Why do people seem to have such negative opinions about Deviantart?

[thecrystalrook]

DeviantArt is a meme in itself and has been since at least 2007. A lot of the 4chaners from that era don't take it seriously because all they ever saw was the "lol kawaii desu desu ne so randum RAWR" side of the site.

[Macarenaoftime]

Solar sands

(joke)

[Aleksei]

I suppose that liking dART it's an acquired taste?
I been there the past 16 years, and I mostly find nice pieces of art when I search for it... but yeah, there is a lot of rule 34, and others. I don't undertand all the fixation with inflation, and bondage, but defining the site by their worst face would be undeserving of it. I could say the same from Tapas, but we know better. Every site has their ups and downs.

[azzy-m]

Speaking as a former dA user, I dunno. I think it's a lot of things. Its reputation prolly comes from the saga of "cringe" art from 2014-16, but I think it's a lot of people don't really approve of how the website is being run? It's hard to grow there if you're starting out? General toxicity from people who use it (which is why i eventually stopped using it)? I don't know. I haven't thought about dA in years, my account pretty much exists just to be an archive of my old stuff, lmfao.

[sc101]

Sonic rule 34 and other intriguing things: the novel.

[Scarlet_Cryptid]

I guess a logical question to ask is... where else ought someone post their art as a primarily art-hosting site? I mean, I've got Tumblr and Instagram, but while both of those places have an art community of a sort, they're not specifically art sites.

(I suppose there's always Artstation, but dear god, I am so intimidated by the caliber of art on that site... XD I need something in between 'beginner' and 'godlike professional'.)

[Rhonder]

The opposite of this line of thought is actually why I haven't been back to DA since highschool I find it kind of tedious to post art to social media in general, so I prefer to manage only a few sites and actually prefer those that have more of a non-creator/consumer facing aspect to them, like the typical Facbeook/Twtitter/Instagram/Etc.

Maybe it wouldn't be as important if I did more art-art and less comics, but as is I try to reach out to and find readers, and I know from experience that a lot of folks who are busy making their own stuff don't always have a lot of time to invest in yours. Just viewing and liking standalone illustrations is one thing, but investing in a comic series is a whole other beast.

This preconceived notion may be incorrect (I haven't posted to DA since like... 2012? 2013?) but from my years there I got the sense that mostly just other artists hang out there- I'm not sure if a lot of pure consumers have accounts? That's my food for thought anyways

[N1ghtm4r3]

some of that hate may stem from some people who kind of complain and argue cause a lot don't seem to have any better things to do, two forums on there are most infamous philosophy and religion and the politics threads see alot who just spout random without actually discussing, and there are more then a few that post link to some kind of scam ,but i dont mind DA i generally post my clean work on there ,my NSFW i save for FA and inkbunny

[NickRowler]

I think people have one of three issues with it.

• There is a lot of weird fetish art which tends to get a lot of traction. The site doesn't really have a way to hide this kind of art unless it is NSFW. So sometimes you will go in the frontpage and the really weird ones will just randomly be there.

• I don't know if they have fixed this but there has been an issue with high political people from both extremes of the spectrum using the site as a blog site to just be extremely hateful. I remember coming across extremely racist and sexist who would use the site to post memes. The forums I know at one point were treated like a 4Chan lite. I remember there was one where a bunch of racists were saying the n-word that stayed up for several days.

• The site is also known for having a lot of teens and other people who are new to art. A lot of their art is usually not the best and I think people unfairly attack these types of people as being "cringe". I think people should be free to express themselves if it is doing nothing to hurt others.

[DiegoPalacios]

Shadow is pregnant......or was spongebob pregnant with Shrek and shadow was the older son????.....don't remember....maybe i repressed that memory

[Aleksei]

Oh, true! I forgot those. The worst is when all those fetish are mixed in one big piece. In a furry creature. The madness.

[ivanskilling]

I'm lucky to not have any contact with the weirder community on deviantArt but I think there are a lot of problems with the site in general.

Eclipse is terrible for multiple reasons:
1. Literature works on deviantArt are historically deprioritized and are not very visible to the community. Eclipse made it worse with the overly large thumbnails that show you one word of the title and removing cover images.
2. Groups - which is arguably dA's crowning feature - is more difficult to manage. As an admin, I no longer receive notifications about deviations being submitted.
3. Submitting to groups is close to impossible without installing someone's plugin. This implies lower visibility for your work if you don't submit to many groups.

Another big concern is that unlike Tapas, the dA staff do not take feedback. Yes, they ask you to fill up forms, etc. But they do not take action on the most critical feedback - e.g., fixing the broken notifications when someone mentions you or your work (this hasn't been working for years). Instead, they offer new, useless features like gems. Which act similarly to llamas/likes and complicate the system unnecessarily.

[indagold]

They have no standards and is over run with creepy sexual content. It wouldn't be a bad thing if they stayed in their lane but the staff encourage their existence, promote it despite banning porn and they will spam your dms and page if you even glance at them funny. Unlike other sites where you need at few brain cells to know how to type and write words, DA somehow attracts the worst due to only needing a cavemans skill to draw. Yes nsfw content exists everywhere, I know that but DA is unique because the bar of entry is so low. Because its not technically social media, anyone can use it while other apps scare away the same users...

[Kaydreamer]

A lot of internet veterans have been on DA from the early years. We've seen it rise to fame as the biggest and most vibrant art community online, the place where every artist with any kind of online presence would post... And we watched as it grew complacent in the age of social media, watched as it lost droves of casual artists to fast-growth sites like Tumblr, Instagram and Twitter, and watched as it lost industry artists to ArtStation.

DA these days is a haggard shadow of what it once was. The reason some of us older artists are so negative about it is because we were there in the glory days, we've seen what the site could still be if the leadership were actually competent, and the fact it was allowed to languish to the extent that it has is deeply frustrating.

(The fact that it's forums are still running on the old UI when the site has been on Eclipse for... what, a year now? They haven't even bothered to re-skin it? That speaks volumes.)

Also, the moderation on the site is basically non-existent, so trolls run rampant, and it can be a very negative place overall.

[MK_Wizard]

I think I should answer this as someone who was not only burnt by DeviantArt, but also traumatized to the point of not posting art on the Internet for up to ten years.

The problem with DeviantArt is that it is too big for its own good and the administration has a lot of trouble running it and keeping problematic users off. I have seen trolls there that have accounts older than some of the artists who are speaking on this thread. And also, they are especially cruel to people who have an opinion they don't agree with or like. If you give negative criticism on something even when it is valid, it will come back to haunt you and no matter how many times you try to clean the slate, the trolls and people who feel "offended" by what you said even what you said wasn't offensive will completely ruin your experience and your page. Yes, the admins can simply kick them off, but these people usually have multiple accounts and removing one is like removing a shark's tooth. Another comes back sooner or later. In the end, you can't make your art in peace and you're basically trolled to the point of harassment and the comments on your page might as well be unsightly graffiti. It is really is ugly and frankly, I would never recommend DeviantArt to a lot of people.

If you're curious as to what got me in trouble, I basically said that I find a lot of fan slash is bad because it has abusive undertones and at times, involves toxic things like pedophilia and incest. Ever since I made that comment, my life on DeviantArt was over.

[oshirockingham]

Just listen to yourself, not what other people say.
Good or bad a site is, it depends on how you use it.
Let's say you won't think a site is good if you spent your time on that site with bad people, even when the review said the site is good.
In conclusion, if you think the site is useful, then stay. If it's not, then move to somewhere else.
A certain site is not made for everyone.
Stay on the one that appreciates you more.

[nostalgicroxas]

As a user of it I can say several things:

Pro's
Folders, Organization, Dates, I heard you like Mudkip meme came from it from April Fool's one year when all avatars on the site were force changed ( Also as someone who lived through the mudkip avatar take over, it's sad to see that you cannot find that pixel April Fools avatar art anywhere cause it was hilarious )

Con's
Porn, smut, nudes EVERYWHERE, constant changes to the UI without care or rhyme or reason of why and doesn't listen to feedback from the community ever about anything, forums are a joke, "live chat" is a joke, constant pushes for cash grabs to use features that used to be available for free

Most to all of these cons are why "exodus" happens from time to time, usually when the UI has some overhaul. They flee to tumblr, insta, wherever. And yet, none of these sites hold the same sort of organization as devART does. Even with it's current "black is the new green" BS layout, it still is organized better than any of the attempted replacements that people flee to in the exodus.

[Zugaikotsu]

I like DeviantArt. It's so nostalgic and I made sooo many friends there, from everywhere! I even exchange letters with some till today!! Also it gets me some patreons.

But things there got dark really fast... ugly, poorly drawn porn, photo porn, sonic porn, mario porn, people in diapers... and a somewhat vulgar crowd wandering around. Sometimes I share some sfw pinups of the characters from my comics there, and once I got a comment about "how big was his but and how huge must be his... D-thing." The boy portrayed wasn't showing anything critical.

I'm a gay dude so I don't care, I even laughed and showed to my bf the comment, but it's not the best place to build a portfolio and show to studios, etc. I use it as a hobby place to hang out with friends and such.

[surenlicious]

AHEM Because it's a scourge. That's the short version. XD

Now, the art community on dA actually had held onto a lot of toxic beliefs that made my weave fly when I joined art Tumblr and moved to twitter next. People cling to their toxic creeds on how to draw, what you should use to do it and beware if you try anything else. People policing one's original characters in terms of design and background, fetish arts, hordes of fans jumping on creators if they dare to question their art god-

And the list goes on. And if you personally haven't experienced it good. But I did and I will keep calling that place the absolute asshole of the art world.

[Darth_Biomech]

DeviantArt is a site with no moderation or quality bar. While that's undoubtedly good from some angles (Self-expression, sharing, and all that), it leads to equally disastrous results from some other angles (sonic fanart, poser renders, straight-up minimal effort art farts, ETC).

Then there's the issue of it becoming a walking corpse in the last five or so years, with engagement dropping virtually down to zero ( I for instance rarely get even faves nowadays, and comments were a beast on the verge of extinction even before that...) and the site changed hands with new owners apparently giving zero fu**s about their audience, and doing anything but the stuff everybody's begged them for years. It's 2021 and there are STILL no e-mail notifications functionality, for example. But they had "improved" the site by taking away the ability to directly link to the images, even those in sta.sh (making sta.sh absolutely useless).

And also, they are especially cruel to people who have an opinion they don't agree with or like. If you give negative criticism on something even when it is valid, it will come back to haunt you and no matter how many times you try to clean the slate, the trolls and people who feel "offended" by what you said even what you said wasn't offensive will completely ruin your experience and your page. Yes, the admins can simply kick them off, but these people usually have multiple accounts and removing one is like removing a shark's tooth. Another comes back sooner or later. In the end, you can't make your art in peace and you're basically trolled to the point of harassment and the comments on your page might as well be unsightly graffiti.

You sure you aren't talking about Twitter?