u/WW92030

https://preview.redd.it/d8l6qhz441ih1.png?width=907&format=png&auto=webp&s=8e2d425b0e4c462eb7809a832f9fd044d20714c3

Over the past four years I have witnessed many incidents of people insinuating that the rational desire for engagement on your hard work (instead of it being tossed into the void while e.g. the world admires those around them) means that you are an attention whore that creates only for external validation. Unfortunately that is a false dichotomy.

Humans are social creatures. If so and so was truly creating for themselves you would never see the art that they create--you would never know them to be an artist. The mere act of posting it online insinuates that the work is for others to see and recognize.

YES people enjoy what they create. NO it does not mean that it does not hurt when the ROI is zero (i.e. their hard work is disregarded). YES these two concepts can coexist. YES someone can simultaneously be proud of their own work while wishing that their work was also appreciated by others. Does that make sense?

Rant over.

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TL/DR - The set of attention whores is not the complement of the set of people that don't give a shit.

*The one thing they hate the most

Every single time someone brings up the idea of supporting, encouraging, or even just acknowledging the work of--novice and small (non AI) creators the statistically majority reaction is instantly negative, ranging from mass disagreement to public humiliation and outright bans.

These people preach to support human art and yet consciously refuse to do so. Truly the epitome of human consistency and free will. I guess not supporting small creators is some kind of dogma or some crap.

For the record, I don't use AI but I am basically neutralist at this point (i.e. my stance only consists of passively not using it) because I have been on the receiving side of these kinds of negativity on at least 5 isolated and seemingly distinct incidents over the last 4 years (my work being ignored far more than literally anyone else's is over several months and then people getting mad when I bring it up even once) since I started drawing in 2022, and also because at least 5-6? incidents on e.g. Twitter alone within the past 12 months of other small creators being shamed this way—someone laments their work is disregarded, that post goes viral, and the population becomes divided with many big artists siding against the small one.

Everyone preaches to support human art as opposed to AI and yet when actual human art arrives on the scene [ETA: outside of the AI discourse] it's ignorance/disdain unless the art is skilled and/or coming from a popular artist.

...this is why even though I don't use AI personally I will never actively oppose it. At least I believe that small artists should be supported (and I actually support them)