totally agreeing w/ you - it feels like it is so much harder to find an audience for any original characters and their stories. i see a few successful oc artists on instagram but i truly hate that app and how like awful it is .and tbh, i find that it's hard for fan-art to get seen on other sites like tumblr and twitter, algorithms for artist seem totally shot at the knee. and maybe im just old, but i do NOT get the appeal of being an artist on tikt-ok

as i grow older, it is so hard to see the landscape of the internet change, not only for artists but for like kid artists as well.

I think the modern internet in general sucks, not just art sites, everything is so commercialized, and people are impossible to get along with these days. I barely even post what I draw anymore because you could literally upload a single black dot and it'd somehow turn into an argument

I SO agree, I stopped browsing art on DA years ago because I got so sick of porn/fetish content. I'm fine with nudity if its artistic, but a flip phone quality photo of someone's hairy butthole doesn't qualify

If you want to hear my thoughts: deviantart was the only one where I could consistantly get commissions. Social media? I have only gotten commissions from friends.

At this point, I've kind of just given up on digital art tbh. It sucks because back in the dA days, I LOVED it and would draw every single day - no joke. I'm trying to learn to relove it now that I'm on NeoCities- post my art in a gallery just for me, where nobody can comment or "like" or anything.

Modern internet sucks so much. Someone in an earlier post mentioned how each one is trying to be everything at once and that ends up failing, and yeah. That's it right there!

Yeah, I can't help but agree with everyone's sentiments.

As a freelancer that needs to get commissions to pay the bills, it feels like I have to use social media to supplement the gallery sites I use cuz they aren't getting traction on their own anymore. I have to advertise so much more than I used to, and it still feels like screaming into the void.

And-- as a hermitbrained person who struggles to talk to people-- having to use socials to support my art business gives me a special kind of hollow feeling. It feels so lonely! I think some folks are averse to artists advertising on their social media sites, and treat me like a brand more than an organism sometimes. Funnily enough, it led me to pet sites and fan forums again- because I need the community that I wasn't getting being an artist on other sites.

It's mostly social media and smart phones that destroyed the internet. People stopped making personal sites when too many normies (sorry but it's true) got online and businesses started monetizing every square inch of the net. Everything stopped being fun and started to be performative and got expensive. Needing to adapt websites to smart phone displays and Shockwave and then Flash ending support finally killed nearly everything that once was.

I don't think anyone who didn't live it is really going to understand what happened with the internet in those couple of short decades, The nostalgia millennials have. It's literally a place we can never go back to. My husband and I have some very different views on things but we were both nerds with techy dads and so we were early adopters of consumer tech. We even met in an MMO that of course has been offline for over a decade now.

I wish NeoCities was a little more robust, but I understand why it's not..there's no market.

If anyone else feels like this please definitely message me so we can reminisce like old people.

Part of the reason I returned to subeta and neopets and stuff was because how sick I've been of all the social media and modern internet. I mostly just look at art on twitter but I'm deeply limiting my usage now. I'm generally trying to cut my phone usage too given how much BEYOND the average person's usage I had been at on average recently.

I honestly never really used forums or talked to anyone much on the internet as a child. I was kinda scared of people even with the internet veil. Definitely good for little me but I wish teen me branched out more. Especially since nowadays we just play in the functional ruins of once grand cities. At least it still exists though, and I hope places like subeta can continue to live and be a nice place to be on the internet.

That makes it sound more exciting! It was definitely a magical time for me, since I think teenage years are magical for most people in some way..so much new stuff to find, and you have a bit more agency than when you were a kid so you can help create it, too.

(meant functional 🤐, fixed it) I never felt like I had much agency then though unfortunately. The remnants of being on the leash of an anxious parent as an only child, I guess. Hell, even now I don't feel like I have much. Definitely branching out now like I should have then and actually putting forth the effort to make and maintain a few friends. Just 10+ years late.

Late is always better than never. And now the sites are all so old that there are way more layers to it.

Hey, I'm a subeta and neo user too! Didn't really talk on forums as a teen either honestly.....

My digital art skills...leave a lot to be desired so I don't think I would've done well on art sites back then.

XD

Hey, I never even had the tools to make digital art and only ever made stuff traditionally. Sure, taking a pic or scan of your art often doesn't look as good as digital, but I still like it. I've seen people make some stellar traditional art and just use minor editing to make it look a little better when posted online. A lot of photo software that comes as the default in most devices now work better than you might expect too. Heck I'm taking snippets of my art with samsung's new feature that lets you make virtual stickers and I'm gonna make real ones with it! Subeta is going to be the first place I advertise! :D

I'm back again -- Artfol never really took off like I was hoping, and development on it really slowed ... the desktop version at least feels the same as it did when it launched, which was a little over a year ago at this point, and it's missing some key QoL features that I would like to have, so I don't feel much motivation to use it. :(

On the flipside, there's some talk about Sheezy(dot)art going around. Sheezyart(dot)com was apparently an art site that was around during the old dA days that I'd never heard of, but this new version is an unaffiliated successor. They were up for a little while at one point, had to bring the servers down, and are back up again for a (semi-)open beta. I hear good things, but it's small at the moment, most likely because of how registration works. There are only 10 free slots opened every 8 hours, and otherwise you have to pay a small sub fee for an account. Does anyone have an account or is keeping an eye on it - and if so, what's your opinion so far?? Could be a decent option if things continue as planned, as they aim to be out of beta by early next year.

- I'm sorry to hear about Artfol - I remember hearing about it in it's conception but the fact that it sort of slipped from the public eye is never good. I've heard okay-ish things about Inkblot, but it also seems to be struggling.

I'm one of the earlier users of Sheezy(dot)art and quite like it so far. It feels a bit like old school dA with journals, and the community actively engaging with one another - doing trades, journal memes, monthly challenges. There's a drawing upload of I think five to ten drawings a day as not to overwhelm the servers. Honestly - I don't have much grievances with it right now - the ability to customize your profile and have different personas is super useful - i have one for my main art, but i have another just for my comic. you could have a persona just for your favourite oc if you wanted. Moderation seems active and forgiving and the rules on tagging your art is pretty clear and concise (unlike some sites cough cough).

It makes me feel pretty hopeful!

I think one of the major issues of any site is funding. Unfortunately, this isn't the old internet and if you want your art site to stay afloat, especially as it gains traction, it needs ads. I hope Sheezy opens up to the idea of user ads - like how on FA or even here, on Subeta, you can advertise your commissions, your etsy store, whatever.

i got into sheezy on my first try with one of the 10 free slots SDFGHJKL and i've been enjoying it a lot!! profile customisation is honestly one of the best i've seen, it has a good mix of 'click here to change x' and straight html/css editor so both people who know nothing about coding and people who want to code are happy. the community is sweet!! i think there is a good amount of genuine engagement and people wanting to like......... interact

my big gripes are the notification system, lack of gallery folders and lack of favourites gallery :c like you can display art you've favourited on your profile but like only at most 10 will show? and there's no way to just link to all the art you've added to your favourites, which imo is a shame because i loved looking through ppl's favourites on da back in the day to find cool artists to follow. notifications are annoying too because you don't get notified when artists you follow upload, you have to go to your personal feed and see all uploads from everyone you follow, which means things can get buried if you haven' checked in a while. all things considered though it's a really chill site!! would recommend

this is my profile if anyone's curious!! :3c

also based neocities mention some pages back lmao i love neocities man, i spend so much time on my site creating stuff and it's so so fun i actually made an art gallery for my art too but it's one of the first things i made and i kind of hate it now and want to remake it rip

I was literally thinking about this the other day.. I grew up with the 2010s deviantART, and honestly, it was so much easier to get noticed. It was not even about the quality of the art, but it was so easy to find friends there! Back then, I did not really know how to draw that well, but I was able to find friends, do art trades, post about anything I wanted and it did not feel lonely. Now? I would not say my art is amazing, but it's definitely not bad.. But people just do not comment anymore, people do not favourite anymore, people do not talk.. Unless they are trying to pull the attention back to themselves. I honestly think it's the fault of dA's owners - Also now they added the "Do not show AI art" button... Excuse me, what? Should they not be against AI "art" in the first place?!

I miss the 2010's internet. In general. :( I am a cosplayer and honestly... it feels like a beauty contest nowadays. Not even a fun hobby, just people comparing and talking shit. :( Fortunately smaller creators on TikTok still give me the vibes of the "I am just having fun", so I am making friends there :)

I have a profile on Cara, which is sort of like instagram specifically for art (and very explicitly anti-AI). I don't know if that would really scratch the itch you're looking for since I don't know how much discussion goes on between members, I mostly followed a few artists I found via instagram over to that platform.

Instagram itself has become garbage for finding new and unknown artists because there is literally no way to search for anything but "most popular" anymore. It really seems to me that preventing any new life from taking root in your site is the first step in a death spiral but I don't run a massive social media conglomerate so what do I know.