The Rise and Fall of DeviantArt

[@Izzzyzzz]

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[@qt7681]

i've had this game downloaded for a while now and i still suck at it lmao

[@dableutyef]

two dots one link

[@benitaandweeptchis]

TWO DOTS is sponsoring!? I was once a fan of the game, liked the desert fox that appeared on the map, but then phased out.

[@adorableaesthetic822]

Thank u so much for this. Video and love ur fit today and makeup :)

[@ExplosivefartAAAAAA]

​@@dableutyef oh OH *OH NO*

[@iamperish]

I think the reason DA felt so different because, in my experience, it legit felt like walking through an art gallery. Sure, the desire to have people like your stuff and follow you to see your updates were cool, but the desire to become "popular" rarely existed. Unlike other sites now where value is strictly about your follower count of faceless profiles, DA provided a space that felt easier to make connections with those within your niche.

[@aspen-lleaves5125]

This ^

[@doggyspeak]

This absolutely! It was so easy for middleschoolers to go in and feel like they were contributing to something without just constantly being compared to industry professionals. You could go into fandom searches and groups and things and find your peers very easily, start chatting with people and trading art/feedback, you made FRIENDS there, not followings. I feel like spaces like that are scattered and usually not serving the users in a way that facilitates that networking and uncomplicated enjoyment the way DA used to.

[@hope-cat4894]

It also felt like the priority was only making art and not being distracted with looking cool on social media with spicy takes. It just felt like a nice community of art nerds having fun.

[@LadyLuckyLu]

Thiiiiss

[@zozocecp]

Wut. Wanting to be popular was like, half the site

[@Lenachan3ko]

God we need a website that is FOR artists and fans of art. Everything is either dead, working against you, or incredibly niche. Being an artist online is torture now.

[@ragefulhobbit]

I've found that Inkblot is good, though it's not very popular.

[@ravensramen]

fr! im exausted trying to show my art and find art friends, only to get a handfull of likes and no interaction :(

[@Auurify]

Inkblot is getting there, it's just getting started. Let's normalize that website so it becomes the go-to place for art! They're openly anti-AI.

[@elif6908]

Artists need their own AO3 honestly, but the cost of sustaining such website would be huge and almost impossible to do with a non-profit system. That was the reason AO3 didn’t supported fanart from the get go, text is easy and cheap to store and sent over but image wants much more server space and bandwidth.

[@sir-dame-sander]

it’s absolutely hellish being an artist today. I’ve recently started posting directly to pinterest just so I can beat the art thieves to it. the only place I get even a bit of engagement is tumblr, n as much as I love the site + the niche communities who support my art there (plus the lack of algorithm god I hate soulless algorithms), ultimately it’s not really geared towards artists. there’s really no site like classic devianart n I miss it so much

[@milkshakecoffins]

I just wish there was a website like this again. Being an artist and trying to grow your socials is just tiring, we need a community like this. It’s unfair.

[@dyrr836]

There's Pixiv but that one is its own can of worms.

[@milkshakecoffins]

@@dyrr836 Yeah, tried joining there because I found out some artists I liked. The worst thing is one of them turned out to be a huge creep.. and so are many others.

[@datoneperson7696]

Have you tried inkblot?

[@insertnamehere6559]

Pixiv lol

[@thisperson8441]

brooo yes I've looked at so many different similar sites but it just doesn't feel the same (could just be because the usual communities and friends I would talk to aren't there, but still)

[@ismellupdog]

Can't believe we told them "if you do this we will stop using your website" and they were shocked when we did indeed stop using their website. Rest in peace, old friend. I shouldn't have been on your site at 9 years old but I sure was and it sure did do irreparable damage to my relationship with the concept of cats and wolves

[@waltlock8805]

How many actually left? How much revenue did they really lose?

[@LilacMonarch]

@@waltlock8805 clearly enough that they had to resort to bringing ads back

[@vivid.worker]

knowy :)

[@waltlock8805]

@Marshal Marrs The name 'deviant art' didn't give you enough of a warning?

[@blackroses96]

@Marshal Marrs I've been on dA for more than 10 years. That kind of stuff has always been there, from what I can tell. ^^' XD

[@lacountess]

I'm an old soul, and this is what happened to EVERY site I used to hang out at and enjoy in 2000's, not just DA. The truth is, besides corporate greed, the rise of social media such as facebook and instagram totally destroyed the old, niche sites. There used to be a forum for every fandom and hobby and anything you were passionate about, until Twitter came along and sucked everything into a hashtag melting pot. And so, the slow death of forums and community websites started and one by one our hang outs disappeared.

[@pearl3406]

now the big soulless social media sites are killing themselves slowly too ... god, it's truly painful how suits will try to run the internet when it's clear they've never been deeply involved in it in the first place. they have no idea how to cater to us, favoring trends for profit and then seem shocked when it all backfires in their faces.

[@johnps1670]

Fakebook and Insta will also disappear. Just a matter of time.

[@Bluezexmas]

I kinda miss niche websites

[@melasnexperience]

Yeah, I saw the same things. It's stupid how much that I miss the old internet of personal shrine sites & Winamp.

[@BartimaeusTrilogyFan]

I miss forums so much. ):

[@agnesimaitiene7095]

When I discovered deviantART I was no child. I was a young mom with a two-year-old, someone who hasn't drawn anything in YEARS. And thanks to that website I rediscovered my love for art, started drawing again and developed my skills. I've spent 10 happy years on the site sharing and admiring art, making friends, losing friends, making new ones, enjoying one fandom then another. It was fun. But then Eclipse started and the rest is history. Now I barely ever visit the site. Such a shame.

[@tea8053]

im a newer user, i mean, i had an account 8 years ago but started posting with in the last couple of months to a year. to be honest im not even sure what the eclipse even is?

[@formersamonellaclone]

this shit was worse than the fall of rome honest to godddd

[@parkfever]

Do you still have your account?

[@speakersr-lyefaudio6830]

Oh? Do you share your art anywhere else? I'd love to see what art you make.

[@InkRibbon]

Out of all the videos you've made... this one breaks my heart more than any other. I LOVED DeviantArt. Like truly loved it. People who weren't on it back in the day will never understand how special it felt to be on.

[@fluffyphoenix8082]

same, I also literally made MONEY off my art there, and when dA fell I had nowhere else to turn. I still don't. I can't find a way to make money off my art anymore. Tried Artstation but cannot get noticed on there (I'm not on the same skill level as industry professionals... I just do fun character art). I don't have work anymore and I am depressed. I miss dA.

[@agudgorl]

I never expected to find a resident evil channel I subbed to long ago to be in the comments of this video.

[@agudgorl]

@@fluffyphoenix8082 If i had the money, I'd be more than willing to commission you, tbh. Just need a price/commission sheet, some examples, and when I get the money I'll try to keep you in mind alongside the other bajillion artists i want to commission

[@AnnamatopoeiaArt]

Really, no other site really grabbed me when I was younger more than DA. The groups were honestly such. good feature, and it's interesting t see that now that I left how many apps it took to replace it, (Insta/Tumblr/Twiter for art posting, Artstation for Portfolios, and Discord for groups) DA groups were such a big part of my life and I miss them SO MUCH.

[@desireesmith862]

Omg hiii didn’t know you watched Izzy. Hope you’re doing well.

[@vidoxi]

I used deviantart so much I can remember the "most popular - all time" page so vividly how it looked over 10 years ago. death note cosplayers at a cafe, some poem/comic strip about the artist's parents getting divorced, a big drawing of all the simpsons characters, a syringe in someone's tongue piercing hole, etc lol

[@XanthinZarda]

The eggs, the Phoenix Wright art, some generic leaves...

[@Blakbox92]

I remember that kinda anime-ish looking drawing of The Simpsons! All of the characters on the couch!

[@blueizumi]

@@Blakbox92 fun fact: because of the popularity of that artwork, the artist later got a job as a graphic novel artist and worked on both original content, Simpsons comics, and one of the ATLA graphic novels

[@MercedesLefrancois]

Oh man I can picture the exact cosplayers you're talking about, I think they're looking at a display of cupcakes and the photography style is really light and airy. Thanks for bringing back a hidden memory lol

[@vidoxi]

@@MercedesLefrancois yes, and the misa and L cosplayers are bent over to see the cupcakes better I think lol

[@majesteas]

One of the saddest parts of deviantart's fall is that so many accounts deactivated after eclipse and so, so much art was lost to time forever. (that, and the new search system is so bad its impossible to find anything anyways--)

[@regulate.artificer_g23.mdctlsk]

Tell me about it. I found traces of pre-existing MordeTwi art that were professionally drawn (or at least were good enough) and are *older than the original Airplanes drawing* (by bluedog444), and I wanted to use them as evidence that MordeTwi had a community and they weren't merely meme-ing. Sadly, only small thumbnails of some of those got saved on Internet Archive *at best,* and some others can be found in low quality (up to 480p) KZbin videos. But a lot of others are lost to time, like you said; there's only a handful that were luckily saved/found on other websites.

[@LoveEachDay94]

There is so much fucking art from artists that aren’t around anymore that I will never find again and it kills me

[@Silvermoon424]

@Lisa I'm literally obsessed with media archival, to the point where I bought a NAS (network attached storage) system to hold all of the media I've accumulated over the years. No regrets.

[@dramasbomin]

I had a lot of art posted on my account. I wasn't good. But they're something I wish I still had. The memories the communities I was a part of. I wish I could go back to that page, even if only to reminisce.

[@Topdoggie7]

Deactivating deletes it all after thirty days. I could search and find most of it but a lot of them were dramatic and came back a month later.

[@thebadshave503]

As minor as it sounds, the loss of the birthday list cost my interest more than anything. My account has been active and posting for over a decade and that helpful little list of whose birthday was coming up within a week was super nice. Sure my 'DA Birthday' wasn't my actual birthday and it was the same for a lot of my peers but it was nice to see a friend's name on the list and go 'Oh, maybe I'll draw something for them' and getting drawings on your own birthday as well. When I see art friends on Twitter finding ways to sideways remind people of their birthday, I can't help but miss when you could genuinely ambush a friend with a gift on their birthday without resorting to... I dunno... a notepad document or something.

[@FainthedCherry]

OH MY GOD THIS TOO!! A few years ago I relied on the b-day system to draw my friends gifts, 2 days ahead, so I'd finish in time. It's really sad, that I stopped this habit, ever since they did remove it and all you see is their icon have a little cake now in the watching tab. :/

[@ondiiina]

I didn't even need art, just sending and receiving a small "happy birthday" on your profile was so sweet! I had a few and even from people I didn't really know. It's dumb but it was a dA tradition and so sweet. I wish we could go back to back then

[@wavelengthrecords-1]

@@ondiiina It's not dumb, it's heartwarming.

[@roselva0]

Honestly the reason why I love my birthday as an adult is because back in my teens I could count on my profile being flooded with "Happy Birthday!" messages and receiving at least a dozen pieces of art to make my day. It was such a small feature that really helped little niche communities grow ridiculously tight.

[@tablescissors]

@@roselva0 and way less obnoxious or in-your-face than being forced through a workplace “party”

[@starrenightt]

Genuinely the death of DeviantArt continues to break my heart to this day. It was a huge part of my childhood and you truly had to be there during its height to understand how incredible and diverse the community was!! The worst part of it all is that it didn’t even have to die the way it did if the team had just listened to its users :(

[@mybodyisamachine]

​@p-__ As a person who smelt both of their farts, can confirm.

[@meowJACK]

Yea there's just absolutely no website/app/community out there that fills the same niche or captures the same vibe as dA at all. It's really sad.

[@kiarastaggs180]

@@meowJACK Darn now I’m regretting looking at the comments because every single one is reminiscing on a childhood that I didn’t have!

[@Piss_Off_Plz]

The DA team is a bunch of techbro businessmen and women, so idk what you were expecting from them...

[@Most-sane-deltarune-fan]

@@mybodyisamachine XD

[@dear_totheheart]

Shocking how companies keep "updating" their platforms by changing everything that made it popular and loved in the first place. Just unreal, stop altering it and let it be, almost everything is imploding because they keep messing up with the algorithm and point of these sites, making their core audience come to no longer use let alone despise it

[@Blakbox92]

It's the endless childish dream of infinite growth and infinite profit, but they don't understand what they have and end up tanking it all instead.

[@Bitter.Bones.]

*coughs in tumblr*

[@DaLatinKnight]

Feel like sometimes if a site is too old, the platform it was built on is no longer supported. So instead of trying to build eveyrhting AGAIN from the ground up, they build somehting else entirely(from the ground up) with new technology

[@OmarMejiasGamertologist]

Totally true. This minimalistic trend is turning most web stuff into good looking but bland sites.

[@ShroudedWolf51]

Sadly, it's not particularly shocking if you've been paying any level of attention what's so ever. This is what happens when you have people running the company that do not care what they manage, have no interest in the legacy of the company they manage, and only worry about making the line go up at any cost. After all, this new CEO of dA would be just as happy being the CEO of Activision-Blizzard-King or Toys R Us or Burger King or literally anything else. It's the same reason why the videogames industry is such an irredeemable mess.

[@smolexfundie6458]

As a deviantART child, I clicked SO FAST. I was on DA from 2013-2020. i agree that eclipse KILLED the site. 😢 I miss the days on 2013-14 when I was a wee babe, coloring in mspaint bases, arguing with trolls over Derpy Hooves, and vibing with my chunky headphones playing Kesha bc I was just quirky like that. 😂 I anticipate a nostalgic trip of a video and I am excited to listen. 😊

[@ffffffffffffffffffffffffffff5]

Same, I was on DA since 2010 - 2018, I left it after a close friend of mine kept becoming a huge target for trolls and was just fed up with all the toxicity.

[@CommanderWiggins]

That site was so cursed and I saw things that I definitely should not have seen at that age. But it was truly unlike anything else, and it started me off on my career as an artist.

[@LoserWhoLikesObscureMedia]

I clicked fast because I saw the word eclipse 😭 even though I’ve watched this video before-

[@sekaus9158]

Don't worry, I may be able to set something up and running! I miss the old DA too 😢 Even I that only had used the site since 2018 still feel the loss of something I know and love for so long... Let it be an inspiration for the future... "one door closes and another one opens"

[@nicolemichele-darkwoodland2136]

Think I used the site from 2001-2010. I don't even know what eclipse is/was. I'm just a nostalgic elder millennial reliving my sparkle art wolf days 😂

[@miscellaneousjellyfish5634]

Someone once described the internet as a constant burning of the Library of Alexandria and I think that’s very accurate here

[@trollfunk]

not to be philosophical but i feel like that’s history as a whole, we just had the illusion of it being preserved because we’ve seen so much more during our lifetime

[@Theomite]

I'd add to that saying the patrons are running out of the building with the books, so...they're not LOST...just hidden and unfindable.

[@gearandalthefirst7027]

Especially accurate because the original didn't actually burn, just get neglected until everything of value had turned to mold and moth droppings. At least they had centuries to adjust instead of a single decade :/

[@rampancyproductions]

FWIW I have some fanart I thought was really cool like 10 years ago.....and when i look to see if the artist did anything new it's gone, big GONE. The algorithm meant that google images often did not crawl the website, There is a massive amount of stuff that will just be gone forever.

[@creatrixZBD]

Even though the burning of “the library” (there were two major ones) is a popular myth, it’s still an apt analogy

[@KryptosLounge]

the downfall of DeviantART was extremely depressing. I grew up on DeviantART like most of us did. I made friends and adored the community. I MET MY HUSBAND on DeviantART! When they rolled out Eclipse I stopped being active, when they announced AI art and everyone was going to be auto enrolled I deleted all of my profiles. Will never go back they lost all my respect.

[@TaoScribble]

Wait, auto-enrolled? Ah, crap! Did they not send out an email about that? Because I haven't been on DA in years and haven't gotten a thing! I still have some crappy sketches on there. Does the auto-enrollment include things in your Scraps folder? Does that folder even still exist??

[@Rozdlc]

​@@TaoScribble It seems like no one was notified of it, just an announcement trying to make it sound like a cool and exciting thing. But as they explained they did eventually back peddled and now artists are no longer auto rolled. That being said, I still deleted my art off of there despite haven't used the site in a while. I was so sad and angry over the whole thing.

[@DepartmentOfYouth0]

Hey, I also met my fiancé on dA! I haven't used the site for many years now but it's so sad to see the way it's gone because I have such fond memories attached to it

[@Krysnha]

No, it wont come back, first they start with so many comissions, then patreon, then eclipse come, then the AI and NFT crap, now no one talks, they fave and dont even bother to say something, barely some said thanks for the faves, is depressing

[@rutyqutykandi1361]

I had been willing to try and give DA chance when Eclipse rolled in, until I went to try and organize my watch folders. I turned off notifications from artists for a little bit to get a breather and get use to the new interface. It deleted all notifications I previously had and so at that point I just left. Later learned they added back features but this only supported the people who had been shouting at them not to push Eclipse out.

[@KayosDrive]

My parents used internet filters that blocked art sites like DA, so up until like 2014 or so when I turned 18 I only really knew the internet for Facebook. I feel wholly robbed of the sparkledog phase I so rightly deserved.

[@aeviarth-the-dragoness]

Then why not get into sparkledogs now!

[@emofangz]

​@@aeviarth-the-dragonessexactly! you don't have to be a kid to go through a phase

[@Most-sane-deltarune-fan]

@@emofangz Exactly!

[@Yolanee]

No joke, I learned English thanks to DeviantArt! I probably confused quite a few artists when I commented on their art saying "Amusing!" because I thought it's a fancier way of saying amazing. I miss the old sense of community, I don't think there is anything like this today.

[@ondiiina]

God me too! I went from having to use Google translate all the time to being close to fluent without noticing. One day in middle school, it hit me. Just went back to school and understood English despite being terrible at it before and having been a beginner the year before. It took me a few months and now I'm studying it and may make it my job! It only took MMD/3D models and images to change the course of my life. As I'm now more confident (and better) with my 2D art, I wish it was still alive. I wish we could have continued the circle and been those people who received strange broken sentences from passionate younger people!

[@frostreaper1607]

Ah that's okay there where many like us, I used to call everything Sexy, because I thought it was the word Awesome 🤣

[@kkngd391]

​@@frostreaper1607Please share a story about an awkward moment by doing that. You must have even a few things to say

[@Hey_Aqualung]

Amusing comment!

[@bandidocavalier]

not amusing 😭😭😭😭

[@shybie2798]

I think the thing that made Deviantart so unique is that nonartists also go there. Reason a bunch of new art websites tend to fail is that they set up for JUST artists. Its like setting up a table to set your art at an artists only section. We all vine the same but if you want to grow and expand you also gotta appeal to the non artists and dA was just that site where anyone can join. Thats why we cant expand from twitter and instagram these days cause new sites cater to only artists.

[@Andellamovez]

Thats true, inkblot is the only recent site i can think of that allows non-artists to have their own accs there

[@Rasamama_]

I love that they had so many medias and interests too!! I had friends who weren’t artists who made a dA just to read fanfic, post their poetry or writings, and interact in clubs and specific groups. It had so many options 😩

[@LikaLaruku]

It was a grande one-stop shop. Paintings, illustrations, caricatures, OCs, fanart, bases, stock photography, anatomy poses, fetish fuel, real nudes, drawing memes, costume designers, cosplay, stuffed animal crafting, crochet animals, prop drawing references, poetry, fanfiction, movie reviews, fan clubs, art contests, topical forums, drawing tutorials, coloring tutorials, short animations, flash games, photography, photoshops, custom photoshop brushes, photoshop tutorials...

[@Rasamama_]

@@LikaLaruku I learned some of the techniques I still use to this day from my childhood days on deviant art looking at my fav artists posting tutorials! It felt so personal on there

[@xobunnyfangsxo]

Inkblot caters to artists AND non-artists! I highly recommend!

[@lordspooky5496]

I think the most tragic loss for me was when they removed the new deviations tab. I loved looking through the unfiltered stream of uploads and happening upon the strangest stuff, but they quietly removed the tab and I haven't even heard anyone talk about it. RIP deviantart new tab

[@squittens8337]

It still exists, you just have to manually search for the link in your browser.

[@LashnZachAdventure]

Yes, I used to just spam likes everything when I was 13 on the new devatation page haha

[@sadcena7204]

I miss the literature tab. It really helped me find communities or storys that followed certain genres that I liked

[@Benny-Arts]

New deviations does pop up every now and then (it’s random and rare 😭) but it’s just 5 images 😢

[@TC-rv6sz]

Yes!!!! I discovered so many up and coming talents thanks to that tab. Now it's just a popularity/monopoly circle jerk.

[@maledictionwolf]

One more thing screwed by the fall of DA was webcomics. With the shutting down of SmackJeeves, DA was the last site for indie webcomic artists to post their comic in page format with a community that could feed new readers to them. IG penalizes anything that isn't a square, so full-page comics and traditional strip comics are a no-go there, and Tapas and Webtoons Canvas are heavily oriented to infinite canvas comics, so page-by-page or strip-by-strip comics look like tiny, meager updates compared to the pages and pages that an infinite canvas comic takes up. Tumblr is okay, but because it's not primarily an art community it doesn't do half as well as DA did. Honestly, the story of how Webtoon became king and how all the other webcomic sites (SmackJeeves, Drunk Duck, I can't even remember the others!) have died would be an interesting one, as well as an insight into all the comics we've lost from the sites dying.

[@stainedglassstudios2969]

Comicfury is less well-known but still supports page-style comics, at least!

[@maledictionwolf]

@@stainedglassstudios2969 yeah, but it requires you to have a website of your own to use the comicfury plugin on. It's not a website that hosts comics,and as far as I know it has no functionality for going between the various separate comics it supports, so you can't find other comics through it.

[@Poosaycvm]

i think twitter would be okay for it because you can set notifications (that barely work) when someone posts a new tweet and you can view photos in full screen

[@shaniquasparkles]

My core deviantart memory was when I had gotten a daily deviation for my poetry. I was mainly a writer on the site and the attention I got from that daily dev gave my high school self so much confidence and affirmation, the kind I never got from my parents. Not to mention all the groups and friends (both irl and online) that I truly loved and supported. My closest online friend was this emo girl who, looking back, posted a lot of concerning content and who I genuinely hope is doing okay now that we're adults and have lost contact. Deviantart is truly the place of my childhood/cringe early adolescence and it's so sad to see it swallowed by greed and stupid soulless AI. RIP to my old profile. It was so fun while it lasted.

[@lorenzomizushal3980]

No such thing as souls anyway. All art ever created is soulless. A "soul" is a fictional narrative we ascribe to a work of art. It's all in the head.

[@iratetrolls]

@@lorenzomizushal3980 the second definition of the word soul: ''emotional or intellectual energy or intensity, especially as revealed in a work of art or an artistic performance.'' It's not a fictional narrative. It's a figure of speech meant to describe the effort put into a piece of work.

[@lorenzomizushal3980]

@@iratetrolls it's all in the mind. You can't literally see it or even measure it. It's something you believe, it's a narrative.

[@Chantel99]

​@@lorenzomizushal3980 you sound depressed dude...I hope your doing okay.

[@lorenzomizushal3980]

@@Chantel99 yeah, man hope you're doing okay too.

[@The_Humbugg]

DeviantART was a goldmine for fan art of obscure games and shows… and also for some fetishes you didn’t even know existed.

[@biptari]

@@emilyoflynn I mean, outside of fetish-cringe which is a sort of innate ick you get as an outsider, I don't really see the problem with these people posting good ol' honest cringe. Like, really earnest pencil drawings of their favorite background character, that might not be the best artistically but you know what? It's great, there's heart, they are cringe but they are free. I feel like old fashioned crossover-au-mediocre art cringe is great. Maybe it's just because I'm autistic and am guilty of some myself. but those cringy things are some of the most enjoyable ;]

[@ARCHIVED9610]

god i remember coming across some really weird changed furry art and being so confused

[@definitelynotashark1799]

@@emilyoflynn the ableism is coming from inside the house 😐

[@BinglesP]

DeviantArt, to this day, is my safe space to post my Problem Solverz fanworks with little-to-no harassment. It’s half of why I still use it on occasion.

[@sugarnsaffron]

@@biptari for real. if it weren't for deviantart i wouldn't have figured out i'm autistic tbh! i have embraced my cringe and wear it proudly. (12 year old me would've gotten rabies seeing my now being silly and drawing my oc kissing a canon character over and over lol) i've found the most enjoyment out of being "cringy" and it's nice to see other people feel the same too

[@silversailor5950]

Not a day goes by where I don't miss the simple charms and culture of the Poptropica art niche on DeviantArt. Good times.

[@mitzinull]

Oh my god, Poptropica... I want Izzzyzzz to talk about Poptropica.

[@PawClow]

I remember in my good ol' Poptropica days I'd complete the Spy Island first cause one of the characters there had a hairstyle I loved

[@snowglobe4784]

3 bots counted goddamn

[@partricklambaste1235]

I was too young to play poptropica properly, by the time I had my wits about me the best islands were broken

[@bashfulwolfo6499]

Poptropica!! My username is my Poptropica character that I’ve had since the fourth grade

[@SavvyScribblin]

I met my husband on deviantart. He filled out my pirate meme in 2007, we became friends, then had a long distance relationship, and now we've been married for 11 years. dA was important to me in so many ways and I'm very sad to see what it's become. I'm still there, though I rarely post art anymore.

[@Lazy_.Lavender]

That's amazing lolll

[@fartinfpooping8801]

That's incredible.

[@JordanS-ww4eu]

Aww that’s so sweet congratulations

[@Most-sane-deltarune-fan]

"He filled out my pirate meme in 2007" How?

[@JestemGlonojadem]

I was there to witness the golden age of DeviantArt and its horrendous downfall. This site shaped me in so many ways! It's devastating to see it in this miserable state. I'd love to see more videos about it since DeviantArt is a goldmine of Internet art history!

[@LikaLaruku]

So many things to talk about.... The challenge trends, art memes, how it competed with & overtook Elfwood, art bases, notable cases of art theft, clubs, art competitions...

[@kiarastaggs180]

@@LikaLaruku And I missed all of that ☹️

[@XanthinZarda]

@@LikaLaruku Don't forget the many infamous artists which rose on DeviantArt and are now serving time in a prison somewhere! And just general infamy for how whacked out they got. Shadbase, Sparrow, et al.

[@ddjsoyenby]

agreed we need a new da.

[@XDAverylilith]

Deviantart is where I spent most of my time from ages 10-14. I find it so interesting that my niche little fandom circles felt like the whole site to me, where everyone knew each other and the same like eight people commuted on every art piece, but in actuality those circles were just a micro fraction of the website's user base. It felt like even though everything was just one one website the "more like this" feature made it a wildly different place for thousands of groups of geeky kids.

[@dkdnejdisjabw8r8271ysh]

Something I will never forget reading from someone about the AI debacle with DeviantART is how their friend had passed away at some point before the AI opt-out feature and therefore couldn't opt out as a result because they were dead and their friend didn't have the login info. So it wasn't just stealing images from their users, it was stealing from the corpses of past users too. Really ghoulish behaviour.

[@redrubyrose618]

Fr and I don't like that AI did so

[@Topdoggie7]

All AIs steal from dead artists if their art shows up in a Google search, it'll be used. Dead people are just the easiest ones, but there's lots more out there like banned accounts and deleted ones on art sites.

[@phantasmagorics]

This is like the core of AI photo generation, stealing without any sense of morality whatsoever. I've seen this type of situation countless times now, a dead artist's work being stolen without a second thought, their agency completely taken from them.

[@jeffbrownstain]

​@@phantasmagorics This is the core of progress in the inherent nature of the human species. Stop pretending anything you've ever done is unique: it is not.

[@tiropat393]

@@jeffbrownstain L + Ratio

[@GeneralOlde]

Checking the front page of Deviantart these days is so soul-crushing because a good chunk of the pieces on the front page are those dreadful AI "art" pieces, which all look the same and have no personality. Even the crude drawings that people used to ridicule the site for have more charm and soul to them. Just complete sludge.

[@Dark_Flame_Master]

I made my account on DA 4 days ago and now I found a setting that is called "mute AI art“. If I understand that right, that means that no ai art will be shown? But I could be wrong, that whole page just confuses me and it took me long just to find out how to change my profile picture.

[@GeneralOlde]

​@@Dark_Flame_Master I hadn't heard of that feature before; I'll look into it. Yeah, the entire site is an awful mess now. The enshittification of the Internet knows no bounds. :(

[@Dark_Flame_Master]

@@GeneralOlde Yeah, Quizlet had an update some weeks too and it messed everything up. I put many of the vocabulary from school into quizlet and have made many learning sets, but the quizzes you make yourself are weirdly hidden now. Instead of just going to your profile and seeing them, you have to go to the library and set the filter on "own“… so weird. :/

[@dezmodium]

I don't mind AI art. DeviantArt has an even bigger problem if you have any adult art in your algorithm on that site because there is a bunch of AI "art" of under-age looking girls all over the site now. It's gross and I just stopped using the site altogether over it. I understand taking a stand against AI is hard but at least they could crack down of the sickos producing "art" that resembles underage children in states of undress.

[@Dark_Flame_Master]

@@GeneralOlde oof, it seems like the setting doesn’t work properly. I currently get ai art all over my recommendations. I found an ai art adoptable there today that looks a bit similar to the oc of an artist that I like (not exactly like it, but it’s both blue mermaids, the same bikini, similar hair).

[@despairinq]

it’s when they switched to that new look, eclipse. that’s when i remember the downfall of deviant art. rip DA you took care of my 13 year old little artist self

[@floppy_the_froggo]

@Don't Read My Profile Photo no

[@siIIyguy]

when they switched to eclipse its when the rp side of deviantart died. as far as im concerned thats when deviantart became bad tbh

[@MarikuSalana]

Eclipse was such an unfriendly look and user experience. It was like it took the layout most were familiar with and made it as unusable as possible.

[@despairinq]

@@MarikuSalana oh it was ROUGH 😭 it was so laggy and despite the “modern” look, it felt so amateur. it’s like they got some random guy who knows a little about website design to update deviant art and it was NOT good 💔

[@walkingonneedles]

@@despairinq honestly its like what ever modern site design seemingly does, throw out web developers and instead employ app developers to design the layout. nothing feels like it's made for computers anymore and its really making areas of the internet insufferable to use

[@PichuFan4ever]

My greatest/most embarrassing memory of my DeviantArt days is when I was in middle school and posting my Hetalia Nuzlocke comic that I only made a few pages of on there. My school counselor helped me scan the pages during after school tutoring and even made a DeviantArt with my assistance so he could keep up with my interests. I miss Mr. M, he was a real one ✊😔

[@gorogorogorochannn]

omg ik what you mean !! i used to write hetalia fanfiction FOR english class and made my teacher read it, she was always super nice and just praised my grammar skills and so on like she would with anything else. even tho it makes me cringe to think back of today i still appreciate she put herself through that for me HAHAH

[@splendidsimp]

@@gorogorogorochannn i once wrote a hetalia fanfiction for my science class

[@AlexisTwoLastNames]

@@splendidsimp lol what was the assignment cuz science??? lol

[@sasharodriguez384]

damn Mr m sounds like one of the few who wants kids to pursue their dreams ❤

[@loodgack]

oh god. memories hit me. I also posted my cringe Hetalia fanarts and stuff like that TToTT

[@hitbycars]

I've had Livejournal for 20 years, Gaiaonline for 20, Facebook for 15, Deviant Art for 14, Tumblr for 14, Twitter for 13, Reddit for 13, etc etc. The internet is a pale imitation of what it once was. It has been so compressed and corporatized and monotonied and monetized that it's just not as fucking fun as it once was, and it seems most sites burn themselves out, seemingly for no reason. Photobucket fell out of vogue and now hold pictures captive for money. Tumblr purged 50% of its content (to combat CP) and then lost 90% of it's userbase because they just kept purging and purging. Myspace lost the "coolness" war to Facebook then faded to almost sheer nothingness is the course of a year (after 2009 I feel like no one went back). Facebook won the "coolness" war and monopolized most all of social media into an aggregated but ultimately shitty and toxic place. Twitter began declining with Trump and then with the Elon purchase its functionally useless now. It's like the biggest sites on the internet are designed to fit a niche, expand to where they dominate that niche, then, once everyone is on their platform after all others have fallen away, the owners of these companies strip everything away/fundamentally change the nature of the platform, almost universally in negative ways (as viewed by their user bases). The dot com era boom never died, it just adapted.

[@trence5]

I miss Myspace. I loved being able to custom your own page. It baffles me how FB considering how kind of "stagnant" I thought it was.

[@hitbycars]

@@trence5 Some of my favorite songs and bands were because I went to a random person or friend-of-friend's myspace and instantly their player started playing a track. Discovered some life-long favorites that way, but auto-playing music off of a media platform (like Spotify or KZbin) in this day and age would drive people INSANE. Like "I MANUALLY have to stop the music from playing on someone's page?"

[@Blakbox92]

Reddit is kind of a shallow copy of the forums of old, still better than a lot of social media, though I'm sure it's headed for the dumpster too. Seems like we're hitting a wall of all the big social media sites going down hill?

[@hitbycars]

@@Blakbox92 Yup. It seems that corporatism no longer cares about customer satisfaction as the "customers" and their data are basically the product now. They provide services that people "can't live without" and thus have no incentive to improve them or listen to community input, and often go in the exact opposite direction for the name of increased profits.

[@thesteven2army]

You old

[@TennelleFlowers]

I can’t express how important dA was to me in my early art/internet days. I still have many friendships that began with dA and it was such a hub of creativity and resources. And helped me push myself to get better at art in ways I wouldn’t have even been able to conceive without. It really is no joke that dA has shaped who I am and I would not be the person I am today without it. It’s so sad to see it fall so far. This video gave my mega nostalgia and man…I just wish we had another website around like old dA still around. Thanks for this one, Izzy. ❤

[@capybara_king]

I agree here. I feel like it used the be a website that couldn’t quite be matched by any other, and in a way, it still hasn’t been replaced now. I still do spend some time on there, mostly to post my HARPG art (HARPG is a whole thing… don’t worry about it unless you want to fall down a rabbit hole), but for the most part it’s become a weird stew of people sharing their stupid opinions and having Twitter style arguments, and… other things

[@RaineCantRead]

Amog us

[@epsilonthedragon1249]

My dad has an art site of his own that he’s been actively working on since the 90s, I believe. I’ve been told that at one time it actually competed with DA. Once the AI art announcements dropped on DA’s end, my dad’s site, Side 7, got a relatively huge spike in new users lol

[@paranoidleviathan3016]

Huh it actually looks friendly, especially to newer artists.

[@CataclysmicalART]

Oh woah that site looks neat :0

[@nineinchthread]

Looks very interesting

[@kedatan25]

i'm interested,, do you have a link to the site? :000

[@ZiddersRooFurry]

Your dad has a pretty narrow-minded idea of what AI art is. It isn't always iterated on art used without permission. There's a wealth of public domain art out there.

[@notacreativenameatall973]

DeviantArt was a huge part of my childhood, I used to be 12 years old back when I posted my amateur digital art and I met many wonderful people there. I miss those days but I cherish that phase of my life very dearly since it helped me begin my artistic career.

[@birb263]

You have a very creative name.

[@kittygirl0872]

@@p-__ what the hell

[@sammaloo]

OH MY GOD YOU USED MY COMMENT!!! 29:34 Thank you! You're one of my favorite KZbinrs, so it feels great to be featured in a video about something I used to love so passionately. I could legit write a book on what DA meant to me. It's been so horrendously frustrating to see how much they don't care about artists anymore. For over a DECADE I was super active in the community and met so many lifelong friends. Now I only check it to see if any of my artists still post anymore (spoiler alert - out of the 1,000+ people I watch, I MAYBE see art from about 12 of them, cuz everyone else left). I remember when Eclipse started to be rolled out, the DA Team literally made fun of us artists complaining/giving legitimate criticisms. To see them become so anti-artist is really sad. Thank you so much for covering this topic ❤️

[@dailyheavy416]

deviantart is for me the greatest example of the world you were raised in not being the one you live in anymore. when i was a kid, i'd watch my sister, just 10 years older than me, draw digital art and hang out with other artists and stuff on deviantart. i always thought that when i'd grow up to be her age i'd get to have something like that, but nah, the internet is hellish now, i genuinely have no idea how to connect with other novice artists since the only options for putting your stuff out there is like twitter or instagram neither of which is a good option for unestabalished artists 😞

[@lenargilmanov7893]

Oh man, don't even mention it, internet really went down the shitter. I was feeling nostalgic recently and decided to visit the forums and imageboards I used to hang out on, not only a lot of them were offline or abandoned, it was also almost impossible to find any information, cause due to the obscure search terms Google would assume that I meant something else and output useless BS.

[@LilFeralGangrel]

the thing is, the internet has been basically hellish for over a decade now, it's just only ever getting worse. it's genuinely starting to become intolerable now tho.

[@eatatjoes6751]

Tell me about it. I just found my old deviantart account from ten years ago and aside from the cringe the whole thing just feels like a time capsule of slightly better days.

[@hexatinny]

I feel exactly the same way - I remember hanging out on the internet when I was younger and seeing people do such cool things and thinking, “I can’t wait until I’m older and I can do stuff like that!” And now I am older, but those things aren’t possible anymore - the internet has changed, and a lot of those things just don’t exist anymore. Is there any way to get it back, I wonder? Or is something too fundamentally different about the world now?

[@heyfella5217]

Yep. The death of forum culture. Everything is preferred to be fast-paced nowadays, but it was good while it lasted.

[@puffylinux8653]

as someone who has technically grown up along side deviantart, seeing you flash on the screen all the different layouts over the years, breaks my heart... i discovered dA wayyyyy back in 2009 and its how I got my start really taking art seriously despite still being a child. I found so many artists on that site that helped shape my art direction now and I don't know who i would have become had Deviantart not been apart of my formative years

[@kiarastaggs180]

😡god I hate it when I look at the comments and everyone’s reminiscing about things I completely missed because I was either not born yet or so young I wouldn’t be able to understand anything that was more complex than what my 3 brain cells could handle back then.

[@doggyspeak]

Its not your fault, honestly it makes me furious your generation never got to experience the earnest parts of the old internet do to corporate greed cutting the soul out of everything. Its like wanting to bring a young family member to a park you used to frequent but finding out it got paved over.

[@eatatjoes6751]

@@doggyspeak I was around during most of the good times and back then my brain was basically doing that Homer Simpson gag where he was like, "We're gonna rock on forever! Forever!" I'm now logging back into my second, dead Deviantart page just to write some journals.

[@qualityghost]

I've always been pretty connected to Deviantart, but through slightly different means than most. My dad was actually an admin on there in 2003 and I believe laid off at some point mid 2010s. It helped influence a lot of my dad's knowledge of internet subcultures, I remember when Sephiroth was announced for Smash my dad admitted he only recognized him because he was hugely popular in Deviantart's golden days. We've even got some merch lying around the house: emoticon stress balls, llama plushies, a defective Fella plushie with a hole my dad decided to claim, and weird rage face keychains (after all the creator of the most popular rage faces was actually a prevalent Deviantart user). It's been a shame to see the site fall from grace so hard, my dad was already laid off by the time Eclipse was announced but he was actually for the changes at the time, thinking it could help the site into a new era and all that. No clue how he feels about it nowadays considering its disastrous consequences. He's obviously moved on since this - the site was only a side gig for him that he'd often do during free time during his actual important job - but I think he still kind of misses the community that staffing the site brought to him.

[@rubyx9674]

i'm sorry but what does "a defective Fella plushie with a hole my dad decided to claim" mean?

[@qualityghost]

@@rubyx9674 it was a Fella plushie that came out defective thanks to it having a large hole in it, that my dad decided to claim before it could be thrown away

[@rubyx9674]

@@qualityghost LMAO thanks. the way you worded it implied something completely different jsdfhs

[@qualityghost]

@@rubyx9674 pfff yeah I can see how that might happen

[@Paradox_Prophet]

I remember discovering DA as a teenager and it literally changed my life. I joined my first fandoms there and made friends I still have today over 13 years later. I still visit the site since some artists I care about are still on there, but I haven't uploaded anything in there in a long time. It's such a shame how hostile DA became to the community, outright mocking us for not liking Eclipse and comparing us to spoiled brats not liking something being changed. I miss the sense of community it had, especially in the current internet of today.

[@Y0KAl]

It's sad how stubborn deviantart staff were at refusing to listen to their own community. It feels like they really do not get the appeal of deviantart and why so many of us used it in the first place.

[@CoolMagmar]

One thing I wish she touched on the video was that the staff wanted to kill the groups after Eclipse saying they were too obsolete and only after an outrage they learned that people loved using groups and deleted the journal 😶 But then again it was super quick and dunno if anyone took screenshots of it.

[@Y0KAl]

@@CoolMagmar I think I remember something about that. Groups were probably the main reason why I used deviantart in the first place.

[@Topdoggie7]

​@@CoolMagmar They listen, but only if you're loud enough.

[@strawberrysloth633]

@@CoolMagmar i hadnt heard about that but thats actually pretty interesting. ive been wondering for a while now if groups were being removed, because if you go to a group page or even the groups hub it still has all the old pre-eclipse design elements. it’s also pretty telling as to how uncommitted the staff is to the website and its upkeep- theres whole areas theyve just outright failed/forgotten to update in their massive revamp.

[@CoolMagmar]

@@strawberrysloth633 Yes groups nowadays are mangled and quite hard to mod like in the past if you were a mod you got notifications saying that people send new images for the group to approve now, now will receive no notification and the link to see if new people send images is so hidden that is easier to save the URL than using the site, I don't doubt groups still didn't receive a update because dA truly believed groups weren't being used and not their most popular feature. What makes me really sad is that many groups are now dead because the new notification tab is terrible, I used to be part of the GottaDrawEmAll group, it had big collabs to draw pokemons for a giant image and was hard to get in because in less than one day all slots tended to be filled, but after Eclipse rolled up it took weeks to fill the slots and still many artists had to doubles just to finish it :T

[@alduikat]

Does anyone else remember when the website deviantart was the normal, eclectic green situation and the mobile app was the black, minimalist nightmare?? I remember HATING the mobile app because of how terrible the recommended page and customization was, I couldn’t ever imagine that they would make it permanent for all platforms… eugh

[@marni3682]

This actually makes me so sad. Deviantart inspired me so much as a child, and seeing the site from what it used to be to what it is now just brings back so much nostalgia.

[@EMan753]

You are a true internet archivist, like I know these videos are for entertainment but they're also sincerely fascinating and educational. Internet culture is really its own form of history, and the amount of research you do for each video is truly honorable!

[@toastwaffle]

DeviantArt was the reason I got into digital art in the first place. I started off following MLP artists and fanfic groups on there, leading to me making my own fanart and realizing that I loved the process. I ended up going to uni for game art and since then I've been working professionally as a game artist. I'll always remember it as being the army green with the yellowish-green logo... I miss those days sometimes :')

[@CJMoody]

My biggest gripes with DA now is that I can't browse art pieces by category anymore, also that I can't turn off the mature filter when looking up art of my favorite fictional characters without being subjected to gross fetish art and/or erotic art drawn by people whose artistic skill hasn't improved since grade school...

[@splendidcyan]

Same!!! The categories were so helpful for browsing and exploring, especially when you wanted to maybe see other people's character sheets or find flash games. And the mature filter.... you were protecting us all 😭

[@Topdoggie7]

Block the tags. It really helps.

[@CJMoody]

@@Topdoggie7 I did. But some people neglected to tag their work.

[@Topdoggie7]

@@CJMoody Gross.

[@CJMoody]

@@Topdoggie7 Yeah, it's pretty frustrating...

[@victinitron2000]

one thing that i feel REALLY sums up the rise of corporate greed in deviantart's leadership is the switch from "premium" memberships to "core" memberships. even as a kid i understood what the implications of that were

[@Brokeninc]

It began to die when the founding members split because of differences of opinion when it came to what direction they wanted the site to go in, in about 2006 or 7 ish I believe. When the site was one color, green, premium memberships were still newish, and you had a print shop to sell prints in. There was a large divide of those that supported the two main founders. Some of us stuck around after they left, but it slowly became less about the artist and more about the business and what made them money. It went from community to corporate. And in time many of us just left. Some archived their art and some just deleted everything. And to be honest, I personally haven't found a site with that level of community and creative support since. To give some of you an internet time frame of when the stuff all went down, people still actively used Myspace... Okay after watching the whole video, it just seems history repeated itself...

[@monster-monitor3898]

my favorite part of dA was the OC tournaments. seeing everyone drawing eachothers oc's having these epic fights and moving onto the next rounds and teaming up w ppls OC's was amazing. It was so good for finding new artists and for creating awesome new content of your character. I remember 12yo me desperately creating last minute submissions to enter these tournaments.

[@xiaochio_]

I totally agree! There were so many OCTs out there that made up my childhood just browsing pages and entries made by others, and many that have led me to following some really great artists that had left to other sites. While I wasn’t a prominent DA user, the groups and stories made for these OCTs were always so fun to look at. The Walking City OCT is the first one for me that comes to mind!

[@lenargilmanov7893]

Yeah, the Law of Talos was probably the most popular one.

[@spectrumspectre]

I think my favorite DeviantArt story has to be when my Grandma was talking with friends on one of her 20+ years-old chat rooms (as in, the chatroom had been Ongoing for 20+ years) for people with terminal illnesses. One of her buddies-we'll call him Dan-drew custom profile pics for the group, each member had a dragon with little accessories to represent what they do & what they love. The funny part was that Grandma was asking if I wanted to see all of Dan's art, and I said yes, like a fool. She opened up his profile, clicked on a link that led to his DeviantArt portfolio, and I saw that it hadn't been active in 12 years. She scrolls down, and the first 20 images are all furry p*rn. I'm talking like full-frontal, not censored, furry smut art. I had to be the one to explain to my 70 year-old grandmother A. what was happening in the drawings, B. what furries are, and C. what "yiff" meant. It was a difficult day for all of us. Oh and I also had to explain HOW i knew what all it was. I die a little inside each time I think about it.

[@de-niall]

oh!…

[@sagebluer]

WHAT‼️‼️‼️

[@mojaslatt]

Was he hacked or was he a secret furry 🤔😭

[@LunaticoniSolar]

Wtf, why this looks like something from Reddit

[@keytarnerd]

​@@mojaslatt i don't think it was all that secret. from the comment, it seems that he provided op's grandma (or maybe the whole group?) with a link to his old DA page

[@TanakaMoon]

I remember having an online prom on DeviantART art with my friends back in 2016. I didn't know what I was doing, but it was sort-of fun... Up until I got like a hundred people who wanted to be in it, and then it just self-imploded.

[@hv9460]

i deadass read prom as porn

[@jiazeng6485]

@@hv9460 same 💀

[@ms.porter4385]

Battleblock Theater profile pic!!

[@futile5496]

I love the name "Eclipse" given to mark the end of a giant. Impressive naming skills on WIX's end. You have to appreciate the little things.

[@dollarstorevodka]

golden comment

[@sabrinacosta5667]

I feel so bad rn After DA died i felt homeless on the internet aside from tumblr which is pretty niche,there is no place on the internet for small or casual artists mostly because you're neither a giant of art that has a high profile on instagram,twitter,artstation and other or the badly existing person who makes drawings once in a while,these is no in between and it sucks because the only place to find others like you or growl naturally is gone.

[@theForestRed]

Oh man. This video really hurt my heart. I was a deviantArt power-user since 2004 (19 years ago!! jesus). I had paid subscriptions for years, moderated several groups with thousands of members each, went to irl dA meetups in my city where I met lots of friends (and even my partner, with whom I spent the next 16 years of my life.) dA was a huge part of my life and the social links I forged were a very enriching experience for me. Through the site, I learned a lot about art and met lots of people both in and out of the art profession. In all those decades of being on the site, I swear those poor mods couldn't adjust a single pixel of the site layout without everyone rioting and threatening to leave forever, even if the update proved to be a great one in the end. At a certain point you just roll your eyes at the annual histrionics of the user base. I honestly liked the aesthetic of the Eclipse update, which I saw as a welcome transition to more modern looks, and I felt the ability to toggle new and old aesthetics seemed like a happy medium for people like me who liked it, and those who didn't. I was completely prepared to be on board with Eclipse, but unfortunately one of the things that got overhauled was the ability to search for art in any meaningful way or sort through things by category. I used dA a lot for the artistic resources it provided -- reference photos, photoshop brushes, computer wallpapers, inspiration.... and suddenly it was all IMPOSSIBLE to find what I was looking for. Doing any kind of search would yield all sorts of random junk and none of it was even remotely what I was looking for. I couldn't sort through it by upload date or comment count or medium etc, it was just a jumble of chaos and sonic OCs. The keywords and categories that made the search so robust were completely useless all of a sudden and no amount of struggling with it would convince the search to produce anything relevant to what I was looking for. Maybe this has changed by now (and if it has, somebody please let me know). But at the time, suddenly I was cut off from everything I actually used dA for. When before I would come to the site in search of something and spend the next few hours browsing and leaving comments, I stopped having reasons to come to the site in the first place, and eventually abandoned it completely. I was already gone before the AI art thing happened, and hearing about how everyone was opted in automatically.... hahaha scream. SCREAM

[@girridragon]

Here to say I p much just commented abt the same thing. The search function is still p bad. When AI generated works started gaining traction, many accounts pretending to be real artists have flooded the site. I struggle to find the art I want now because you have to sift through tons of AI art to find what’s real. Them having categories and tagging filters for it doesn’t help either bc most of these ppl are uploading it with the intention to deceive people into believing they actually made it.

[@randomtinypotatocried]

I use to use DA for references and the useful tutorials. The search ended up over time becoming worse to the point of giving up on the site. I wish there was another site that could take DA place for me

[@Rachgraha]

The destruction to the search system was devastating. I was a moderately well known stock artist/model. When they limited the number of tags you could put on a post it absolutely ruined my reach, and made it impossible to search for references. Also they TOOK AWAY the stock photo category!!! That alone had a devastating affect on the stock community. There is a treasure trove, decades worth of incredible references, tutorials, brushes, etc that are languishing in the depths of dA because they’re essentially unfindable expect by random chance. The destruction of the search function is was ultimately drove me away. I couldn’t find the references I wanted anymore and people couldn’t find me.

[@inakakiwiana]

I miss deviantart, everyone used to be so supportive of each others art and how you’d go out of your way to go to someone’s page to thank them for following you 😢 nowadays people follow you just because they want to boost their own following rather than being genuinely nice

[@randomtinypotatocried]

I miss that too. I even had a few people at the time suggest ways to improve my art when asking for it. Now even in subreddits for artists asking for criticism it feels like pulling teeth to get anything

[@inakakiwiana]

@@randomtinypotatocried it was the optimal space for artists. To even get your art seen now you have to make tiktoks/reels and all the “constructive criticism” you’ll get is 12 year olds telling you your art sucks 🥲

[@catisyellen9877]

It still exists and it’s functional. ❤

[@ghostdagreat]

​@@catisyellen9877 be fr.... I was on the main page recently and it was a wasteland. There used to be so much interaction and now even posts with hundreds of favorites have absolutely no comments. It's gone down the drain.

[@studioalsar]

I mean it still is. Not as it used to be of course but I find it still much more welcoming than insta or such.

[@alyssacox1746]

DeviantArt was a pillar to Mt development growing up. As an abused kid who grew up with the internet, having a site that was so fun to explore and customize and finally express myself was awesome and thrilling, and it was my first time feeling like I was part of a community. Whatever I posted, no matter how shit or silly or specific, it always got some form of engagement. I made many many friends, it's where I met my first partner. It introduced me to many new hobbies and interests. I really don't know where I'd be without it. Everything is becoming so sterilized and broken and soulless, how are kids these days supposed to find a community anymore where they can relax and explore themselves? Why can't anything be personal and fun anymore? Any time I've tried to get back into the site, it's more frustrating and uncomfortable than the last. No one interacts anymore, the spirit is gone. Idk I feel silly but it just feels like everything now is so clinical to a harmful degree and I hope one day the world will be less suffocating and there'll be a new place for people to gather and share their passions without being shut down or stifled.

[@davidabest7195]

Maybe kids can "relax and explore themselves" in real life with real people? The Internet was never meant to replace actual socializing. I grew up with computers too but it was never something that could replace the nites with friends or the first years as a teen being sexually active. I think the Internet has always kind of sucked just maybe you notice it more now that you're older.

[@sivanhedoesstuff]

As someone who's been on DA for 6 years (started at almost 13, now 19), the way DA has run itself into the ground is saddening. I remember seeing all the beautifully-decorated custom profiles everyone had, the friends and memories I made, and how alive everything was. Now the site has a corporate, soulless layout and seeing so many people leave during the Eclipse apocalypse was a sight to behold. I was considering leaving myself, but I have a decent few watchers (a little over 630 as of writing this) and I'm in a few groups that I love, so I couldn't bring myself to. Honestly, I dread what the site is going to become over the next updates.

[@Krysnha]

Hello, i am there since 9 years ago, i start with 29 years old, and it was so beautiful, the place the ideas, coments, custom places, and groups, from all ideas, now in betwen no one talks, no one coments, entire gallerys behind pay walls, and ai art, a hughe amount of abandon gallerys, is depressing, any i follow no longer publish but i am too lazy to just unsuscribe, is miserable the place, like you i have 592 watchers, but only one or two actualy give a bs about it

[@puppytree6343]

Oh I actually recognize your profile, ( I was the weirdo who made the tawkerr picture.) yeah I also left during the eclipse apocalypse. I honestly had fun at first making my goofy art after seeing my sister play on da muro, but oh well thanks wix. Good luck for your groups, I hope the site improves at least a little.

[@sivanhedoesstuff]

@@puppytree6343 Oh hey, I never thought I'd find someone who recognizes me! Unfortunately I don't quite remember if I know which picture of Tawkerr you're talking about, since it's probably been a really long time :')

[@SunnyCida]

My friend group from Neopets migrated to DA in 2007 and I followed. It was such a great place to explore and create art without limits. I made so many friends and I made so much art. It's all still up. It's nice to be able to scroll back to see what kind of art I was making 10 years ago. It's like reading the story of my life. Sad that I don't really feel the need to post my art there anymore.

[@lexibrowning7447]

I'm a digital designer and have worked for agencies that have done work for McDonalds, Nike, Pizza Hut, etc. I graduated college with a BFA in fine arts and concentration in graphic design. I got into that design program due to my love art and creating my own comics. And I got into that due to Deviant Art back in 2008 - 2012. Some things should never be touched by corporate and Deviant Art was definitely one of them

[@edniz]

I was on DeviantArt in 2008 as a 12 year old until probably around 2013, a time when I already felt the decline in the site and switched permanently to Tumblr (which also went into its own fall years later). After so many years, nothing can fill the empty space it has left in my life. I never used Twitter and I hated uploading my art to Instagram and ended up deleting my account. I returned to Tumblr as the only alternative, but not doing too great. Art is my life. My whole life I've been drawing and I always knew I wanted it as a career, but I will never ever make art in the way it is consumed today. And this isn't even just the case for art but everything on the internet nowadays, so I end up feeling deeply hopeless whenever I try to... Just be me and share it. I feel like nobody cares and that my efforts and all the knowledge, wisdom and skill that I have accumulated throughout the years mean nothing. I don't wish to be pessimistic, but this is how I feel and possibly how so many other people feel as well. So maybe we can at least share this and maybe in time, build something different for ourselves.

[@BarKeegan]

A shame to see it dissolve, and I never even signed up. Something will emerge in the future

[@Asmanidoesnotexist2]

If you want another platform to post your art, Side 7 is rlly good :3 (tho it’s not very active)

[@feral_vlogs]

I used to love dA, however it also put me in contact with a LOT of highly creepy adults (a la vampire freaks if that flavor of bad means anything to anyone) and a lot of my fond memories became really horrifying in retrospect. It made a massive impact in the way that it helped me learn how to find art people like myself, there was also a lot of art theft and general stuff I probably shouldn't have been so easily exposed to at such a young age

[@brodriguez11000]

Puberty killer.

[@scoobysnax]

reading the phrase "vampire freaks" gave me the flashback equivalent of being hit with a brick

[@malikarsyasakani]

trust me, when I was young, I got sexual advances via notes and chat messages. Even as an adult now, I still get messages like that.

[@sharpeningtheaxe]

I feel like every website with a social aspect I went on as a young person was like this. Nowhere was safe from creeps and disturbing content

[@magicalspacegiraffe]

I feel similar about the original Skype. They had this feature where you could show up as online to anyone anywhere, so you could videocall or receive calls from users from around the world. Fellow adults probably know what happened next but as kids we really just thought it will be the coolest thing ever, it didn't really cross our minds

[@brendalima5292]

God, I loved DeviantArt. As someone who was NOT an artist, but loved fanart, I obviously found myself there. And after I consumed all the fanart I could possibly find, I was still not satisfied and started to feel this urge to create what I was craving myself. And then I proceeded to post it there, my art that ABSOLUTELY sucked and was really surprised by the response I got. The amounts of instant supportive comments and faves from other fans, to me that was absolutely nobody and had no talent whatsoever, when at every other website out there you had to have a certain amount of popularity to get this kind of attention. At deviantart all you needed was some tags and people would find you, appreciate you and encourage you. DeviantArt is the sole reason I became an artist, I learned so much just by posting stuff there. 🥰 But yeah, I did leave the site after Eclipse. The community was gone and every feature was hard to use.

[@angelbabyxoxoxo]

It’s Easter and Izzy uploads AND ITS ABOUT DEVIANTART???? He has truly risen.

[@angelbabyxoxoxo]

@@Cheyenne89Pictures I was talking about Jesus lmao

[@pumpkibee]

i was like 12 when i first made my acc. 2007. i really miss how the community used to be, it used to be really interactive. now youre lucky if you get noticed with your posts and favourited, and even luckier if anyone comments on your art. there is no community anymore. it’s basically just an art hosting site. no interaction anymore. it really sucks. i love deviantart and always have, it was so formative for me as a child growing up and even if i have really bad memories with some stuff, i still am friends with people i met on dA back in the day. it was so important to me. i really feel bad that deviantArt changed so much and ignored everything their userbase wanted. they dont care about community or the artist anymore. they just care about making money.

[@valora390.]

I remember making an account to follow an artist for a fanfiction they were working on. From there, I met so many cool people, made lots of friends, and surprisingly didn't encounter any drama. Then Eclipse happened. And then it was downhill from there...

[@Vmar98]

For me the worst part about the Eclipse update was how they destroyed the search ability of everything. The “more like” option was gone and the closest thing to suggestions were collections the art you were looking at were in. They have since added suggestions but they only show 9 You now have to look up stuff by tags only but that only show popular stuff first(they eventually added an option to cater it to your likes but later removed it) You can’t easily look up specific categories of art anymore for example, you now have to add “literature” at the start of your search to look for literature only(and that has stopped working properly recently) They removed the ability to search in any collection, so if you hadn’t already properly sorted your favorites and have just been dumping them in one map it’s almost impossible to find anything. Best part about this is that they said they removed this because it cost to much for the amount of people that used it(?) Things have hardly been getting better. Eclipse remove a whole bunch of features and they’ve hardly been working on getting those back. The only objective improvement compared to old DeviantArt I can think of is that they added the ability to ban specific tags from being shown to you, though it’s limited to 100.

[@vreemdear6344]

A guy on deviantart once asked if he could send me naked pictures of himself so I could practice drawing anatomy. I do go to nude life drawing sessions but I did not know this guy and this was literally the only thing he messaged me. Of course I said no and he was pretty miffed and tried to change my mind. He was really insistent that it wasn't a kink thing, he just "genuinely wanted to help artists" XD

[@InkedAnimations]

How did he not see what was wrong with contacting a STRANGER and asking if they want nudes lol

[@maddieb.4282]

How is deviantart the problem here lol. There are creepy dudes just like this on every other website too

[@InkedAnimations]

@@maddieb.4282 Because DeviantArt doesn't really do anything to STOP creepy dudes like this. Most other websites at least try or even have the basic features to block them.

[@maddyocean5948]

@@maddieb.4282they didn’t say that 😭

[@AneitaLT]

*There are a few other things that happened to DeviantArt ever since Eclipse hit:* *1.* Many Categories were remove for the ""simpler"" layout, before *categories where outright removed altogether.* This mean that someone(me) wants to look up vampire literature, they need to type that in the search bar. That wouldn't be so bad in of itself except that people don't tag their art, so a lot of literature, fan fiction, poetry, anything that involves writing, gets buried and lost to anyone who wants to search. So, unless people type literature or story in the tags when uploading their story, no one will be able to find it. It especially sucks since, again, people don't tag their stuff and a writer doesn't really think to type "literature" or "story" in their tags. It also super sucks when DeviantArt is very visual-based, it will be easy to overlook non-drawing based art. The same can be said for stock references for poses(that category was removed), film or animation(that category was removed), photography(that category was removed), and even icons.(so no new icons can be added to DeviantArt outside of what DeviantArt decides to add) *2. The search system degraded to the point of being useless.* For example, I like monkeys, so I try to look up art of monkeys. A lot of the top results will be older/popular art, but if I DARED to search in "Popular this Month", "Popular this Week", or even "Most Recent", I will get a lot of art that has no monkeys or nothing to do with monkeys. The art can have no monkeys in the title, their tags, username of the artists, or even description, but they will show art with no monkeys in the art or anywhere despite typing "Monkey" in my search. The same can be said when I'm being specific, too. I'm a part of a closed species bagbeans group, so I try to look up bagbean-related art to see what other members have drawn. Keyword is "TRY", because when I try to type specific words like "Bagbeans Time Loot" or "Bagbeans Mining Trial" or even "Bagbeans Monkey Theme" will show a lot of result that has "bagbean" in the drawing/tags, but half of the time, nothing else. It's not just bagbeans; I may want to look up "color pencil art" or "anime comics" and get very little results unless they are showing off old & popular results that fits my search. I can't look up by tags very well as 1. no one tags their art and 2. you need to click on a drawing that already has the tag I'm looking for to search that tag. Even then, I'm only able to look up 1 tag at a time. *3.* This is more of an addition to the previous paragraph, but *search tools that is usually used on google and multiple search engines no longer works on DeviantArt.* In the past, if I'm looking up something, but I want too avoid other stuff, I use things like '-'(minus) or "quotation marks". It was useful when I wanted to look up Sonic art without seeing Pony stuff ("Sonic" -Rainboom -RainbowDash -MLP -Pony) or pokemon/Digimon centric art (Pokemon OR Digimon -human -trainers -tamers). I don't know how a company broke what already works, but now I can't specify what I want and DON'T want to see. This especially sucks when people don't flag their mature art and I can't type stuff like -porn -nudity to avoid it. Mute tags is ""there"", but it's more of a burden when I want to just look up a term without another just for that search.(like looking up Hollows from Bleach that isn't Ichigo or Hollow Knight) *4. DeviantArt is getting worse at hiding mature content.* In the previous example, I wanted to look up "color pencil art" and saw a lot of nudity and porn that made me extremely uncomfortable. I had *mature content filter on* to avoid that sort of stuff! When reporting this to deviantArt multiple times, they just told me to report it myself, which means forcing myself to either go the art to report it or avoid searching stuff. Even the most innocent of terms puts be face first into that garbage. With how much mature stuff that is appearing more and more without filter, it felt like the site wants me to either do their job for them or avoid looking up anything that isn't in the "Most Popular" page. There isn't any way to report the user for breaking the rules when they do this too, to they keep on getting away with it. Meanwhile, more innocent art gets hit by the mature tag, despite having nothing mature to it. *5.* A lot of NEW art seems to get buried. Whether it's art I commissioned someone else to draw, or new-ish art I found after digging, it seems like any new art don't get seen at all. Normally, that's to be expected on a site like this, but it's to the point where I would search for a term and I see nothing but mediocre drawings and assume "I guess no one draws this term", with the better art being near the bottom or outright invisible. And usually, it's the newer art that doesn't get shown off. It makes it difficult to search for art to see if anyone did anything new unless I was already watching them. New artists' art are really hard to see now. I've been on the site for over 14 years. www.deviantart.com/MoonbowDragon Even before that, I go on the site to look up art. Even though I do upload art, I use this site to look at other people's art and get inspired to draw my own art. It makes me sad that a site that helped build me up as an artist fall so low. Now, I don't look up art as much as I use to as DeviantArt makes it difficult to look up anything that isn't popular or mainstream. I aired my grievances to the site multiple times but they either turned me away, give a generic "your issue has been heard and we are leaving your issue as "solved"", or say "nothing we can do". I mainly come to the site nowadays because I'm a part of an art group that gives me prompts and encouragement to draw more often. Outside of that group, I don't really have much reason to seek improvement on my skills.

[@jasonoxley6125]

Exactly the reasons I left DA. Eclipse just made the site unusable for what I was doing, so I moved on, as did everyone else in the groups I was part of. It's really sad to see the end of such a vibrant community.

[@kelandryyemrot1387]

THIS!!!!!!!! ALL OF THIS!!!! I've been on the site (off and on) longer than I want to admit, and THIS!!!! Especially your second point! But all of this. The search engine is so horrible useless now. I feel like it's gotten even worse in the past year. I miss the categories so much. I rarely even use search anymore. I click on pictures from artists I watch, then click on the suggested collections and scroll through those. I seem to have better luck that way, but it's not really a solution. I'm limited to what others have managed to collect. It's horribly time-consuming too. And yeah, the mature content issues has gotten BAD. I don't hide mature content because some stuff I like is considered mature and, as long as it's a drawing, I'm not overly bothered by porn. I can even handle scrolling past artistic nude photography or people modelling as an artist resource. But now I get straight-up porn photos suggested to me. Not nude photography. Porn. It reminds me of the pop-ups from the 90's and early 2000's. Even if you were on a completely innocent site, a screen could pop up and scar your child brain with very graphic pictures of porn. Even closeups of excessively large youknowwhats. I guess I should be glad it doesn't randomly pop up on my screen and refuse to close -_- but still, this isn't a porn site and I don't look at pictures like that so.... There's no way to report it, and telling DA I'm not interested in photo's like that doesn't seem to help and often hides things that are absolutely nothing like that picture.... like uh... sure, the pretty cake might be food porn to some people but uhm??? not the same thing..... at all. Not even close.

[@libbynightwolf7551]

Late to the party, but I always found it weird that DA has a period of time where drawn cheesecake soft porn was a no-no, but you can have a full on real life penis and it's okay because it was "photography" and therefore art. I still haven't figured that one out.

[@amberbaum4079]

Number 1 and 2 was one of the biggest reasons on why I won't bother visiting that site. I have better chances using image search engines and then go directly to the DA art piece then using that PIECE OF CRAP thing they call search system. No way of filtering and proper searching. That's one way artistd loose their audience like me. If you do not have categories and a proper search system then content sites become completely unusable with all the crap that's on there. Art gets buried under and avalanche of other stuff. No one wants to waste their time digging through "stamps" and journal "deviations" and ms paint art to get to the one good nuggets. Regarding number 3, it's bonkers that one has to use third party blacklist browser add-ons to filter the search results of stuff you don't want.

[@thedoruk6324]

@@kelandryyemrot1387 Spot on! Not only you cannot search for anything but results come with absolutely weird things

[@Jiggy...]

I just wanted to mention another disastrous removed feature: dropping deviation categories and starting to use tags. Previously, whenever you submitted art, you'd have to specify what category it fell into, such as fantasy digital art, adoptables, photoshop brushes, textures, stock images, etc. Then, you could optionally add tags to the art to describe what the piece contained. Not everyone added tags, and many pieces went entirely untagged, yet would still be seen by people when browsing "More Like This" due to it's categorization. When they transitioned to Eclipse, they COMPLETELY erased all categories, literally stripping the metadata from their databases. 15 years of priceless categorization data completely obliterated. Now, you had to find art based on the tags alone. Suddenly, searching for specific styles, bases, stock images, and anything else was essentially impossible. Even if you found something you were looking for, like a Photoshop brush, wouldn't guarantee you'd find any more, because it was dependent on tags and what might be in the description. And, if the art never had any tags before the removal of categories, it was completely lost to any searches and essentially turned into lost media. I have a strong feeling this is why most people saw dramatic drops in engagement, as if they hadn't tagged their older work with meaningful tags, they were now completely invisible. It's such a disaster and, honestly in my opinion, one of the biggest blows to the art community in the past 5 years.

[@winrycarver7701]

Wow, I had no idea they'd dropped categories! I wasn't able to use Eclipse for long enough to find out. That's awful!

[@hannahisapalindrome44]

This is what did it for me. I could deal with a lot of the dumb design choices, but taking away the ability to find untagged art was the last straw. I used to find so many artists just browsing my favorite hyper specific categories. No other websites has even come close to matching that.

[@xXxZayanaxXx]

I was actually trying to get back into using dA on a regular basis again around the time Eclipse was introduced and the removal of categories absolutely killed my motivation in one fell swoop. The new search system is abysmal in comparison! Even when I wasn't actively using dA I'd browse the stock and tutorial categories but trying to look anything up these days with just the search terms "stock" or "tutorial" allows for way too much junk to be filtered in, and like you mentioned, old untagged posts won't even show up!

[@katiebarber407]

to be fair hashtags have always been better than categorization

[@theMoporter]

I went to find some tutorials on how to draw slime/jelly a month ago, which is how I found this out. I was gutted. So many resources lost to the algorithm™.

[@delanybell5613]

When I moved schools in middle school I met a bunch of nerdy kids who had the same interests as me for the first time. They introduced me to deviantart and all of the silly fandom sites and customs. We would spend hours on deviantart doing rps and ask groups lol! We made so many friends on that site and others. We went to our first conventions together and made our first cosplays together. Truly a simpler time and I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything like old school DA since

[@Patchouliprince]

My entire tween years are dominated by memories of deviantart- Making friends, writing fanfiction, making a million OCs, and all the old gifs omg. Also nothing was more fun than filling out the “what am I doing right now” section when making a post. It made me feel very main character lol. I still look at my old account to get a look at my mindset from a decade ago and it’s so amazing I’m able to do that! But man as someone who hasn’t used deviantart since 2014 it sure has changed a lot

[@BattleSoXx]

It’s honestly so sad 🥹 DeviantArt practically raised me and really inspired me to become an artist.

[@joshallen128]

youd get more input/output from imgur these days

[@gunbunster]

I've met one of my best friends on deviantart almost 10 years ago now...we used the site a lot to chat by commenting on each others profiles and journals. We made gift art for each other and collabed, we even met in irl despite living in different countries. Deviantart made me active in communities and despite the "bad quality" its where my art peaked. I was just so motivated to draw, found so much joy in it which I do not anymore and no other site can replicate.

[@AlienNPC]

that's so sweet!! 🥺🥺🥺 reminds me of the many artist friends I used to have and doing art trades all the time with them, but due to eclipse and many moving away from the site, many of us fell out of touch 😭

[@strangeaelurus]

When deviantART rolled out its AI thing, that was it for me. I think the company should have known that introducing an AI generation tool would have sparked outrage from its artists.

[@Nahobussyino]

It’s really sad because there are still some really talented artists out there but they’re out numbered by AI users

[@ARCHIVED9610]

samw same. when it happened i immediately deleted all my works and my profile..

[@Y0KAl]

absolutely. It doesn't take a lot of internet sleuthing to discover how most artists feel about AI art. It's like they don't know their own community at all.

[@knives.3733]

I think they knew, they just didn't care. As one person in the video said, "Ignorance and greed."

[@Haysey_Draws]

Problem is the people running it now aren't artists, they are tech people. They probably didn't have a clue how much artists (and the users in general) hated A/I Art. Hell they probably STILL don't have a clue what users actually want or how to make the site successful, when it all goes under they'll bounce onto their next job, probably in a similar position, and never think about it again.

[@Pomshka]

I was one of the earliest members of Deviantart! I was there when we all did the strike for Jarf and I met one of my best friends via the website and we remained friends for around 20 years! I actually do miss the early golden days of Deviantart. No other website has ever felt the same since.

[@thedoruk6324]

Deviantart literally shot itself in the foot. The site is not usable anymore. One still cannot search for simple words within its search option

[@wretchedcats4909]

Oh boy can’t wait to relive my highly specific childhood memories via an Izzzyzzz video again. My deviantart trauma runs deep.

[@DolphinTillTheEnd]

"The spirit of the original deviant art skinning community" is such a cursed sentence if you don't know what skinning it refers to, i love it

[@TheZiros]

I kinda felt like I was alone with feeling like DA's well.. dead. But hearing and seeing this, it's kinda like you finally put the poor thing into its grave and I am thankful that you honored the greatness of it and gave it a proper burial. Sad it had to go out like this, I had been on it for 16 years and loved it until eclipse.

[@eatatjoes6751]

I'd been on it for a while - once when I was like 12 and then forgot the password for it, and once six years ago. Eclipse and Core were the worst things about it.

[@Topdoggie7]

Been on it since 2005 and will still be there on and off. It's still the biggest website and not run by pedophiles unlike certain big ones now. I don't think it's as amazing. But free art sites are impossible too.

[@_kurohana_]

I used to spend hours on deviantart looking at mlp and anime bases which definitely helped me start with my own drawings. I left after eclipse because it was a drastic layout change and I simply couldn't find myself there anymore. I went back a few days ago after someone mentioned deviantart and I was genuinely surprised it's still up. (Btw I am absolutely in love with your jacket!!!)

[@thepowerisyetunknown7710]

This site is where I made my first online friends, where I learnt what a furry was, where I posted my first fanfic, where I assimilated basic fandom concepts such as "ship" "OC" "OTP", that stuff. Its also what got me into Vocaloid and anime. Ten years later let's just say I'm still blasting Hatsune Miku and reading a ton of anime fanfic, some things just never change.

[@zagooper]

I've always said "It happened on dA first," and everyone scoffs, but it's true lol We walked so the world could run

[@mitzinull]

FINALLY IZZY TALKS ABOUT DEVIANTART!! I always thought it was odd that she didn't talk about DeviantArt, despite she mentioned it in some of her videos, because not only it was very iconic art sharing site in 2000s but also the impact it had on the internet culture, fandoms and the fact it had a rabbit hole. I really missed the old DeviantArt and its ability to customize your page by coding in HTML and using F2U pixel headers, dividers and emoticons, and having the fandom and shipping buttons/stamps on your page.

[@ravensramen]

same!! i remember learning how to do basic coding on deviantart, it was so much fun, but theres no sites left like that on the internet now :(

[@mitzinull]

@@ravensramen Toyhouse and Tumblr are the only sites I know of that allow you to do basic to complex coding on your page, but yeah many sites no longer offer you the ability to customize your own profile and such, which is really shame.

[@sarahdreamix]

i'm in my 30s and my peak deviantart days were 2005-2012, that site was so important to me for fandom and i even met my spouse on it! It's sad to see how it ended up

[@katherinebeaudry8197]

It's so sad to see these websites like deviantart and tumblr degrade and loose their community because of horrible corporate decisions. Nowadays all websites all trying to be each other and we end up having basically the same thing on twitter, facebook, insta, tiktok... I so wish we could bring back blog style websites, costumization and community.

[@goodhunter6433]

Deviantart was my introduction to internet culture! When I was younger I got bullied in school for being an introverted geek and the friends I met on dA were the only thing that kept me sane during my teenage years. We were the embodiment of cringe sparkledog fangirls but it was the first time I felt some sense of belonging and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Some of those friendships ended up being toxic af but I'm still in touch with a few of them! I occasionally log back into my account out of nostalgia and it always feels like coming back to an empty playground

[@pravu5]

I usually don‘t like commenting on videos but wow I just had to. This video made me feel so seen and heard. I loved deviantART SOOO much I can‘t even describe it. I was only 10 y/o (2013) when I started posting my art and that went on for the next 6-7 years. When I tell you, my heart SHATTERED when the new update arrived… I genuinely felt so lost anf unseen bc it seemed like all my friends and followers perished. I since have stopped drawing or, actually rather, sharing my art. I haven‘t drawn in a long ass time for a while now which saddens me to the core. May sound corny but drawing and sharing my art used to fulfill me and made me so happy even if it wasn‘t visible in my art at times. I really loved customizing my page and used to draw characters just for that. Ever since dA died, I haven‘t felt the same WITHOUT SOUNDING DRAMATIC LMAO but it jzst feels like I‘ve lost my spark and my skills god you unlocked so many memories. I wish to be able to draw and share my art like I once used to. I wish it for myself and for every artist and esp those who feel the same as me. It‘s like there is no other platform that gives you this opportunity which is really sad. Thank you nonetheless for bringing attention to dA! Love your videos ❤❤❤

[@Krysnha]

I understand, since eclipse come, the amount of comisssions or patreon only gallery or suscribers only gallerys,are now everywere, no one coments, they fave and nothing, not even thanks, lie you said i stay for one or two, in betwen the aftermath of the plandemic and these depressing thing, i used to write a lot, now i write a bit, but so slow and not with many desire, no one give ideas or want to participate

[@muscari5482]

I'm sorry to they did that, it's unacceptable. Do you have a Tumblr or Instagram? I'll follow you!

[@SuzysRedStripes]

I was the same way. I was a poet/writer right before the update, and after that, I posted maybe five pieces of writing anywhere online. (In fairness, a lot of that also had to do with the general chaos of the 2020s, but the loss of DA did play a significant role.)

[@cringer8107]

Thats just part of growing up sadly

[@corvigae]

For years deviantArt was a huge part of my internet existence in fandom and the place that really introduced me to digital art. Then, even after I'd long-since abandoned my account, it still stood for more years as a perfect internet time-capsule of a certain period of my life. If I ever needed to find examples of what I was up to and what my art was like in middle school/early high school, I knew all I needed to do was search up my old username. I'm now realizing that I should definitely be making an effort to preserve and memorialize as much of that content as I can, because who knows how much longer this site has left. What's upsetting is that even with going through and saving all of my old art, I'm still going to be missing a large part of that time-capsule: all of the works I'd favorited, groups I'd joined, etc. As it is now, they're pretty much preserved in amber, but when the site iteself goes down, that'll all be gone forever.

[@magical-soap5359]

You are so right. The time will come and who knows what will be left. 💔

[@KidarWolf]

Never watched one of your videos before, but saw DeviantArt's fall mentioned, and had to watch. My account is not active on DA anymore, hasn't been for a long time. It's still there, there's still art on it, still writing on it, but the account is a ghost placeholder. A check of my profile there shows I've been a member since about 2005. The change to Eclipse drove me away from the site, mainly because the front page and recommended art were no longer relevant at all to me as a consumer, but also because without the More Like This existing in its originally introduced form, it was very hard for me to find artists with a similar aesthetic and subject matter to mine. I maintain the account, logging in occasionally to redownload resources I remember finding useful as long as 18 years ago, or to review ancient tutorials by others that did something clever, but that's about it. I don't have anywhere to post my art anymore. I'm not on Twitter because to hell with Musk, I'm not on Instagram, I just don't get it. I'm on Flickr, but don't think it does what I need it to for my art, so don't use it for that. There just isn't anywhere for me as an artist anymore. There's no art community online anymore, not really. I feel so alone as an artist now.

[@ingridc0ld]

Deviantart is so nostalgic. I miss the days of being an angsty pre teen making shitty artwork, and connecting with cool people, and interestingly enough discovering music. People used to post their favorite songs and artists in their profile discriptions. It was a great way to find indie music. I also used to print out my favorite artwork onto cardstock and tape them up on my bedroom wall. Yes, I was a theif 😅

[@magical-soap5359]

Bahaha, saving the art you like is just fun lol. And yes reading what is on somebody's profile is something to remember 🙂

[@aspen-lleaves5125]

I so agree with the music!!

[@ddjsoyenby]

yeah kids nowadays don't get it.

[@C.T.T535]

Memories! I'm almost 29 and DeviantArt was such a profound part of my childhood and early teens. I found it at exactly the right time (early middle school) and remember visiting the site pretty much every single day. I found so many incredible artists who had a tremendous impact on my own art journey. Ironically I didn't make an actual account until I was well into my late 20s. Just in time for the garbage fire of N. F. Ts and AI to hit the scene because I have great timing. 🤷🏾

[@CJDragonheart]

Omg twin! Same age and we found the site at the same age. I made an account as a teen because it gave me an escape from school and a rather boring home life. It let me express myself and share art and stories with likeminded friends. I haven't touched the site in over 10 years and so i completely missed when the disaster hit. Probably a good thing. But i am still greatly saddened by this. Hopefully we can find or fund a new site that can replace da

[@poweroffriendship2.0]

DeviantArt, Artstation, and Newgrounds are like the art galleries of the Internet where everyone can post their own artwork online. DeviantArt is an enigma when it comes to looking deeper into the weird side. It is blessed and cursed.

[@cyqry]

On note of the AI art stealing artwork from others: I know its going to be ranty but bare with me I hear the most common argument against this being "well all art is derivative, imitative, none of its original anyways, we're all influenced by something else". This is absolutely true, we are influenced by others, take a look at some of the best musicians or music writers out there and they will all tell you a long list of other musicians that had influenced them. But here's the catch, its a *list* of them, various musicians with often varying styles. As a game developer I can say we experience a similar thing. We are influenced by games we played growing up, certain genres, certain mechanics. If we want to make a 2D side-scroller, we think "what games do I know like this that are successful". But again there's a catch; we look at the specific design choices that made those games good, or at least the design choices they use that are similar to what we want to implement. We're influenced in the sense that we find what worked and what didn't. We have another term in game development; cloning. Its the act of straight-up copying another game and perhaps adding in your own art style or a handful of mechanics on top of it, but the core is undeniably the thing you copied. More often than not, your additions don't blend with the original design either, hence why so many clones tend to be bad. There's a significant difference between being derivative/imitative/influenced by something and straight up copying it; one involves looking at the original piece and analysing how it works to inform your own decisions, the other is theft. How does this relate to AI? Simple, when we first started hearing about AI it was all "detecting if this is a cat or dog" type things. From the very beginning it was designed to look at what existed and try to categorise it. Modern AI generates art based on this same approach, you give it the prompts and it uses its databanks to find things within that category, its just that the banks have gotten so large now that it can appear as if its creating something new, but the truth is a human could very much do the same if we were able to rip off enough pieces and merge it into one thing. The AI isn't intelligent and the techbros who say it is are often simply users of software rather than people who actually make it themselves. The reality is that a truly conscious AI is still a very VERY long way away, we're just in that stage of faking it really well. The AI can't analyse why the artist did something in a particular way, it can't determine why some sidescroller games have very fast floaty movement while others have much slower and deliberate, it can only copy what it sees and hopes that it fits. AI art isn't derivative, it isn't influenced, it cannot be compared to human art. It can only clone.

[@ferndrop]

I was on dA from about 2008(ish)-2012 and after this video I feel like I was a part of it during the golden years. It's such a pity it's fallen from grace like this, it was an amazing start for some talented artists.

[@Katie-gr6qq]

As soon as the AI thing happened I got scared for a few artists I knew had passed away. I'm glad this lawsuit is happening.

[@HeartsSoulArts]

This will most likely get buried but one of the most missed opportunities DeviantArt could've done was to capitalize on the whole Twitter Artist migration when Elon Musk bought out Twitter back in late 2022 So many artists were trying to find another place to post their work, and it SUUUUUUUCKS because despite Eclipse being awful, DA could've promoted itself, but instead announced its AI art the same day people realized DA was an option. Also witnessed tons of friends/artist I follow make accounts only to immediately delete them the next day when DA made the announcement. Funnily enough, Tumblr gained a bunch of traction & more so because of DA's fuck up

[@masamunezx6011]

Twitter artist migration sounds awful No thanks

[@HeartsSoulArts]

@@masamunezx6011 oh dude it absolutely sucked lol

[@leftoverthoughts2275]

Twitter artists? Some must have ended up there anyway. It would explain why every search ends up with almost nothing useful, buried under a mountain of toddler scrawlings, slap-a-girl-on-a-cityscape copies, vore fetish faffing-around in low quality CG, and endless repeats of the magic leotard story with different stock photos slapped on.

[@magicbuns4868]

No such exodus actually happened. 99% of Twitter is trashy political squabbles between two factions of idiots. It's a website that's fuelled on outrage, and it's only got more outrageous, thus popular,since Musk.

[@SuzysRedStripes]

And Tumblr didn't even want the Twitter migrants. Lose-lose-lose-lose scenario for literally all parties involved.

[@Cyberdeamon]

You know you got the full dA experience when you got greeted with the badly drawn furry in a diaper on the home page.

[@twotruckslyrics]

or seeing that the collection your art got added to was full of mature art 😰

[@brokenfoxproductions]

Ah, DeviantArt. I used this from whenever I was probably 11 or 12 (lying I was 18, obv.../half sarcastic) until I was nineteen or twenty (2006-2015) and I have so many horror stories. Like the first time that someone requested a commission from me, they asked me to draw their oc getting farted on by a My Little Pony. I remember the April fool's Day mudkip invasion. I used to interact with artists who are now well known in the industry (like Vivziepop) back whenever the only thing that they did was make very questionable and creepy smut. I wrote crappy poems and I made pixel art, and towards the later years I did a lot of fetish modeling. At one point I won a custom plushie of a baby Homestuck character, and it was shipped the whole way from Germany. I even managed to do a collaboration with one of my favorite hentai artists. It was definitely a time, man. I'm pretty sure my old account from before I transitioned is still up under the name raeraefox. It's the biggest trash fire in the entire world though. 😂 Edit: apparently it was deactivated within the past six months because that was the last time I checked.

[@cozmiknik8699]

Man, this is sad lol. When I was a teen back in 2008, DeviantArt was my go-to all day, every day. It really helped me come out of my shell, explore my love for fandoms, and talk to, even befriend, fellow artists.

[@kontrun]

devianart honestly shaped me as an artist.,, i still vividly remember my idol at the time (mind i was 10 lol) being my 20th follower and it felt revolutionary to me LMAO the devianart community was probably the best thing to happen to me, because people would actively encourage you to continue creating, no matter how "cringe" or "bad" it was.

[@jammer9rtglz]

hi mika

[@no_fishman9669]

It's really refreshing to see a video about Deviantart that doesn't mention the fetishistic content, cuz, as much as it's a part of the website as much as the normal art, it's still simply just a separate community from everyone else that i think should just be kept to itself and not giving it attention (mosty because fetishistic stuff is a 18+ content that kids shouldn't be exposed to, as a amature fetish artist, i'm upset at how those "Cringe" Content Creators casually do that, without a single ounce of awareness). If anyone's looking for a better alternative to for DA or Twitter, i recommend Itaku. Pretty solid website.

[@Blakbox92]

TBH the fetishistic content never bothered me, it always comes off as this annoying nod to juvenile, meanspirited "cringe culture" humour (thank god cringe culture mostly died out). It was never really the majority of the site, and it was pretty easy to avoid or ignore if it wasn't your thing.

[@no_fishman9669]

@@Blakbox92 Yea, thank god that's slowly dying as it should. And I think people who say they see alot of fetish art are usually people that just don't have a DA Account.

[@BerraChoirs]

I find the "Cringe Deviantart" phase on the internet pretty horrifying considering it's minors looking up fetish material which they don't have the concept of consent to do so.