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

[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?

[R.n.P]

If i could wipe from my memories some of the stuff I've seen there while browsing the forums, I would

[DualDragons]

Hmmm...

• Weird fetish art. God, why are people into vore?
• DeviantArt Eclipse. The initial update made it kinda annoying for me to adjust.
• DON'T offer requests unless you do some strict rules on your journal, people will swamp you on those.

[Yulek]

I think what sets deviantArt so apart is that it's a creator's only site.

Most Everyone on there is a creator first and consumer second.

Compared to e.g. Instagram, where people who don't create use it and follow all sorts of content creators, friends and acquaintances.

On DA this feels like it leads to it being an enormous echo chamber

That's what happens on Facebook within groups. Or on Twitter with hashtags, or on reddit with subreds, on Tumblr too within fandoms and niches.

So anything toxic that can happen in an artist community gets amplified by a lot.
Questionable fetish art (I don't believe in kink shaming, but it stops being a fetish when it crosses consent lines) gets traction easily since for anything there's a whole community on dA.

Art trends and styles also get amplified and develop in extremer ways.
A lot of them quickly get considered cringy by the mainstream because you have to be in the bubble yourself to understand it (no judgement for either side intended. It's just like talking in memes to someone who isn't on the internet. They will just not get it, and from their perspective you will probably sound ridiculous.)

Aaaaand since everyone is a creator... Artist envy is a big issue that just breeeeds drama.

And it's worst, when the more toxic parts of the artists community on dA is where a fresh artist starts.
dA IS the starting point for many when it comes to posting their art and engaging with the community, so the dA community rules and etiquette are often the only thing the users know when they set foot on other platforms.
I think that one might be pretty much outdated tho.
I know that back then, my artist peers all had dA accounts way before any social media's.
DA is 20 years old.. Insta for Android merely 9

So yea, when people started migrating from dA to other Plattforms, you could just tell that they came from there a lot of times, from the type of art they made. Which isn't anything bad by itself.
It just then takes a few unsavory people who also exude the dA vibes for people to stereotype.

Also, because of the age, 2000s emo culture "rawr xD" was huuuuge. And since it's such a sealed eco system, it never went away.

Even Tumblr is only 14 (from 2007)
Twitter and reddit are both 15.

And while 5 years don't sound like much, in this context they are a lot.

Sooo yea, factors that contribute to dA's image and stuff:

Da as an echo chamber.
Creators only platform.
Artist envy and Co as breeding ground for toxicity.
It's own language and culture.
dA's age and thus migrations from the site when insta and Co later became relevant.
And dA's age in general.

..... Uhh... Thank you for coming to my Ted talk. I kinda rambled way too much about this

[MK_Wizard]

DeviantArt is supposed to be about ART which means free speech even the kind you don't agree with should be allowed in so long as that it is respectful, non-offensive and non-aggressive. My statement was none of those things yet everyone made my life hell there all because I was honest in how I felt about a type of type of fan shipping which even other slash fans agree with me on.

DeviantArt isn't social media and there should be a no tolerance policy for harassing someone for just liking a type of fiction. A lot of people don't like a lot of fiction because it is badly written and has unsettling implications including official fiction made by professionals. And this matters because an art site is supposed to be open to people liking or not liking something and be even more open to constructive criticism to make an art form better so slash shouldn't be the exception or the exemption.

[Shanny8]

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.

THIS- one of the reasons I dont really frequent DA like I used to.

[Darth_Biomech]

DeviantArt isn't social media and there should be a no-tolerance policy for harassing someone

But does it matter what site it is? That zero-tolerance policy should apply to the entire Internet (Well, aside from the fact that the concept of zero tolerance is BS that was proven harmful in real life countless times... But I get the vibe and I'm agreeing with it).

[Fafnir]

As an x teen who used to post his terrible art on elfwood. I ask everyone to cut the bad artist teens some slack. Posting your art on the internet is fun. Having a bunch of pros call you terrible, and the site you use garbage, not so much.
I like deviant art, I follow a lot of great artists there, and the ability to favorite art, then go look at it in the folder is nice. Its like making a little collection. And I like looking through artists pages at their works. Instagram and twitter, I "like" a picture, and then an hour later it's buried under posts and gone forever.

[Lady_T_Musings]

I started posting art on DA almost 20 YEARS AGO, oh mai gawd haha. Anyway I loved it back when I was testing the waters by showing my cringy art and admiring so many others, but I then wen to college and slowly started to forget about DA. I remember the thing that made me really just roll my eyes and move on to Tumble was the big ado about how censorship rolled. They were much kinder to the female form than the male one and that annoyed me quite a bit. So I moved to Tumblr.

Besides that it is home to my early art start days and for sure there is a lot of cringe, but it was where I started so I haven't deleted it, but going back to it now just feels like revisiting a time capsule. I did try to restart my engagement and got a few results, but overall much of the engagement was from folks feeling entitled to my time and opinions and I'm like.... can y'all like chill...

Though if you are having success with it I say do you. For me, it just feels antiquated and though I'll occasionally post something to it to see if anyone I used to jive with is still around, it's out of the memory of how I used to feel about it over anything it can be now for me.

Idk if they ever did a major update or overhaul and added some fair moderation, I might consider checking it out, but with more and more art sites like Artfol and Bibblehouse popping up, I doubt it.

[Iris-Grimoire]

I despise it mostly because of the lack of moderation and just zero care from staff about security. There's no email confirmations, there's no measures to stop someone with 20 alts, reporting might get an audible shrug from the mods and they're known to remove venues of communication when people get too vocal about how they seem to pick and choose what content to ban(I recall the 4chan lite thing coming from the fact they'd just ignore that there were hate speech groups). I'll take any day on Twitter over what I saw there, even if it's got groups. Hands-off is better than pretending to be hands-off but actually pulling some strings.