Holy shit the new DA Lay-Out is a Mess!
I've known about DeviantART for about 10 years now, had this account for 8 years of those and never have I seen a website be turned into such a mess! I'm used to websites changing, it happens all the time. YouTube had a couple of updates over time as well, and while some were a bit eh at first they never changed what the site was at a base of it all, this was why I could deal with it. I never even complained much about sites changing as I didn't care, as much as I didn't agree with some of the chances. Yes I did complain a bit about Tumblr and while it sucks and made a mayor amount of people leave, it's still Tumblr at the base of it all.
I feel like the internet is slowly kidde'fying everything because: Oh no, we have to think about the younglings!
Which I find ridiculous because as a parent you should be keeping track of what your kid does online in the first place. My parents did this for at least the first 10 years of my life. Not everything is made for kids, Jesus!
But it always appears that, the bigger a website or company gets, the greedier they become and the less they start to focus on what the actual people want.
Even writing this journal is a pain as I have to write at the bottom all the time! I cannot scroll down to get a general view. I didn't mind Eclipse being an option but it feels like DeviantART is just so proud of the trash they produced that they want to shove it down everyones throat whether they like it or not. I understand they'd like to be innovative, but look at Furaffinity! They changed the lay-out but listened to the people and did it in a way that was innovative but didn't change the site at it's core.
This is a nightmare! Privacy is gone, you cannot change that. They say they added tons of new stuff, but removed 20 things, maybe adding 3 things they liked. Core Membership is a disaster, they took most of the things away that made it unique and gave it to others. HTML is no longer a thing so people can no longer customize their pages. I can HARDLY navigate or sort things the way I like. It took me ages to figure out how use the new mailbox and I still hate it. I HATE how groups and artists I follow are all pushed together in one page now so I have to scroll for ages to find the artists and groups I mainly keep track of or older art of the artists/groups I follow! They say they tested this on people but where? They only listen to those who are genuinely positive about this change or ask questions while ignoring literally everyone else. And from what I know only about 10-20% percent uses Eclipse, most other people loved the old lay-out as do I.
If this is the future of DeviantART I sadly do not wish to be a part of it and while I was already very much innactive here I still loved to follow my fave artists. I will do the same as most people and go innactive from May 1th-3th to see what DA thinks of that.
If you want to see me be more active you can follow my Instagram: Lisspeed
Or if you would like to still talk with me and watch me reblog my interests then my Tumblr: Just-Ornstein
You can also ask for my Discord, but I will give a private Note of that.
Ragnarok Online?
I used Instagram a lot nowadays. Kind of sad since I still remember back when I was a huge DA user, such nostalgia.
But out of curiosity does anyone here play Ragnarok Online, or ever heard of the game? It's something I've really enjoyed playing lately and one of the few MMOs I ever liked.
Where are things now
I kinda became inactive on Tumblr as well with the whole purge thing, mainly because a lot of the people I followed actually became inactive because of it and moved elsewhere.
You can mainly find me on Discord and Instagram nowadays. I'm still here, but if you want to chat it's more likely to get my attention there haha. And if you want to see my art, same thing. xD
Destroying Cringe Culture
As a young child our brains is often very creative because we aren't influenced by a lot, we don't care what other people think and just do what we love. Want to create an OC with 4 pairs of wings that can shoot laser beams from their eyes? No problem! Want a universe where men can get pregnant? Go right ahead! Want to have a universe where dinosaurs never went extinct? Just do you!
But as we get older and mainly when we go online, those ideas are often looked down upon because people are so keen on certain standards to a point where it actually hurts. When I came to DeviantART I was but a child, my first couple accounts ended because I was too young, it deeply saddened me back then because of all the effort I put into said accounts. At that time I barely understood what DeviantART was about too, because I was so young my English sentences sounded like someone put a sentence through google translate 20 times. Some people still remember when I sounded like this and oh my, do I cringe when I looked back on how I wrote. But that is alright because it's a part of personal growth.
People are so keen on telling us what we do wrong but do they ever look at what a person does right? You make one tiny mistake and suddenly that is your personality for the rest of your life. And it sucks that even adults still treat people that way. But of course karma is a bitch and someday people will see what they did wrong, hopefully at least.
But now about one of the things that really bothers me and I came to realize as years passed. Nowadays people get so extremely limited in their creativity. Why? Because there are hundredths of people who keep telling them how wrong they are. Your character is autistic while you're not autistic yourself? It's offensive. You character can get pregnant while they're a dude? That's fetishizing and thus offensive. Your character has 4 wings and can drain life from people? They're too powerful and should be nerved. Your character becomes a reformed villain? Do you have any idea that they will never be a good person due to the mistakes they made? Your character is covered in scars? Man what an emo... Your character is covered in rainbow colours? They're super ugly and waaay too perfect!
It's sickening by the amount of excuses people can come up with. ESPECIALLY when they use this against a young child who's still exploring their creativity. Back in the past it hurt me a lot, I tried to change my characters so I would please people and the more I changed them, the less was left of myself in them until they just grew dull and boring. But apparently some people just like dull and boring more. Weren't most of the most original character created by people who tried to break logics?
How is suddenly EVERYTHING offensive? Unless you're being plain racist (like blackfaced for example, that's something very offensive) or abusive towards groups, etc, I don't think one can be offensive by just making a character that is autistic when they did proper research. And heck, even if they didn't, as long as they don't come to me personally and scream into my face that I'm autistic, I don't care. Why does everything have to kidfriendly all of a sudden? If I want to write about abuse and what it did to my character I want to write about that and not cover it up for whatever reasons. If you worry about every single opinion or thing someone does or say, that isn't even addressed to you, then I can only imagine how unhappy you slowly start to feel. That shit affects you... Why would you let every single thing affect you? Unless someone personally attacks me on the internet I don't feel offended anymore nowadays. I mean, I used to dislike how people make every socially awkward character autistic and self-diagnose themselves. But overtime... I just stopped caring you know? If people like that or that makes them comfortable well, good for them! They do not affect me, they're not me and like I said, unless they come to me acting like a total asshole, I don't care anymore. If that is what makes you happy, good for you and I genuinely mean that!
So why is it suddenly so bad to have a rainbow alicorn pony OC? Why is it so bad to have a character that is good at 5 things at the same time? Why is it suddenly so bad to write about a bad event that happened to your character? Why is it so bad to make your character immortal? There are many more things I could mention and I could go on for hours but at this point I just stopped caring. With Damon I made a character different from any character I had ever made and so many times I worried about him being a gary-stue but overtime I just threw that fear out of the window. And that way I created a original character that represents me, that has parts of me in him, that I like, that I relate to. Damon is covered in scars, has wings, is pretty strong, immortal, he's able to get pregnant and has had an awful life to a point where even now that he finally has his happy ending, he still worries that he might lose it all someday. He still has tons of flaws, he still has his problems. And out of all the things this character has what do the people on the internet point at when they try to find something 'cringy'? The first facts I mentioned about him. But I stopped caring because there are also tons of people who do love him, probably because unlike with previous characters, this one was genuine and poured so much thought into him that even after 3 years I still love him and haven't abandoned him like most of my other OCs.
There are probably things I haven't mentioned yet, or things I haven't elaborated on and due to that people will also always twist your words to use them against you. But like I said, I changed a lot in the last couple of years, especially in the last month or so and it has gotten to a point where I no longer care. And if someone decides to be an asshole I just block them or ignore them. And if they go on anon or send an entire crowd after me? Well that only shows how much of an coward those people really are. People are so confident online, but irl they wouldn't even dare to say half of it straight to your face. Which is why I stopped giving online people so much power, chances that I'll ever meet them irl are very slim so unless they're an online friend I've had for a while I no longer care.