been doing some thinking on what it means to be an internet artist in 2024 and it kind of sucks tbh. there’s so much focus on numbers, but numbers aren’t fulfilling. what really matters to me is community engagement, or the actual response i get from my audience. a number (be it a like or reblog) doesn’t tell me anything. but tags do, postulating about the meaning of my drawings in the tags or my inbox or replies means something. but you can’t get those kind of thoughtful comments without reblogs. and then, those thoughtful comments are SO few and far in between, it’s genuinely kind of depressing. like, let’s say you post a drawing and it gets 100 notes. great! 90 of them are likes and 10 of them are reblogs. MAYBE one person will tag it with any of their personal thoughts. and that’s a big maybe. even small comments like “cute!” or “i love this so much omg” are worth more than silence. idk. i’ve been on the internet for a really long time and this new wave of reclusiveness from audiences just kind of sucks. it’s demotivating and isolating and it takes a lot of the joy out of creating. when you think to yourself, “man, i bet they’ll love this drawing!” only to have like, two people tops say as much… when u post ur art online for free like i do, that engagement is literally The Only Thing u get out of it. so it’s sad to watch in real time as it becomes sparser and sparser. whatever. who cares (i do.)