand new players joining and wouldn't invite you if it wasn't! We had a new player join our six year long game recently and I've been in other groups where it's happened.
People are also usually happy to help teach you the game as you play as well <3
It's worth a shot if you get the chance. Its really helped fill that void for me and I love getting to share silly art of the characters with other people in the groups. I know it can be intimidating at first though!
Well if they are any good at role-playing they will appreciate a new character to engage with! Though philosophies differ from group to group on seriousness tone and gameplay to story ratio! I wish you luck in joining, but also don't give up if this group doesn't work out, I'd say the best tips I've learned for having fun in DnD is 1)make sure your character is excited to be there, whether they are a selfish rouge excited for a good score, a high minded hero, or they want to save their mom, interpret the objective of the quest as part of this. 2)Try to give a window into their inner world- if the character is open and talkative this is easiest, but if you want to play a shy/mean/edgy character narrate their expressions and actions with detail so its never just "they don't respond because responding wouldn't be in character " but "they look like they might respond but visibly blanche as soon as someone mentions kobolds, it seems like they don't want to talk about that thing"
Sorry if this advice is unwarranted! I just really like DnD XD I hope you have fun when you play!
Agreed! I think I went through a phase where I was like no more crazy edgelord shenanigans I MUST BE LITERARY but then I got bored and it was pointed out to me that my choices came from a place of wanting to adhere to an arbitrary standard based in shame and I was like FUCK THIS I will make the stuff that I find amusing because this is all just for fun anyway!
I have a real life group of illustrators and artists. We meet regularly and talk about art, oil paint, books, comic drawing,
struggles as an artist and we do life drawing with models.
One of the best things that I did this year was drawing a crappy traditional comic with my brother like we used
to do when we were kids. I´m turning 50 soon, my brother is 2,5 years older than me. We used to draw those
really trashy comics in the 80s when we were kids. Then we laughed about it and drew the next one. They
were mostly very chaotic, funny, violent or just bizzare.
I don´t like the communication on facebook, instagram etc. there is always a troll or somebody laughing about
what you wrote. Or you read those horrible discussions of people who love AI or something like that.
Instagram is filled with extremely superficial stuff.
I like the communication with the same 10-20 people on the tapas forum
I have my reasons to worry about this group and how they might be wary of me, and I also have my reasons for thinking this idea had not been run by his other friends before mentioning it to me hah; (That reason being I was bugging him about how he'll be able to join my writing group now that he'll be free so he might have just been matching my energy.) its something I'll just let him bring up on his own again if he was serious or not. I'll definately give the group a shot if he was serious.
