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chariot313 · 4 years

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Western social media has no respect for Japanese online artists - and it’s killing online art

The visual arts have evolved to suit the most popular medium of each era. In nowadays’ case, the internet is the go-to method of sharing the fruits of one’s labour). However, as stated in that tweet thread of mine you can see if you scroll down a bit (assuming you’re viewing this post on chariot313.tumblr.com) different cultures have different attitudes towards how their customers react to their products. This include you know what fuck the formalities, I’ll just say it: The exclusively western concept of someone seeing something they like online and hitting the share button to stimulate the “Haha, upvotes go ‘brrr’!” dopamine in their smooth-ass lizard brain will be the death of online Japanese artists. Or rather, it has been already, and you would know that if you’ve ever seen an artist’s Twitter bio be in mostly Japanese save for one sentence in English; “Reprint is prohibited.”.

If you want to hear me rationalize the absurd claim I just made, feel free to click the “Keep reading” button. Otherwise, turn back now and save yourself from me possibly wasting your time.

Alright, you’ve chosen to stick with me. Just remember, you asked for this.

Introduction

Social media as a whole is based around sharing (posting, uploading, submitting, tweeting, blogging, streaming etc.) and other’s reactions to what one has shared (views, likes, subscribers, favorites, followers, upvotes, retweets, reblogs, crossposts, etc.).

However, miscommunication and culture shock due to language barriers and cultural differences is one of the many factors that can negatively affect one’s experience on social media. For example, the Japanese artist community, active on sites such as Twitter, Pixiv, NicoNico Seiga, FC2 blogs, etc.. Twitter is mostly inhabited by English-speaking users. Here in the west, our main motive for sharing something on social media (such as art) is for fame and recognition. However, over in the East, most online artists only upload their works to the internet for personal use. I’m not saying one cultural attitude towards sharing art is better than one another, but when these two worldviews collide, the culture shock can negatively affect the careers of artists who are unaware of the other culture’s differing views on sharing art.

So, I’ve listed numerous social media platforms below and I’m going to elaborate on how each of them contributes to the alienation and discouragement of Japanese artists.

DO NOT WITCH-HUNT OR HARASS THE CULPRITS I’VE LISTED AS EXAMPLES; THEY ONLY SERVE TO BACK UP MY ARGUMENT

Twitter

Go into the twitter search bar and type in the name of an anime character (usually female). What do you find? Most likely an account named after said character that does nothing but post unsourced fan art of said character with cheesy “in-character” captions on them.

Exhibit A [NSFW]

Exhibit B [NSFW]

Exhibit C [very NSFW]

Aside from that, Twitter isn’t that bad in this regard, as a lot of the art that gets stolen is originally uploaded to Twitter anyway. But I’m just getting started.

Wattpad

Ah yes, Wattpad. One of the “trinity” of fan fiction communities (the others being fanfiction.net and AO³), featuring many different stories with varying degrees of readability. The problem is the option to add a picture to adorn your fanfiction, at which point most of the authors google “<fanfic subject> fan art” and use something from there without considering the repercussions. This causes Wattpad to be one of the top results when reverse image searching to find the source of some fan art, aside from another site I’ll mention later on...

There’s a subreddit I often browse called r/ChurchOfJirou, a community for sharing anything relating to the character Kyouka from My Hero Academia (I mean come on, she’s like the cutest thing ever). A lot of the posts on that sub are sharing fan art of the aforementioned character. One of the rules in the sidebar is “always include the source in the title or the comments”. And most of the submissions make good on that rule. However, a lot of the posts are from Japanese artists on Twitter or Pixiv, and following the source link leads you to find the artist’s bio, which usually has something along the lines of “don’t repost my work”. And what’s more, the biggest offenders (of submitting art to the sub without OP’s permission) were the moderators of the subreddit. You know, the ones who are supposed to be enforcing the rules? I even got so fed up that I called it out, to which one of the mods replied,

“It doesn’t really make a difference, does it?”

Luckily, not all subreddits are like this. For example, other MHA-related subs like r/BokuNoShipAcademia or r/ChurchOfMinaAshido have moderators that are more considerate of artists’ wishes. Overall, Reddit is usually a hit-or-miss when it comes to this kind of thing. At best, you’ve got subs like the two I just mentioned which make sure to respect artists, and at worst you’ve got people trying (and failing) to edit out watermarks. Also, not to self-promote, but this tweet of mine represents this situation pretty well:

Imgur

Imgur isn’t that bad compared to the rest of these, but it’s a common one that people link to when asked for the source of whatever they’ve shared on Twitter or Reddit or whatever.

Amino Apps

Amino Apps is a strange case. I don’t know much about it since I’ve never used it, but from what I do know it seems similar to Reddit in that there are numerous communities for different niches. That said, judging from the way it clogs up Google image search results, I doubt OC art is posted there often.

YouTube

Now, you may be thinking, “How does a video site rip off others’ art?”. The answer is uploads of soundtracks. Look for any OST from a video game or anime on YouTube and the picture used for the video will likely be some fan art by a Japanese Pixiv artist, usually one that forbids reposts of their work. Not only that, but if the uploader did bother to add the source in the description, it’s usually not even a link to the actual source, more likely a link to Zerochan or Pinterest or something. Now take into account that some of these videos get millions of views. Imagine working hard on something, and some numbnuts takes it, slaps some music onto it, uploads it to YouTube, and gets millions of views while you get next to nothing in comparison.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B (re-upload; original had nearly 40 million views before it was copyright claimed)

Exhibit C

and many many others

Alright, this is the big one. When Pinterest isn’t giving recipes or wardrobe ideas to suburban white moms, it’s clogging up Google reverse image search, punishing anyone who just wanted to find the source of some cute fan art. I feel like this meme by ZebitasMartinexSi on Facebook sums it up:

For example, this piece of Legend of Zelda art by Twitter artist @_nomeri_ (I’ll just link to it, since it would be hypocritical of me to embed the image even though @_nomeri_’s bio warns people not to repost their art). Good art, right? Well, if you right-click and hit “Search Google for image”...

...yeah. Pinterest is a plague. It thrives on theft. Even worse is when someone will post fan art on Twitter/Tumblr/Reddit/etc. and have the nerve to say “IDK the source I found it on Pinterest ^_^”. Or worse yet, they link to Pinterest saying it’s the source.

Instagram

While many other sites rag on Instagram for its reposting of memes, it’s no better when it comes to reposting fan art, especially from Pixiv. I’ve seen lots of stolen pieces with fan fictions written in the description. Personally, if I were an artist, I’d rethink my career choice if I saw my art reposted on Instagram with a half-assed fanfic under it, so I don’t blame Japanese artists who close their Pixiv accounts after seeing that. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to prevent it from happening in the first place.

DeviantArt

DeviantArt is more “renowned” across the web for its niche circles of bizarre fetish art, but in its defence, there are some legitimately good pieces on there. If you do find a good one though, try checking to see if all of the uploader’s pieces have a similar overall art style, because if not, that’s a sure sign of someone passing off some Pixiv user’s art as their own, which is unfortunately fairly common on DeviantArt.

9Gag

Not a whole lot to say about 9Gag. I mean, it does contribute to reposting of art, but nothing really separates it from the others on this list, aside from its watermarks. At least the watermark gives away the fact that something was reposted.

Know Your Meme

You know that Zelda pic by @_nomeri_ I was talking about earlier? Well, to add insult to injury, it became an object-labelling meme.

Imagine putting hours into something and politely asking others not to repost it, only to find that some nincompoops on r/DankMemes made it into an object-labelling meme.

But this isn’t KYM’s fault, per se. Know Your Meme only documents memes; they do not create them. However, as someone who regularly browses the Know Your Meme image galleries, I can say that the image gallery has essentially become Know Your Fan Art (unlawfully reposted fan art, that is).

Redbubble

There’s an NSFW artist I follow on Twitter by the name of Nico-Mo. A while ago, his Pixiv account was suspended, and there were numerous pictures on there that he had not uploaded to his Twitter or DeviantArt, so I found a mirror of one of those pieces on Gelbooru and reverse-image searched in hopes of finding it on his Twitter. No such luck. What came up instead was a .png of the piece made into a sticker being sold on Redbubble. In fact, that’s one of the major reasons why artists disapprove of their art being reposted, as it may find its way onto a sticker or a T-shirt being sold as merch without the original artist giving consent nor the artist receiving so much as a single nickel.

Facebook

Surprisingly, I think Facebook is one of the least offending sites on this list. Still worth mentioning, though.

Funnyjunk

Like Imgur, Funnyjunk isn’t that bad compared to some of the rest of these, but this exchange in the comments of a repost of an MHA artist that deleted their account (not hard to see why considering people straight-up ignored the big-ass watermark at the bottom) is proof enough of western social media’s flippant attitude towards ruining online artists’ careers.

Aggregator imageboards such as Yande.re, Konachan, Danbooru, Gelbooru, Rule34, SankakuComplex, Zerochan, etc.

I don’t think I need to explain these. But like Imgur, these are what most people link to when asked for source instead of bothering to find the original post.

We Heart It

I don’t know much about “We Heart It”, but it seems to be a “Pinterest Lite” considering it clogs up image search almost as much as Pinterest does.

iFunny

Basically the same as 9Gag, in the sense that its watermarks are a dead giveaway.

4chan

I’m not sure if 4chan really “counts” among these, as it’s a chat board where nearly everything is impermanent anyway. However, I was once on an NSFW subreddit where one submitter used a 4chan thread to get Patreon-exclusive material from an artist to upload to the sub (even though one of the rules of the sub was “no paywall content”), so that alone earns 4chan its spot on this list.

Tumblr

Yes, not even Tumblr is innocent. Although I’m sure you knew that. Similar to what I said about Twitter, look up any blog named after a fictional character and it’ll likely be chock-full of unsourced fan art.

“Why is this even important?”

Because if an artist sees that their work is being reposted, depending on the artist, they may delete the original post when they wouldn’t have to if people had just respected their wishes. Now, if an artist wants their works gone from the internet for other personal reasons, that’s up to them and we should respect them for it. But artists taking down their works due to mass reposting is 100% preventable, which is why it’s sad. If you don’t respect an artist, they won’t create art. Simple as that.

“Why do you care so much?”

Eh, I’m just weird like that. It just ticks me off when anything online, whether it be art, or a video, or whatever, is lost. In my opinion, nothing hurts more than clicking a Pixiv link on an imageboard and being greeted with “The work was deleted or the ID does not exist.”.

“But lots of western artists forbid reposting of their art too!”

Indeed, that is correct. But while many artists of every nationality and culture frown upon reproduction of their work, it seems only western social media is responsible for reposting art in the first place. I mean, why else do you think Japanese artists are saying “Reprint is prohibited” in English when the rest of their bio is in Japanese? Because English-speakers are the ones reposting.

“But exposure can help an artist!”

Yeah, that’s true...

...but “exposure” doesn’t mean much if those “exposed” to one’s work don’t know or care who it came from.

And if you need even more reasons, look no further than these posts about the same topic by other blogs:

https://cranberrywitch.tumblr.com/post/143456002228/stop-reposting-art-from-japanese-artists

https://thegospelofnagisa.tumblr.com/post/143308182398

https://edendaphne.tumblr.com/post/163117317030/ive-been-wanting-to-make-this-educational-cheat

https://marklightgreatsword.tumblr.com/post/190056977650/discourage-art-theft-in-fandom-in-2020-dont

https://letusrespectpixivartistconsent.tumblr.com/post/92189994896/why-is-this-important

also, not to self-promote but I made a thread on Twitter on this topic about a month ago that you can check out here.

That’s all.

posted Jun 14; last edit Jun 21

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becomingherocomic · 7 years

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Becoming Hero

How to post your #comics to all the socials at the same time (#makecomics

2020 Update: Back in 2017 Blog2Social had a security leak that caused a phishing attempt on my site. I deleted the plug-in, contacted them, and after about a year reinstalled the plug-in. Haven’t had any more phishing issues since, so it looks like the security issue’s fixed. Just full disclosure fyi.

How do you promote your comics on all TEH SOCIALS? It’s one of the questions that came up recently on the Webcomics Facebook Group I’m part of. Should you even bother posting your comics on socials? If so, which social media outlets should you bother with, anyway?

It’s better to do one social well than to do a million poorly. However, the more places your comic exists online, the more opportunities other people have to run into it. Posting to multiple socials also provides a great back-up in case your site goes down (like mine did last month), and, most importantly of all–

The more high-profile websites that link to your website, the better its ranking in Google.

Oh snap! You know what qualifies as a high-profile website? Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, the works!

That’s why I started posting my comics to the socials I don’t use all the time. And you know what? Since I started doing that, my views have multiplied by tens, yay! BUT OH MY GOSH IT IS TEDIOUS AND HORRIBLE to try to log in and post to a gazillion social media sites HOLY CRAP WHY WOULD I DO THAT–

So I don’t. I use the Blog2Social WordPress plug-in, which means that right after I finish a post, I get a page that looks like this:

…where I can scroll down to customize a promo-post for each social media sites. With images. Instagram, Pinterest, etc are below this screen–I just scroll down to edit each post.Anything I can do on the social site itself, I can do on this page.

Or, if I’m lazy, I can just pre-set Blog2Social to autopost when I hit publish here:

I advise against that because different social media sites really do have different culture, and I get more engagement when I bother to customize each post. It’s really fast and easy when they’re all on the same page like that.

Blog2Social has made my life so much easier.

There are other tools available to do this, and I have tried the major ones so you don’t have to.

I can tell you right now that Blog2Social doesn’t have as many esoteric social media options as SNAP (“social networks auto poster”) does: no app.net or Instapaper, sorry. Its free version also can’t troll through your old blog posts and auto-post them every now and then without you, the way Microblog Poster says it can (B2S can do that in the paid version, though). That’s truth.

But when I tried both of those plug-ins, they gave me buggy, difficult to use, get-under-the-hood messiness. SNAP posts did look nicer, when they worked, but the one by one installation and API management of each social media network took me literally an entire day, and in the end, half of the socials didn’t actually work. I feel like you basically can’t use SNAP without being at least an amateur web designer. Worse, it’s hard to customize each Tweet with images, which means I’m losing engagement and quality, and SNAP refuses to post anything from my comics category. Comics were the entire point in the first place! And Microblogposter straight up just didn’t re-post the old stuff like it said it would. It just didn’t.

I ended up uninstalling the Microblog Poster, and I now only use SNAP to try to auto-post to StumbleUpon and Deviantart…which it doesn’t actually do most of the time, but whatever. I do like Facebook Publish a lot: it’s got a lot more Facebook-specific features than B2S, so you could try to use them together. In the end, though, I ended up uninstalling Facebook Publish, too, because B2S just does what I need, and it’s never double or triple posted on me like FB Publish did to me the other day. Blog2Social pulls pictures from my links better than Facebook Publish does, which is important for comics:

The post above pulled my actual comic from the page. The post below, by Facebook Publish, pulled a generic picture off my sidebar rather than the actual picture in the post.

(We all love Natasha, though, so who can blame Facebook Publish for posting her instead = P)

B2S basically never fails me. It was easy to install and it worked immediately. No playing with API. No reading and troubleshooting. If it stops posting to a network, I just re-authorize that network (which means I just log in again) and bam, we’re back in business.

So.

Easy.

Everything I’ve shown you so far about Blog2Social is free, and I think the free version probably works well for most amateur comic artists working alone. If you have even less time than I think you have, you might want to look into the paid version so you can schedule the social media posts for their optimum time and connect multiple accounts to each network. For comics artists working with one or more partners, the Smart Version allows two users, and the Pro version allows five. That’s pretty baller. There’s a big businesses option, too, if you run, like, a huge comics news site or something (in which case, please get in touch with me, because wow we gotta talk!). That’s for if you need like 15 accounts per social media network, with 10 users.

You can do more comparison of the different plans on a cool chart like this…

…over at the Blog2Social website.

If you want that stuff, you can probably go here for the Smart Plan, here for the Pro plan, and here for the Business plan. (I say probably because I don’t know what post-apocalyptic future timeline you’re reading this from, and I don’t want to assume.)

And if you don’t want to give money to software creators, the basic version’s always free. It really does do just what I showed you in that screenshot, and it’s a total life-saver for me, especially because for a while, I didn’t have a phone.

No phone, no Instagram, right?

Blog2Social is the only tool I could get working that can easily and freely post my comics to Instagram from a computer, and I’d use it for that alone, since the Gram is becoming one of the fastest growing networks out there. Most of you are smarter than I am, so you can probably come up with a bunch of other uses for B2S that I haven’t thought of, but me, I just love how easy it is. This is why I became a Blog2Social affiliate: I tried the product, loved it, and thought, “hey, why don’t we team up?” I think a lot of webcomic artists want more time to draw and less time working on marketing, and we don’t all feel like learning how to develop software just to get our comics posted online. I support that, and I’m happy the company wants to support me and my comics with some moneys. I’m honestly thrilled about getting other comic creators posting smarter online: we need more comics, and less politics, out there on the Socials.

So how about you? How do you use B2S for your comics? If you don’t use B2S, what do you use? After this post, you think you might try it?

Leave a comment below, and don’t forget to check out my comic, up in the menu, and tell me what you think.

https://becominghero.ninja/how-to-post-your-comics-to-all-the-socials-at-the-same-time/

#Making Comics and Drawing Superheroes

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