Hey babes,

Over the past few months, I've gotten to hate deviantART. I've never really been part of the community here; I'm a compulsive lurker. I'm pretty damn shy. But that doesn't mean I don't see what goes on around here.

This place is supposed to be a community for amateur artists to explore their talents, communicate, get feedback, and grow. What we see blossoming here is not creativity. It's repetition, copyright infringement, and a poisonous community of assholes. I'm not saying that everyone on dA is an asshole. There are some very nice people here. I'm not saying all the art is shit. A lot of deviants have real talent and make fantastic stuff.

But the community is full of drama, hate, jealousy, elitism, stealing... need I go on? You all know already. It's amongst the upstanding members, the trolls, and even the staff. deviantART is one massive popularity contest.

Instead of being in high school, where you have the cliques of preps, jocks, anime geeks, goths, and nerds, you have an art environment with cliques of fanart, emo poetry, smut, and unoriginal dramatic images. People are just as immature. People still blindly follow trends and sell out for a dose of pretend popularity. What the fuck is this place?

All the shit that makes the front page and even the Daily Deviations... Everyone always pounces on complainers and calls them jealous, but it's true. A lot of the most popular, highlighted stuff is shit. Unoriginal. Crap. Done before. And a lot of the stuff that never gets seen is shit as well. That's not to say that everything on the site is shit. Like I already said, a lot of it is awesome. Some awesome stuff makes the front page, and some never gets seen. And yes, I am jealous.

This site nurtures jealousy. It's a blatant popularity contest. Items are ranked by popularity, items are displayed by popularity, works are given DDs because someone is popular enough to get recommendations, whether or not they have any kind of talent, and sometimes the people in charge of DDs don't even read the descriptions.

There are people on this site better than I am, and they deserve attention. I am better than other people on this site, and I deserve some attention. There are different opinions of better, and I recognize that and respect that. Every artist on here deserves spotlight, some more than others, but mainly...

Creativity deserves spotlight. Real, true art deserves spotlight. People who put their heart and soul into their work, come up with their own concepts, and love their art. Instead, we lavish attention on people who do the exact same thing over and over, especially when that one trick is not even their idea.

Talk about the decline of culture.

And having said all this, I'm going to say one more thing. I'm not a whiner. I'm not going to bitch and moan and then stay here hoping for someone to give me a cookie and call me an artistic genius. I will delete all my stuff from my gallery, and I'm sorry to anyone who might be put out by that.

Everyone who favorited my work, thank you so much.
Everyone who commented on my work, a thousand more thank yous. It really makes a person feel good about themselves.
All the wonderful people on here, keep at it. I don't hate you or your work, I just hate what this place is becoming.

I will be uploading things to my own webspace, and I'll update this journal with a link when it's ready to roll.


---Silversweet