intention is so beautiful in Islam, your thought process, your justification, your genuine feelings are what are taken into consideration

As a fellow artist who is also enduring the shift from art as a fun creative medium in fandom spaces, to specific daily content TM.

Do you think it will ever shift back? Or do you think it is going to get worse from here on out? Do you have any thoughts on how artists can feasibly push against this?

Or is it a thing where you think that any real art engagement, is going to have to once again fall back into more traditional normie spheres (?) I don’t know if I explained this properly, but I would love to hear your thoughts if you have any.

Boof. Some of y'all came out swinging with the big art questions lol

Personally, and take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I've been in art/fandom spaces for almost 20 years now. Today's art/fandom climate is drastically different than even 6 years ago, if you can believe it (obv there are consistencies, but I'm esp speaking on how I interacted in both fandom and webcomics),

And I hate to be the glass half empty guy, but unless something monumental changes in the internet climate, with multiple variables, I see it getting worse, not better. But that's partially on how corporations influence/run the apps we all utilize. Right now, I'd even go so far as to say an entire generation is being brought up with fast consumerism which is unfortunately resulting in some sense of entitlement. And it's not just gen-z getting influenced, don't get me wrong. I don't buy into that stupid generational war crap, so I’m not meaning to single anyone out. But I think younger gen-z have been raised on an internet vastly different than what I was. Hell, the entitlement in general on the internet is kind of disheartening.

But to get back to the core route, there has been this weird expectation from multiple apps and companies that art needs to be frequent to be relevant. Comics need fast updates, and even still engagement on virtually any form of art, unless you have a huge following, is so little. For example, back before webcomics became such a bloated industry, so let's say 2016 as an example of this, Satan and Me would get hundreds of comments per episode, and on tumblr it would get even upwards of thousands of notes/reblogs. Nowadays, tumblr SaM gets a few hundred notes, and the updates get anywhere between 20-50 comments. The view count has been axed tremendously.

A lot of these sites have an algorithm set up too, and restrictions. Sites like twitter and instagram feel like they actively work against art promotion. I do think the situation could get better, but it would take a loooot of unified artist pushback, as well as some of these apps changing to accommodate their artists who use them. These are big ifs.

With quick consumerism, less engagement, app dissatisfaction of "slow updates" building that expectation of pumping out art faster for audience consumption, and an overall unwillingness to accommodate artists to promote their work, I can't see the internet art environment getting better any time soon.

My best advice would be: unless you're basing income off of the art you produce, try to get more into self-enjoyment rather than outside sources providing you fulfilment in your art. I'm lucky that I've been able to build a pretty hefty following over the last almost decade, but, god forbid (knock on wood), if that were to all fall away and I had to go back to school for a different career path, I assure you I'd never stop drawing. You simply cannot create good art solely for engagement. I don't believe that's possible; there's no heart in completely corporate art.

I do pray for the art community, tho. I hope someday to see some wins in our corners, cuz it's been so bleak the last IDK 5 or so years.