I've been using DA for six years or so. It works like this: Assemble gallery of quality art. By chance, accrue followers (chance increased by community participation, ie contests and making friends), popularity will either snowball or steadily increase to a certain point, depending on quality of work, popularity of subject, or time of submission.
So over time, at some point, it became: Assemble gallery of quality art. Accrue followers through either chance by time of submission or popularity of subject. Popularity will either cap within the undiscovered section/popularity-ordered searches, or they will snowball into infinite popularity by ensuring the work is in some way affixed to the top of the search results.
There is such a huge gap between popular works and unpopular works. What's affecting this is DA's algorithm, mod attention, and CORE. But I think the root of the problem is the sheer amount of uploads. There's so much to look at on that site that the reason people use it has changed. People are less likely to follow an unpopular artists with a gem every so often, than a professional artist with scheduled eye-candy catered to thousands of followers. It's so hard for budding artists to move up to the big leagues on dA than it is for a professional artist already popular on social media to move their work to that platform and do the same thing. The little guys are stuck and drowning. This is also happening on Tapastic, but the fundamental idea of tapastic hasn't changed. Creators still have a good chance of getting readers through quality works and participation, even if some creators seem to randomly shoot to god levels overnight for no reason. Tapastic has a better handle on traffic that gives dedicated creators a better chance of growing popularity than on dA.
Oh and the other thing is, the audience. There is a reason you're afraid of getting flack on DA for opening a discussion about something. Those people make DA what it is. Look at what it is. It's like a suburban high-school. The site has turned into a popularity contest, and the only way you'll get big is if you hang out with the popular girls and hope they'll notice you.
Now look at what Tapastic is. It's a very friendly fun place with rainbows, because its target audience happens to be a merry band of kittens and unicorns. It's a nice safe place because it's full of nice safe people, so it's still a nice safe site.
