Apr 19 2007
Why do people follow the masses into the deep pits of hell when heaven is around the corner?
I couldn’t think of a better 
analogous title but anyway this is another one of my “rants & raves” (or as other people would like to call “Editorials”) Today’s feature is regarding comparing 2 art communities: Deviantart and Sheezyart. I’m pretty active on Deviantart, since there’s a lot of people on there so you’ll always have at least one person who knows about Clannad or Suzumiya Haruhi. Unfortunately, while the community may be good…the site sucks. It always loads slow, times out constantly and features like “reading comments without loading them in a separate page” are for “paid” subscribers only. Their subscriptions aren’t cheap either! With all that money that they get from subscribers you’d think they’d do something about their servers. On top of that, they have some pretty ridiculous policies (as dumb as youtube may I add) where if you made a flash movie but say you used some Jpop song, they will remove your movie (and now I think they may ban you for a week) for posting “copyright material”. YET if you post a link in your description to your movie it’s totally ok. Anotherwords, they don’t want “copyrighted material” residing on their servers. Uhh….then you might as well get rid of fanart you turds.
Deviantart rant aside…there’s a popular alternative called Sheezyart. Sheezyart has had its ups and downs but at this point, it runs smoothly, quickly and all the features that Deviantart makes you pay for….Sheezyart gives you for free. Now given that SA has less subscribers could contribute to it….but they don’t have the stupid copyrighted flash movie policy so you can submit all your flash movies and no one’s gonna ban you for it. Now the question remains….WHY do people still stay on deviantart?
I noticed that most people who populate Sheezy, are idiotic 10-13 year olds who on the sight of “kissing” or “hugging” freak out. Also anything that they “don’t understand” in an artwork automatically makes them go crazy and flip out. Oh and you get your usual batch of “Omg lolz11!1!” crowd. But if the people who have half a brain left DA and came to Sheezy this could be improved…yet people continue to stay on Deviantart, deal with the timeouts, deal with the lag (the pages load as fast as if you were on dialup..even if you’re on a freaking T3.) I just don’t understand. I left DA yesterday because I got sick of refreshing 20 times to view deviations or load a comment. At points of the day it wouldn’t even load period. The only time I was able to access it is early in the morning or very late at night.
So the conclusion is…..do people just follow the masses? Is it the “if everyone else jumped off the bridge” effect? Or am I the “true” deviant, who leaves the masses for something better, than joining them in something worse? If you have experience with either community, I’d love your input on this issue.
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14 Responses to “Why do people follow the masses into the deep pits of hell when heaven is around the corner?”
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When I still drew regularly I would upload my crappy drawings to DA every few days, but my experience with it has never been as bad as you say. It always loads decently fast for me, and I’ve never experienced downtime with the site except for regular maintenance.
As for why the ’smart’ people stay on DA - it’s established, well known and have a long history. Sheezy art might be stable now, but can it handle the traffic and volumes of information and data DA deals with everyday (DA has 35mil submissions whereas SA only has around 900k)? How much trouble would it be to move all your art to a new site (many artists use DA as a portfolio)? How do you find all the people you’re already watching? Moving site comes with a lot of problems just like moving house in real life.
I’m not familiar with it, so I don’t know what features Sheezy Art has, but I don’t see a print function there, so a lot of (usually the best) artists who sale prints aren’t going to get anything out of Sheezy. On top of that, with the smaller population, even if they do prints they won’t sell as many. This is a two way thing, but I imagine this is one of the biggest reason why the best artists don’t bother moving.
I’m not trying to defend DA btw, it’s got its share of problems - subscription being one, but I don’t mind too much since they need to maintain their servers. I’m just trying to point out some possible reasons why people aren’t moving.
I’ve never sold a single thing on DA for 2 reasons. They don’t allow you to sell fanart, and nobody gives a flying fuck about original characters unless you’re a SUPER popular arist. THe prices DA takes from your sales is like you’re making a dollar per artwork and it still has to sell for like $10. They take all your money its not even worth selling prints through them.
People aren’t moving because people are stupid.
Jeez, isn’t it TOO MUCH to make your own site (or failing that, sign up for free webhosting services)?
I mean, HTML isn’t THAT hard to learn, and PHP’s really easy to learn. There are free CSS templates you could use, and well, hosting your own site is oodles of fun :3
Not to mention your site, your rules :3
Most people don’t want to deal with learning something new, especially if it was a pain to learn the first time. Many who just want to post their pictures and not deal with other stuff may just find a solution they are comfortable with and just stick with it. It’s not like strong challengers are jumping out all the time to wrestle fans away from DA.
Also, how well known is Sheezyart? Nobody wants to commit to a service that will go belly-up, whereas DA seems to have been around forever.
On the other hand, every time I have tried to use Deviant Art, I have given up because of how craptastic the servers are. In terms of usability, the website scrapes the bottom of the barrel.
“Why do people follow the masses…”
Because, in part, humans are herd animals. A little known fact is
that the residual radiation from the asteroid impact which
caused the dinosaur extinction also caused a mutation which
allowed the genetic material from two species to intermingle
(Order - Primates, Family - Hominidae, Genus - Homo…and
Order - Artiodactyla, Family - Bovidae, Genus - Bos). The result
turned out to be Homo Sapiens…however, Linnaeus had made
a spelling error in his taxonomy. Since this was a combination
of the Homo & Bos genera, the proper name should be
“Homoos Sapiens”
By the way, Homoos is pronounced:
hoe-mooz
with emphasis on moos…you can even drag the sound a bit
as in mooooos.
I do quite a bit of personal design work. I remember setting up a DA account not too long ago, and totally giving up on it. I definitely agree when you say it’s a pain to deal with. I don’t even think it’s worth the trouble for the exposure. There are better art communites out there, and I found that I was much better off setting up my own site.
LOL, don’t forget that if all people will move to SA, it will be become exactly like DA. It’s perfectly forseeable.
And this lag-problem is quite recent. I haven’t got THAT much of a trouble with moving around and I am on DA for 3 years already.
Somehow I’m not willing to get an account on Sheezy Art - fist: it’s layout is even more annoying than DA’s.
Second - most of my friends are there and are not planning to move either.
Third - having lots of accounts is an idiocy (too many identity thieves around - I prefer to stay in one place just to make sure that ‘me’ is actually me). Not to mention that establishing popularity again isn’t that easy. And popularity for me is quite important not because of a stupid ego-thing, but simply because my art will be my source of income one day. I got some job offers through DA already.
Not to mention news/contests announced or advertized - some of them pretty interesting. Simply - a lot more is happening around DA and I think it won’t change for a while.
So - not after DA will be come completely screwed up, I’d still prefer DA than any other art communities
Tee> Well you must be a great artist to get job offers from DA…all I get from DA is “WHEN ARE YOU MAKING THE NEXT NAROOTO MOVIE!!??!”
I’ve had my account since ‘02 and haven’t had too many problems. Granted, I use it for browsing; it’s better to just upload your stuff onto your own server.
Plus, Dev is established and therefore a better jumping off point if you want to get your name/art out there.
Ive had one account in 03, left DA came back in 05. You’re right about browsing sometimes can be ok (if you get lucky) but like when I go into my DA inbox to look at comments or deviations its SUCH a pain. on SA its like the comment is “right there” you don’t have to “click” on it to see it. The only way to see a comment right away is to subscribe on DA…but on SA its free…its like the livejournal vs Greatest Journal controversy. Everyone uses LJ but GJ gives you so much more free crap which is why I use it so often.
Considering the deafening silence which has met my admittedly bad joke,
I had guessed that people either didn’t understand it or did, but didn’t feel
like responding. That’s okay, though I purposely made it bad so that it would
elicit groans and comments of how bad it was.
However, a thought has occurred to me that it may have been offensive to
some people. If so, I apologize, though the joke was meant to be a “science”
joke and not making fun of homosexuality.
Here are some hints:
- herd animals
- Family - Bovidae (think bovine)
- the portmanteau of Homo and Bos (Homoos)
- the pronounciation of Homoos (rhymes with booze)
Again, sorry for any confusion…the portmanteau was meant to be a bad pun, that’s all.
Sparta Koolaid Guy is full of win.
mochi> your joke was silly I just sometimes can’t get to all the comments cause they seem to pour in for my rant posts really fast XD