Is DeviantArt broken?

I started dA in 2010 I think, I mean I was 14 so of course no quality art, but I was sure that I wanted to make it a career sooner or later anyway (so I really put effort into it). Back then I got some comments from kids who were even worse than I, so it was kind of cute and it was relatively easy to get into some kind of community. I don't talk to them though, mostly because they aren't there anymore or even deleted their accounts.
I can't deny that dA had a huge influence on me, I found some really helpful tutorials I still keep as a get-go because they're just great. Back then you also got more critiques, older/more advanced people took their time to actually help, or I just found a handful that did. Plus there was a group project to critique as much as you can within 1 week, it really was fun and partly even helpful for me.
I mean yes I did a lot of fanart back then, especially when I was most active in 2012/2013, but I can't say it exactly gained me more followers. I have a grand total of 139 followers, and I bet at least half of them are actually deactivated accounts (one big issue that hasn't changed - it takes forever until dead accounts vanish from the follower list)
It wasn't particularly great but I had my friends, we could share advice and admire the more popular artists from afar.

Then the whole "draw my oc for free here are 10000 reference links to their entire backstory, check there for any descriptions lol" started (I actually did that two times). Apart from the whole "Cheap commission!! headshot 10 points!!" - which made me believe that my art was basically 10 friggin cents worth because that's what everyone charged, right? - the most horrible thing on this site. As soon as I got more comfortable in my skills, I seriously asked others if $5 was too much. dA was very toxic in this case, like "you cannot charge anything if you aren't from the top notch." I only realised when I left for tumblr and twitter, where people like me charged way more, and still got commissions.

Also, on especially twitter, people are so much easier to approach? Popular artists on dA rarely replied to the masses of comments they got, but on twitter it kind of just works. Plus it has some kind of "multi-cultural flair" to it - on dA it's got incredibly hard to work up the ranks and it's mostly always the same people around you, and on tumblr you just stay in your fandom nieche but actually have a chance to get seen and work your way up there. Original stuff is hard to share either way, but to me tapastic works out for that just fine at the moment.

Also I'm glad that memory didn't fail me and the CORE membership indeed is roughly twice as much as Premium used to be. I shortly thought about getting one again but then decided against since I have adblock anyway, and only throw off my best pics lately and run away again. I don't even check in the groups I'm in, barely even the people I follow because I know their "new" things from other platforms anyway. All comments I get are basically "nice" "cool" etc.
It got very superficial, but maybe that's a mutual thing with this platform/community..

I gotta say, dA has just been Meh to me as of late. It's good place to post my works since their servers don't mind my large files but honestly its just good for a portfolio kinda site at this point.

Like, when the CORE went up, I was both annoyed an confused. Why did it go up in twice the price? I mean yeah, it said the membership was on sale when you bought it, but after like what? 3 years (probably more) a lot of people started to assume the price was the same. I get they need more money, but I feel like if they fixed whatever was giving their damn adds viruses they wouldn't have such an issue. I tell everyone I know to make sure ad block works on that site. Otherwise they can kiss their computer goodbye.

Don't even get me started on the point system.

As for people? I think it really depends. You can still find nice people on that website but if you wanna grow a fanbase, its gonna be hard and its gonna be harder to get noticed. I've only gotten a little attention from my fan art and even then, thats only when I do it right when the fandom is having a big even going on. The place is too big at this point.

Ehhh, I'm not too fond of how it's going right now. The legibility of the Hot Topics posts has gone seriously downhill and I don't click on them anymore because they're too badly designed for me to be able to read.

As for the people... Eek! A lot of very rude and whiny people on there. Sometimes on the "forums" I'll strike it off good and have a good conversation with some random person, but mostly I avoid posting anything at all because I don't have the time or patience for somebody to get hyper-offended from me replying. Doesn't even have to be something bad, I could say "I like cats" and some anti-furry dog-lover will go on a tirade of how I promote animal cruelty by indulging in bestiality and enslaving animals for entertainment, or something totally bizarre like that. And there are some seriously entitlement issues on there where people think you're overprices if you charge over $5 for a good quality drawing.

Agree. I'm still on dA but probably only because I've been on there for 10 years and it's the first art account I had. Though, I've changed accounts recently (2 years ago) and I definitely notice not as much traffic. What really bothers me about dA is the seeming randomness of popularity. Accounts that were created 5 years ago even if they have no original artwork of their own or (excuse me for saying) poorly drawn fan art with questionable taste... get very popular while I see very good artists who have no traffic or silent faves with no one commenting.
As for "you have to be active" blah blah I disagree. I have always tried to rekindle the dA I knew years ago where people comment on pieces they like whether from very good and inspiring artists or people just starting out who need some encouragement. I comment and comment and... NOTHING. Big fat nothing. It is very tiring to spend so much time critiquing and commenting and giving encouragement over the past 2 years with my new account to have only a handful of people who actually want to interact with you, ask you questions, and comment on your own work.
I was die-hard dA for many years but now have run away to Tapastic where things seem much more friendly.

My main issue with current DA is how poorly it is managed, when I first joined (I think in 2008), if you put something in the wrong folder, they would have moved it. Also there was a stronger push to avoid unoriginal stuff like memes and screencaps, sometimes even moving them straight into scraps.

Now the site sort of seems like there is no management. People just repost screencaps they took off of Youtube and memes. Add that the site seem to have a lot of trolls yet there is no one even really moderating this. Why does a forum filled with racism and the N-word stay up for several day? Why isn't there an easier way to report trolls? Why when someone does troll, they refuse to delete said post (if the user is banned) because they made some pack in blood that they would never delete comments? Why do they let people run "fav bots"?

I do like the format of DA, more so than Tumblr. It's easy to search and I will get favs on older works. While on Tumblr, for popular fandoms, if you don't get a large number of notes within the first few days, your work will "disappear" and good luck if anyone finds it again.

I stopped using dA because they were selling user's work without their permission to Hot Topic. :c And the Terms of Service on dA states that they basically own what you post there. Be careful guys!

@haleymewsome That's messed up. I had no idea they were so shady.

I have an account there from 10 years ago. I actually used it to keep track of my bad drawings lol. I mean I have stuff there that I don't have the original file anymore. So that's it.

I have never been active to begin with, but yeah sometimes I feel like there's much drama and less comments. And beware of their dark site and all their fetishes art.

DeviantART is a fickle beast, but I way way WAY prefer it to something like Tumblr or even Pixiv.

I don't recommend making a new account, even if you are being stalked, if you are trying to build a following. I've been stalked (am currently) and I just put the block button to good use. Your followers may not have been dead, they just may have been too lazy to switch to your new account. I know back before dA let users change their names, I had people I was following change their names every other year. After about the third time I would usually not follow them because I'd have to go in, re-favorite all their artwork I liked, etc. Such a pain, and I think it says something about the artist when they are constantly trying to restart their visibility on dA or whatever.

I had almost no followers until dA started their groups system. It's still slow going, but groups really helped in getting visibility. I don't even check the front page or anything, and most people I know don't bother. It's usually the same people and half of it is porn anyway, haha.

I would say choose an account and stick with it, submit to a lot of different groups, add new art regularly, and see what happens. Not everyone is guaranteed to be a star on DeviantArt, though-- talent level does often play a part of it. But you can be friendly and courteous, follow people, make friends, and slowly build a following over time. You can draw fan art of whatever's popular if you just want followers, but it really is a community and I think artists should be true to themselves and their own passions.

I've been on DA for 11 years now.
I use to have a lot of luck with DA about 4 years ago and then when I went back this time (and even better with my art) nothing. I get almost NO traffic. No idea why. And a lot of my pervious fanbase seems to have either moved on or deleted their account. I think it's over populated bc they decided they didn't want to regulate their community. I think it's a few things:

• They never purge their community
• The don't have quality or content control
• They don't cycle new or unheard of artist enough

Dude...even the creator the site would agree that things are not the same over there as it use to be way back when. There was such a community back then, everyone was talking each other, they listen to their users. Now? They do whatever works and let no one on on what they're doing until last minute. Like YouTube...

yes, it's as broken as mi soul after I placed the words sonic the hedghog on the search bar 0.o
things seen ca't be unseen

Well, I have account on DA for 11 months now. Never use forums, didn't see the need too and I can't talk about art anyway, I know myself the best. I only have 1 watcher. I have some notes from people asking me to draw them something and when I click their profile, turn out they do the same things to everyone lol their fav is just full of a certain type of drawing that people draw for them. So yeah, I have meet some weird people there despite all I did on DA is just browsing tutorial that I can use later or a model for drawing reference. Maybe it's just me but so far I say DA works just fine for me. I didn't care much about watcher or fame etc. I know my art isn't that good and honestly every single time I look for tutorial and saw the art I make '_' expression but well, tutorial then practice then repeat.

So well, just my 2 cent.

So I just happened upon this thread and alot of the comments I've been reading so far mimic what I've been feeling alot lately and its been such a breath of fresh air! I've felt so alone! haha

Not just DA but most social media has caused me to feel like its just not social anymore? This is the first forum I've stumbled upon in recent months that have had at least an active enough and expansive enough userbase that its been really fun to join! I feel like alot of social media - DA included has just boiled down to a bunch of people posting things just to promote themselves and theirs no longer a community. It really makes me miss the internet days of old - I used to have so many internet friends, some I still have - they will be my life long friends, but I wouldn't be able to say the same of my experiences through social media these past 8 years or so. I stopped using DA a while ago even though I started in 2005 because of a lack of community and a fostering relationship between artists outside of random almost automated feeling thank yous. Then I went to tumblr. Recently I stopped using Tumblr and Facebook for much the same reason and stick closely to Instagram. I don't use twitter either, for me it breeds more anxiety to try and keep track of conversations I want to have and people I'm interested in rather then a sense of friendship, community, or conversation. It's not really built for that. I've looked through the remains of livejournal, throughout different social medias trying to find a replacement to no avail.

I agree with all the previous posts that the design of DA is a clusterfuck, including its forums, and makes it really tiresome to eve want to interact, so I can't really blame people. My feed got wayy too ridiculous to ever hope to keep up with, it was difficult to manage my friendslist to get rid of inactive, dead, or lost accounts.

Im going to take alook at the different suggestions from here and see what it's like!

I've had a dA for over 8 years. Granted the first many years I rarely used it, got it because some friends said I should and after a year they sorta stopped using it and so did I. But for the past couple of years I've started to become a regular active user. I gotta say, I never use the front page. I never look in what's hot, new or whatever else the different pages are called. I use the forum sometimes, and usually skip most threads other than thumbnail shares, which I use to promote my art, like I do with groups. I've never been big on communities, I never seem to be able to keep up. It seems to work and I'm slowly getting more watchers. Granted I'm still under 200. I follow things I find interesting and people I like.

I think the problem with dA is the size of it. You need to really push yourself out there and shout loudly to be seen or heard. As the page grows larger, there has to be more admins, but that costs money, and when the money isn't there they are overburdened with work, and can't control it properly, not helping that their money solutions are unattractive for their costumers and the fact that almost everyone uses adblock nowadays. I'm not trying to defend or accuse anyone, merely deducting and speculating what can cause these problems.

They have also been bought recently by Wix and I doubt they have good plans in store for the site. I still hope that they will make it better and fix some of the bugs the page have, but I'm not holding my breath.

I still like dA though. Maybe because I'm a creature of habit and the affection value is there. Maybe it's because I'm finally starting to learn how to utilize their tools in my favor.

I want ot give a shoutout to the group Project Comment though. They really try and better the community, and promote good and constructive commenting rather than jusrt fave and run. they have a give and get comment system that works very well.

deviantart is almost dead. The whole site is broken and all the only activity I get are children or people turned on by ducks.

Someone needs to take it out back and put it out of its misery.