#stg as soon as a fanartist does more than draw your favorite whiteboy everyone throws a fit

[tallaroo]

genuine question, why do you think you are owed likes and reblogs for posting art? as an artist myself, i find myself deleting social media often because if i’m on one site for too long i start equating my art’s value to my numbers. it doesn’t harm artists to not reblog their work. at the end of the day, likes and reblogs are really just numbers that show how many people both saw your work and wanted to let you know they appreciated it to some extent. if you care so much about the ratio, would you rather people not like your work at all if they don’t want to share it on their own blog? just because a person thinks your art is good doesn’t mean they’ve done you wrong by not sharing it with their friends. you have to admit that mindset sounds pretty entitled.

what i want to know is: what do likes and reblogs mean to you? if even 1000 is a small number for you, i’m curious why it’s so important for people who appreciate your work to press buttons to let you know. why do you create art? is it for yourself? for others? because you want to make a living? if you plan on making money off of it, i can maybe understand why exposure is very important to you, but if not, i think you really need to take a step back and look at how you are reacting to your numbers. compare your numbers to smaller artists’ and think about how you might sound.

if i know tumblr, i imagine there’s a possibility you might just read this and call me something like “deranged” for writing such a long message about this, but i hope you can take it as a genuine and heartfelt message instead. i’ve simply seen this attitude on this website far more than any other and it’s disappointing to see; the numbers on this site really don’t mean as much as people here seem to think they do. it’s important to reflect on why you create and why you choose to share your creations, because you aren’t owed attention or even any expression of appreciation for it. each like and reblog is a gift in its own — sure, a very easy gift to give, and not one of much value, but a gift nonetheless. people give you them out of kindness and appreciation, they don’t pay them to you as part of an exchange.

-🤖

I’m going to start this off by saying that my post was meant for all fan artists but mostly the smaller ones on this site. I used my numbers cause that’s whats available to me so I can get the numerical point across. It’d be an asshole move to pull up random numbers from an artist smaller than me. The point was to show that if it hurts with bigger blogs it will hurt smaller blogs even more.

I’m in school for art, I plan to be a professional in the field and the biggest thing my professors have told me is exposure and outreach means everything. You get the job through connections and visibility. Yeah social media and fanart is a hobby in the end and you shouldn’t get obsessed with numbers, it’ll lead to toxic thinking that will do you more harm than good. But artists big or small run on validation for their hard work. Disagree all you’d like on that but I’ve never met an artist who doesn’t share their work with someone.

Tumblr is a platform that only works if you reblog. Likes mesn literally nothing here, this isn’t twitter or instagram. Most fan artists I’ve spoken to do or plan to do commissions to support themselves. They can’t do that if no one sees their art can they? That post was never about me and my own numbers it was pointing out a universal problem this platform has. I don’t know why people can’t seem to get that through their heads.

Every time an artist speaks out about this we’re called entitled. The ‘small gift’ of a reblog is what allows more content for your fandom to be made. I’d love to see how y’all would cope if you didn’t have the amount of fanart and fanfic that you do. Fan content is the only reason fandoms stay alive as long as they do, remember that.

And since you’re going to put the words in my mouth anyways, yeah you’re deranged : )

#roo got a letter #anonymous #stg as soon as a fanartist does more than draw your favorite whiteboy everyone throws a fit