Can i be so for real

[Orichan]

I am really comfortable with the fact that my comic/art ect is rough/amateurish/poorly executed/weird/ bad-- I wouldn't have even gotten this far without a certain lack of fucks to give and I make it primarily for my own enjoyment.

BUT OMG

It feels so hard to socialize in art communities these days!!! When I was a dumb little middle schooler drawing 1099 pictures of my own Mary sue in the same pose over and over I had dumb little middle schooler friends sharing their 10087 pictures of THEIR Mary sues and we talked about them and had fun. Now, I'm on all these art sharing platforms and it feels like most of the interactions are bots and it's so lonely!

I don't have any solutions but since this foum seems to actually have people in it, I'm inclined to reach out and ask if it's just me or if I'm not the only one going through this?

[kyupol]

Yes it is much harder these days. Can totally agree

[wolflu66]

I completely understand how you feel. Nowadays, art-sharing platforms are flooded with a massive amount of AI-generated works. Many of these platforms seem completely out of touch with the times; they lack the ability to tag or filter AI-generated content, causing human-created and AI-generated works to be mixed together, with human art being drowned out by the overwhelming amount of AI content.

In recent days, a large number of AI-generated Ghibli-style illustrations have appeared online, along with many tutorials teaching users how to generate images and sell them in online stores.

Over the past two or three years, the feeling of artists being devalued has grown stronger. However, when you express these feelings online, you often face even more ridicule—especially from those who deliberately generate more AI images just to mock you.

Among the Japanese art-sharing platforms I still use, PIXIV is actually one of the better ones. It allows users to filter out content tagged as AI-generated, but the catch is that the uploader has to voluntarily mark their image as AI.

However, it still has its flaws. When creating NSFW artwork, the site has always had a policy requiring that characters' private parts be censored with a mosaic. In the past, though, even if you didn't comply, the platform rarely took action to remove your work. But nowadays, their moderation has become much stricter, and they are seriously enforcing this rule—apparently due to pressure from credit card companies. This is something I find really frustrating.

On top of that, there are plenty of self-righteous internet users who have nothing better to do than roam the internet all day, searching for artworks that don't align with their values just so they can criticize them or perform what they call "fixing", completely disregarding the artist’s intentions and creative freedom.

In short, artists today are facing two major challenges: the flood of AI-generated content and the tightening restrictions on creative freedom. It’s honestly making me feel powerless.

[jwabeasley]

@Orichan you can always hang out with us! This is one of the few places I've been able to find online artist friends.

[justincarbunkle]

I'll gladly talk to you about art anytime! My art is also pretty amaturish/rough.

[remiquise]

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?

[wolflu66]

@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.

[remiquise]

@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.

[Orichan]

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!

[Orichan]

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!

[Orichan]

Hell yeah! Let's draw for the love of the game! >

[jwabeasley]

tbh I miss having crappy little roleplays with my friends with our lame little OCs when we were young.

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)

[Orichan]

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.

[Orichan]

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!

[enderdragon]

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.

-

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.

[Orichan]

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

[Orichan]

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.

[jwabeasley]

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.

[remiquise]

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

[remiquise]

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.