My older art was more "fandom" oriented. I kept it more private but I involved myself in the "animation meme community" in the 2010's.
I used to contribute to that but all of the drawings I made are really old and terrible.
I sometimes wonder if the people who saw them still think about them in any way...or that whole "online subsect" at all in it's totality.
(I am referring to a specific subsect in the animatino meme community...)
I guess it's a little embarrassing but I find that period to be extremely charming and funny in retrospect.
Objectively it's not funny, there were a lot of bad things happening ("bird", "lizard", "sleepy royal"...lol...) but I can't help but see it through rose-tinted glasses.
I think I am charmed by it because it represents pure innocence to me, the time, not the things that were happening.
It was just a bunch of teenagers mucking about online, even with all the pedantic useless "drama" baloney (so many "drama" videos).
As of now I can see it's a bygone era, completely eradicated and shifted into something else by the waves of online culture.
The boats scatter into different oceans.
Their boats either ride the waves as they seek new ventures or they rot with their anchor pigeon-holed into the same archetype and face, too afraid to let the past become the past.
I do not like fandom anymore, at least in it's current state.
I could say that there is something "missing" and "different" but the reality is that I am too old to engage with it.
I still miss it though when I think about it, even if it was really really really really stupid and annoying and lame.
I think the idea of not being able to let go of a persona is probably due to ego, it's what defines them and it's not easy to let that go.
I don't think that's inherently a bad thing but it can possibly damage the soul if a persona is held onto for too long.
I personally do not wish to practice this as I prefer the fluid abstractness of online identity and it's not good to get too attached.
Some people stay as one person as if online is real life, although at this point it kind of is.
Online is more real than real life because it's an abundance of real life (although that's not entirely true because 2020 reality AI abstraction is horrible...what a great future...).
Some people want to blur the lines of their online self and real self but I think it's good for the two to be different.
I shifted my entire artistic vision when I had an extremely vivid dream.
It was as if I was trapped in another world, reality bent in impossible ways.
I became obsessed with the world I saw and everything I do circulates this world and trying to understand it and pull the curtain back even further, to lose myself forever in that world.
90% of my art takes place in that world, I don't think I will ever get over it.
I have never had a dream like that since.
Look up the album artwork for "Yesstory" and find the original painting for that cover, it's by Roger Dean.
I was looking at that painting before I had that dream, it essentially looked like that and shaped that dream, the visuals.
Sometimes ideas and things just come and go as one gets older but I don't think this "world" will ever leave me, I hope it doesn't.
I usually call it "Orange World" but that's not an accurate name, and it sounds silly.
I think the world is called "Carriage" or something.
It's prodominantly orange due to "unfilled infinite space" but calling it "Orange World" is a reductive descriptor.
Reflecting on it, I am more in love with that world than I usually comprehend.
I wish it was real, that I could go back even though the dream was petrifying, that I could slip in and lose myself.
It was beautiful despite it all, it felt so real and it never happened again.
It was as if an otherworldly force took me away and tooled around with me and sent me back, that there is something grander in this life and universe.
I am having a hard time describing my sentimentality to this world but there is something about it that is intangibly entrancing and fascinating to me.
I sometimes can't help but feel that I really made contact with something, that it managed to really take hold of me in that dream, that it was more than just a dream.
It feels strangely cathartic to talk about this world in this way.
It's silly, but it's more to me than just "an imaginary world", do you understand?
I don't enjoy social media that much anymore.
I much prefer this way of putting myself out online, I am too inept for the online social media thing. (Sorry to DMs or any message I have not replied to. I appreciate the kind words deeply.
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When there are a lot of eyes and I know that there are a lot of eyes I get way too self-concious and it destroys my ability to express myself authentically.
Technological expression ends up being a lot of approximations rather than straight genuinity.
That isn't to say that there is no genuinity in technological output but it gets filtered in a way that feels defeating.
The mechanics of social media causes too much internal conflict, it's slot-machine esque structure is very anti-art.
It degrades the art into an infinite novelty product of the slot-machine. Putting in time for dopamine.
The cost is very low so a lot of time gets wasted, and it turns the art that is seen into pleasant but dull sludge, with no time to sit there and fixate on it, as the scrolling inevitably must continue.
The structures of social media encourages very bad things on the artists as well.
With "views", and "likes" and such making a horrific reward system that is, again, like a slot-machine.
Artists sort of become addicts to attention, the thrill of posting and getting likes and views is unparalelled, and the withdrawal of likes or views distorts ones self-worth and drive horribly.
The artist's style may degrade in a disingenuous way that serves more for their audience, aka the kidnappers of self-worth and dopamine, rather than genuine expression. It's abusive and weird.
Social media is very anti-art.
Yes, audience reception is integral to the experience of the artist, however, when it's commodified in such a degrading and invisible way, it absolves the art completely.
Neocities is a fantastic way to present art.
An artist is able to have full control and is able to ask the audience to actually engage with the art. To look, to sit, to stare, to wander. It's not discardable.
It's very pure and whimsical to me
It's all the best parts of social media without the stupid parts.
No addiction, no droning scroll, no attack on self-worth, it's just blissful and fun.
It's sad that most are just complacent in letting the centralized online do their work for them, because coding is "too hard" or whatever.
It would be way better if every artist had a neocities.
The mechanics of social media are a sickness.
It's better to get no attention than to get any attention at all.
When the likes start rolling in, the eyes, the attention, I get into a state of cathartic delerium, it turns into a domestically abusive relationship.
This is all without referring to how it's encouraged to be detachedly ironic, bitter, and spiteful to almost everything.
It's a slot-machine TV show, so anything that does not please is submittable to any form of vile insults or harrassment if the art is deemed "unpleasant".
I have not personally experienced this, but I see it and it's horrible.
The structures devalue humanity and genuinity due to it's incredibly soulless and degrading nature, so that defines the way most users engage with one another.
Everything is rusted into a golem of undefinable and vacuous qualities.
This may all sound like I am yelling at a cloud but I can't help but feel this way.
The older-ish (2010's) internet was like this too but I feel it's just gotten more saturated and faster.
