Myspace. Lol.

DA barely even has actual art anymore. And I'm not talking about AI generated images - stuff like THIS is what gets posted near-constantly by fetuses and it somehow has more support than things with actual effort put into it:

So no. DA is bad, and not even the funny-bad it was a decade ago. It just sucks as a platform.

People keep mentioning Tumblr, but I've had remarkably little success there. Maybe I'm Tumblring wrong, but posting there feels like shouting into a void. Pretty much a flat zero interactions on anything I post. Every once in a while I get a new follower, but it always ends up being some bot account advertising some crypto scam or the like. I'm still posting there, but it's discouraging.

As for DeviantArt, well... eh.

My success on there has been much better than Tumblr, and many of the other sites that I post to, but that site has major problems. Mainly, as others have said, the fact that it's overrun by AI generations makes it awful for browsing for art or finding new artists. I think they drove away a lot of their audience with that move, likely because they drove away a lot of their best artists. But even still, my posts do get some attention there. It might be because I had already established a (small) following before the AI wave struck, so starting out there as a new artist now might not work for you. However, I do still gain new followers regularly, so I'm not sure about that either. For whatever reason, some people actually do still browse art on that site. The browsing experience is completely awful now, so I don't know how they do it, but they do.

Really, I think the best reason not to use it would just be to protest their endorsement of AI, which is fair. There are still much better sites to choose that don't want anything to do with AI. I've considered abandoning it for this reason, but my desire to get people to look at my art trumps my desire to stick it to DA's stupid management - not like me deleting my account would really affect them anyways. So, I'll continue posting there until the site finally dies for good, simply so I can take what I can get from it. People are still discovering my work there, and I'm hoping that some of them decide to follow me elsewhere too.

I guess my point is - try it if you want. It might still work out for you. Personally, I post art to just about every site I can get my hands on. Some are better than others, but it doesn't hurt to try. You never really know what you're going to get when you start posting to a new site, since each one is different, has different algorithms and different communities. Case in point: Tumblr, which everyone seems to recommend, has done absolutely nothing for me. Even my Pillowfort account gets more activity than my Tumblr (Pillowfort is notoriously... inactive). But on the other hand, I've started developing an unexpected following on Pixiv of all places. Not a huge one, but it's become one of my most active sites, and I wasn't really expecting to get much from it in the first place. So, you never know. So yeah, try DA. It couldn't hurt. But using it as your main site? Oh no. Nah, nope, hell no. Once upon a time, it would have been a great place to use as your main gallery, but those days have long since passed. If you use it at all, it's as a secondary site only.

As for alternatives? Well, everyone's already mentioned Tumblr... Pixiv is worth considering. That site is very Japanese, but it does have a very active community. All the comments I get are in Japanese though, and the machine translations sometimes don't make a lot of sense, so interacting with your audience on there can be difficult. However, it does allow you to reach a completely different audience that likely won't see your work on other sites.

Mastodon is another one. This is a much smaller community, but I seem to get a lot of engagement on there. Not exactly in terms of high numbers, but just a lot of people who actively comment and interact with artists. It's a nice place to interact with the art community since it's a bit smaller and there's less competition.

And lastly, Twitter/"X" - this is the site I have the biggest following on, and growing the fastest. This seems to be the case for most artists I know. For better or for worse, this does still seem to be the de facto capital of the internet art world at the moment. With how things are going, they might end up completely tanking sooner rather than later, but it's still a really good place to get noticed for the time being. However, it does help a lot to have other artist friends on there who can re-tweet-post your stuff to help you get off the ground. Once you have momentum, though, you'll just keep growing.

Oh my god yes. THIS.

This shit is EVERYWHERE on Deviantart, and it makes my last two braincells leave my head.

Used to use it very frequently but I'm never really active on there and that's mostly because it's kinda hard to get your art ACTUALLY seen from my experience. You can get seen as an artist but not the art itself. I frequently get followed on there but the people that do follow me never really seem to look at my art. Or even if they do it usually just is a small majority, and it's just looking at a few that are on the front page, leaving a favorite and then leaving, not even a comment which means a lot more to me as someone who tries to improve on my craft every day. Honestly I'd say stick to your guns on newgrounds and maaaybe post on instagram, twitter or tumblr if you feel like it or have the time. I don't know about any other platforms you could use.

Tumblr has 2 things to note - it has 2 ways of being found, one is hashtags and other is reblogs. Like with every community it has its own sub culture and interests. Let say if you do only original art, then only way to get noticed is to use very accurate tags of object of your post. With fandom it is easier. They recently added the traditional social media algo-based-popularity feed and paid posts, but they keep the old system too, so the algo based discoveries are not yet put in science and statistics yet, but ask me again next year.

There are also posts - maintained by tumblr itself, as far as I know which show trending tags, so if you want to ride that, you can pick up what is hot in there, and use those tags.

Most current tumblr users are 18 to 30 and from north America (US/canada), while I do these days art based on film from 1980s, then for example people, who comment and reblog/engage with my posts often react to 'funny tags' (something very tumblr and not seen anywhere else) and too engage that 18-to 30 audience even with 1980s fan art, you have to think a bit like them, so I sometimes pick random peoples comments and respond to those, so next time they respond, and laugh all their followers see the chat and look me profile up.

2nd is that while it has very large user-base, 50% is from northern America (as I said above) so best time to post in there is 5 pm to 12 am EDT - and then you can convert that optimal time to local time of yours. And then there's that you have to figure out from where your followers are from or people, who like same things as you. Some people counter various time zones with self-reblogs.

Then 3rd thing is - often tumblr users pick 'if to click someones blog' is based on mouse-over of your profile (your blog header) - it has to be fitting for your target audience. Mine has neutral language and a joke, people I want to engage, like that.

Tumblr is a blog and a website, not social media - You have to make it be YOU. And you have to make sure you tag things proper and if you do not reblog (like I do not due my blog be my art showcase) , then make sure you like and comment others works and do not forget using funny tags, when you reblog or post.

Hope this helps a bit. :) While I do not have masses as followers, I have works I get more than 10 times or even 100 times more notes than i have followers. So you can get out to people there, but it works different from IG/X or Tiktok.

NO.

THAT PLACE IS FETISH HEAVEN

RUN.

K

That’s helpful, thanks!

I have been tagging all of my posts pretty thoroughly, but I’m not sure what you mean by “funny tags” - could you elaborate on that?

I still use dA for posting my fetish art. But it's clear the site is dying and that's kinda sad.

From my last evenings post :

Funny tags is very 'Tumblr' they do not really exist in any other social media or website subculture.

or here's another example of 'funny tags', when someone reblogged my post and added this:

They are 'funny tags' in sense that they do not do anything to the machine - you wont be added to some fancy algo and be better found, but those are small jokes, comments or takes people add to middle of real tags for other people to find. And every now and then if you do a good comment people react to that - I do not recommend offending or being rude in there, its about fun.

Seems alright from what little I have seen. I will say it is more tucked away from the rest of the internet and feels more professional. Sorta like something a creative team would use to find inspiration.

God no. That place is a cesspit lmao. The userbase and the staff are both just plain fucked.

No, not really; AI has basically ruined it.

Try Pixiv.

Might stop posting on DA.

Hidden gems amirite.

I should be used to this, but I am still surprised of how many good unknown hidden gems are there. You find an artist that is so amazing and good and then your heart is like one of 2 or 3 they got. You look further on their site and socials and see - those are the artists own works, this is legit person, crazy good/talented, but unknown and hidden.

Happens so often and happened more in past, just modern platforms like X, IG etc stopped promoting finding good stuff, they started to show the popular and paid stuff lowering quality and visibility, but platform itself got better engagement.

I like at evenings sit down on a random platform - be it NG, Tumblr etc, and then just dig, dig, dig, dig and reach finally to so called no names, but talented artists. I just wish i'd have time to do it more often.

I was referring to the "funny tags" but I agree with what you're saying.

I was incoherently rambling anyway- its just one of my emo-aspects-with-modern social media and I used my chance to cry out loud and share my internal suffering, he he.

Ah! I had one of these a while ago. Someone reblogged one of my posts (the only reblog I got, in fact) and commented only with a tag like that. I didn't understand the purpose of that when I first saw it.

tbh as someone who started out posting their art on da as their first non 3ds game proper social media , no. the site used to be pretty small and cozy in my experience but good lord has it gone Downhill especially with the ai stuff

although i was like 10 or 11 so my standards were probably just pretty low lmao

It was never really a good 'art' site in first place since constructive criticism is highly frowned upon there for some reason. I would see it more as a Tumblr / Twitter alternative.

It used to be a good site to start to build yourself a name. You could easily get people to notice your pieces by joining groups. But now the whole site is flooded with stolen art, AI pictures, political images ( not even art ), memes & bots. It's not really motivating to think that 3/4 of your followers aren't humans.

As if it weren't bad enough, the art that you post there is immediately fed to the site's AI, regardless of your consent ( the whole 'Opt-out' thing is fake, you will feed the AI ). Also, the mods openly defend stolen art, even when the creator themselves report the stolen piece ( they force you to fill a DMCA form, on which the thief can just press the 'it was a mistake' button & dox the original artist ).

I could make a novel about why this site 's staff is terrible ( politically-influenced censorship, defending thieves making money from stolen art, defending real life 'soft-core' cp, etc ), but I think I told everything about the art part.

So, I doubt that it's a good idea to expand there. Unless you're fine with those.

Before....yes but now....no

lol this was an interesting read. I didn’t know the internet was so chaotic.

i personally started out with deviantart as a digital artist back in 2016, but honestly the landscape of the site is much different from how it used to be.

All that Eclipse, AI art, and other drama effectively killed the website. Posting on deviantart in 2023 and in the future makes no sense anymore, it's pretty much a dumpster of crap and most featured shit on deviantart nowadays is AI generated. Not to mention, it's become an even bigger hub for weird fetish artists and people who seek out that garbage.

Like, even if you're stubborn and will make an account, you will get barely any attention because no one really uses deviantart anymore. The site is long past it's prime, and it's just overall not a good choice to publish your art.

Nah, knowing how the community in da is like, it might be best if you stay here for now 😬

Well, many here have already posted their opinions with regards to dA's viability re: 'small artists'.

To add my two cents (not adjusted for inflation): No. FUCK NO. Art thieves, raging drama queens bickering about the pettiest of shit, creepy-ass weirdos DM'ing you to draw what they want for them 'or else' and of course, their enthusiastic embracing of AI-generated 'art' (that their CEO is an avid AI shill/'artist' and dA automatically opted-in artists AND their works by default for use by the dataset for its 'DreamUp' AI generator speaks volumes) as well as letting the place become overrun with the stuff.

What's that? Just block the offending AI 'artists' that don't bother tagging it such? Well, too bad, turns out you can only block 500 users and then you're forced to see their shit on your feed anyway (some have suggested reaching out to these 'artists' and ask them to block you to get around this limit - personally, I'd rather stick my hand in a jar full off pissed-off bullet ants).

And that's just the tip of the iceberg; I still keep my account open (although I've removed my illustrations there shortly after the AI shitstorm) there for two reasons: one - there's still genuinely good stuff out there to be found amongst the artistic sludge and AI-generated abominations, and two - given I've had my own work stolen by art thieves there on more than one occasion, maintaining my account there is the quickest way I can slap a DMCA on their asses should I catch them or inform other artists of their work being stolen.

Update: not anymore. I abandoned that sinking ship.

Why’s this thread been bumped again?

It’s the same post repeated over and over.

Like, it’s just a website, guys. Don’t use it.