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Description
Well, I think it's about time I hop the fuck off DeviantART. It's been a long, slow, sad decline, and at this point I'm actually getting whole-ass pornography (not fetish shit, naked women with their heads chopped off) advertised to me next to completely innocuous Deviations. Wix has made their decision about who this site is targeted at, and it's not artists anymore.

It's sad! I can remember my middle school days of browsing DeviantART on my DSi into the long hours of the night (because my computer had parental controls that locked me out at 10PM sharp), probably listening to Cage the Elephant or something like that. I didn't have an account until someone tried to impersonate me on here, but I've been lurking it since the 2000s. Sure, there was always weird fetish stuff, but there was just as often amateur artists who'd go on to have careers at animation studios or as webcomic artists posting their Neopets OCs. DeviantART was the place to go for those doing it as a hobby. It was such a good, fertile place for young minds to develop. It might have the Geocities reputation for being a lot of awful, amateur garbage, but that's what makes the internet feel alive.

In the 2010s, it was my go-to place to see Pokemon OCs, especially PMD OCs, and especially those through all those old roleplay groups--PMD-Unity, PMD-Explorers, plenty of others. Those groups were instrumental in me making my first OCs, some of which I've been thinking of bringing back as an adult, giving proper designs now that I can draw, writing some little tribute stories to that angsty, oblivious kid I was--browsing DeviantART. It was a pretty cool place.

I don't need to tell you that it isn't anymore. The world of online art is different now. Community is gone and it's all number fixation, immediately selling commissions, and carefully tailoring your posts to superstition and how much you think a computer will like what you've uploaded. I feel so fucking bad for all the little 13-14 year olds right now being tossed into, effectively, the Red Light District. I don't want to be blackpilled, I don't want to say "the hobbyist is dead", but I do wish it was a lot less cynical. Really, it's just as much a shame on my end because that Kapy did do so well. Right when I start doing numbers is right when I decide to join everyone else in giving up.

I'm not moving on to social media. If it's not a classic art uploading site like DeviantART, I have no interest in it. I have been maintaining my own basic HTML art gallery over at home.macintosh.garden/~maritea…, and that has a lot I've never submitted to DeviantART, alts, and my trademark rambles underneath every drawing. I'm quite happy there, even if I don't get free dopamine from DeviantART telling me someone favorited my drawing. If you want further Cammy art, go check it out there!

As for the rest of the site, I'll probably keep favoriting stuff and collecting new art that I see for a little bit, and then using gallery-dl to scrape it all into local downloads. I'm starting to think about a great big media hoard again--YouTube videos, my offline music library of lossless downloads and CD rips, drawings I love and find inspiration in. If I don't grab it now, it won't be here when Wix decides to CNET DeviantArt and shut it down, and I'm not relying on Archive Team to have grabbed it for me.

Oh right, the puppy. Setter needed a new ref, because I'm thinking of hopping in on Art Fight and his old one kinda sucked! Especially now that I've got that big cute bright shiny eye thing going on, especially now that I'm more confident with my poses, and especially now that I'm not using a wack-ass stabilizer making my lines all digitally wonky. This took a lot of work, but I am indeed very happy with it. I tried to make him as doofy as possible and I think it very much came through.

Description
Well, I think it's about time I hop the fuck off DeviantART. It's been a long, slow, sad decline, and at this point I'm actually getting whole-ass pornography (not fetish shit, naked women with their heads chopped off) advertised to me next to completely innocuous Deviations. Wix has made their decision about who this site is targeted at, and it's not artists anymore.

It's sad! I can remember my middle school days of browsing DeviantART on my DSi into the long hours of the night (because my computer had parental controls that locked me out at 10PM sharp), probably listening to Cage the Elephant or something like that. I didn't have an account until someone tried to impersonate me on here, but I've been lurking it since the 2000s. Sure, there was always weird fetish stuff, but there was just as often amateur artists who'd go on to have careers at animation studios or as webcomic artists posting their Neopets OCs. DeviantART was the place to go for those doing it as a hobby. It was such a good, fertile place for young minds to develop. It might have the Geocities reputation for being a lot of awful, amateur garbage, but that's what makes the internet feel alive.

In the 2010s, it was my go-to place to see Pokemon OCs, especially PMD OCs, and especially those through all those old roleplay groups--PMD-Unity, PMD-Explorers, plenty of others. Those groups were instrumental in me making my first OCs, some of which I've been thinking of bringing back as an adult, giving proper designs now that I can draw, writing some little tribute stories to that angsty, oblivious kid I was--browsing DeviantART. It was a pretty cool place.

I don't need to tell you that it isn't anymore. The world of online art is different now. Community is gone and it's all number fixation, immediately selling commissions, and carefully tailoring your posts to superstition and how much you think a computer will like what you've uploaded. I feel so fucking bad for all the little 13-14 year olds right now being tossed into, effectively, the Red Light District. I don't want to be blackpilled, I don't want to say "the hobbyist is dead", but I do wish it was a lot less cynical. Really, it's just as much a shame on my end because that Kapy did do so well. Right when I start doing numbers is right when I decide to join everyone else in giving up.

I'm not moving on to social media. If it's not a classic art uploading site like DeviantART, I have no interest in it. I have been maintaining my own basic HTML art gallery over at home.macintosh.garden/~maritea…, and that has a lot I've never submitted to DeviantART, alts, and my trademark rambles underneath every drawing. I'm quite happy there, even if I don't get free dopamine from DeviantART telling me someone favorited my drawing. If you want further Cammy art, go check it out there!

As for the rest of the site, I'll probably keep favoriting stuff and collecting new art that I see for a little bit, and then using gallery-dl to scrape it all into local downloads. I'm starting to think about a great big media hoard again--YouTube videos, my offline music library of lossless downloads and CD rips, drawings I love and find inspiration in. If I don't grab it now, it won't be here when Wix decides to CNET DeviantArt and shut it down, and I'm not relying on Archive Team to have grabbed it for me.

Oh right, the puppy. Setter needed a new ref, because I'm thinking of hopping in on Art Fight and his old one kinda sucked! Especially now that I've got that big cute bright shiny eye thing going on, especially now that I'm more confident with my poses, and especially now that I'm not using a wack-ass stabilizer making my lines all digitally wonky. This took a lot of work, but I am indeed very happy with it. I tried to make him as doofy as possible and I think it very much came through.