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Ramblings I Needed to Let Out
Aug. 10th, 2024 07:42 pmThis is probably my longest entry to date. I admit this is more copy and paste rather than go to each one and burn my fingers out typing what is essentially the same thing over and over. Only thing that is really being typed for each is the intro paragraph.
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I'm probably not the first to say that I've grew up in the age where most of us were exposed to a ton of online stuff. Neopets was a big one that I can say right off the bat, but really - any virtual pet concept could fit this criteria. I even had gotten my current email address in that time frame that I still use to this day... MySpace - the original juggernaut - came out and of course some of my peers were lying about their age just to get an account there. Needless to say, I did too but couldn't keep that a secret - haha...
After the secret slipped out though, I kind of forgot about it until I came of age to get one myself and ended up deleting that faux account. Even remembered getting my Facebook now before it became the shell of its former self too invested in fighting false information rather than caring for their userbase. Sadly, even then my FB was pretty much too quiet to where it got frozen and locked for a while because I didn't do status updates and such. Even when I did, they were too uncommon it's enough for their system to think I was a bot. Not exactly - I was just socially awkward and had no friends aside from family...
I had done some virtual pet games there from the ever popular Pet Society from Playfish (screw you EA) to the rather fishy Party Town that was a ripoff and a bit of a stolen content trashbin. Even with the ups and downs that was virtual pets, I remembered both Neopets and Subeta. While I don't have my old accounts from back then, I still play. Even after my silly child self got themselves into a hot mess, I still kept to myself and loved it.
Didn't really thought about sharing my art online until at least college. Granted, I did some in highschool but it's the locked down FB sharing before the paranoia set in. I guess I tried DeviantArt before it started their lovely AI storm... I left after the drama picked up. I know one part of it was because I had deleted a comment from someone that was of a drawing that made me uncomfortable and it was done in the mural feature of the site. Their friend didn't take too kindly to it and their behavior towards me really bugged me to bits. I even had a similar issue with a group on FB I was a part of and I knew it was related to that one fox song. Thankfully that song has dropped from everyone's radar for the most part...
I don't recall every bit of it but I knew it was a heck of a lot worse when both people involved got aggressive... I think it was there that maybe my anxiety took right off like a bat out of hell. DeviantArt was deactivated and I was more in the background on Tumblr the first time around.
Long story short: left twice because of the bots going overboard and maybe one anon that probably was going through a rough day and wanted to press someone's buttons. And that's where I'm at now.
I had restarted with Itaku before departing for Artfol - both of which I never use as much anymore. One was because I never got much activity there to justify usage and the other was because it seemed way too virus cliquey to the point it felt pointless...
Between the shaky stability of Artfol servers, I gave Pillowfort a try as well as several other places: Weasyl, Inkblot, Newgrounds, DoodleAddicts, and even CoHost. Inkblot was too much work to try and get something posted and took off from there. DoodleAddicts were just not something I could work with, especially with the limitation of one upload per day unless you got a subscription. I departed from there as well.
The remaining three I still use to this day. And even though I refused to touch DeviantArt again even with the AI being front and center of attention, I have FurAffinity a try and even with the bits of content I consider not my cuppa, it's not a bad place. I eventually got to give Cara a chance and eventually gave Artfight a go this year.
Side note to mention: I also considered going back into pixel art but there's little to no sites that support it much. I do remember one that I had been on but because of the behavior of the admin that ran the app I left. Plus I had forgotten to add that I had tried Medibang's art social but left there after a bit...
Between my social anxiety (or general anxiety to be fair) and the fact that I sometimes can't grasp that I'm better off not reacting to stuff, I have had less than stellar experience with online connections. Granted, even my physical ones are very few. There's already a few I knew I forgotten like Toyhouse, Unvale, and Character Hub - but for the most part, those are more lax and are just character depositories than anything else I would think.
---
The reason for all that backstory drop is because - I had a couple of times where I thought it's best to just disappear for good... I equate that to anxiety and such but it just seems like the only contribution I give is more frustration and slop even though it's not always true. I guess for me I wanted to just give people a reason to smile and feel like it's not always going to be hopeless even though I had those moments as a kid.
I've been trying to limit my time online in social media and such. Most of my online time is just Neopets/Subeta and YouTube. I even play my Switch/3DS or even touch grass in the form of housekeeping. I guess it just seems like I need to give myself grace and allow myself to breathe while trying to create my own boundaries in the cyberspace realms.
Sorry for this long read, but thank you if you've read all of it.
---
I'm probably not the first to say that I've grew up in the age where most of us were exposed to a ton of online stuff. Neopets was a big one that I can say right off the bat, but really - any virtual pet concept could fit this criteria. I even had gotten my current email address in that time frame that I still use to this day... MySpace - the original juggernaut - came out and of course some of my peers were lying about their age just to get an account there. Needless to say, I did too but couldn't keep that a secret - haha...
After the secret slipped out though, I kind of forgot about it until I came of age to get one myself and ended up deleting that faux account. Even remembered getting my Facebook now before it became the shell of its former self too invested in fighting false information rather than caring for their userbase. Sadly, even then my FB was pretty much too quiet to where it got frozen and locked for a while because I didn't do status updates and such. Even when I did, they were too uncommon it's enough for their system to think I was a bot. Not exactly - I was just socially awkward and had no friends aside from family...
I had done some virtual pet games there from the ever popular Pet Society from Playfish (screw you EA) to the rather fishy Party Town that was a ripoff and a bit of a stolen content trashbin. Even with the ups and downs that was virtual pets, I remembered both Neopets and Subeta. While I don't have my old accounts from back then, I still play. Even after my silly child self got themselves into a hot mess, I still kept to myself and loved it.
Didn't really thought about sharing my art online until at least college. Granted, I did some in highschool but it's the locked down FB sharing before the paranoia set in. I guess I tried DeviantArt before it started their lovely AI storm... I left after the drama picked up. I know one part of it was because I had deleted a comment from someone that was of a drawing that made me uncomfortable and it was done in the mural feature of the site. Their friend didn't take too kindly to it and their behavior towards me really bugged me to bits. I even had a similar issue with a group on FB I was a part of and I knew it was related to that one fox song. Thankfully that song has dropped from everyone's radar for the most part...
I don't recall every bit of it but I knew it was a heck of a lot worse when both people involved got aggressive... I think it was there that maybe my anxiety took right off like a bat out of hell. DeviantArt was deactivated and I was more in the background on Tumblr the first time around.
Long story short: left twice because of the bots going overboard and maybe one anon that probably was going through a rough day and wanted to press someone's buttons. And that's where I'm at now.
I had restarted with Itaku before departing for Artfol - both of which I never use as much anymore. One was because I never got much activity there to justify usage and the other was because it seemed way too virus cliquey to the point it felt pointless...
Between the shaky stability of Artfol servers, I gave Pillowfort a try as well as several other places: Weasyl, Inkblot, Newgrounds, DoodleAddicts, and even CoHost. Inkblot was too much work to try and get something posted and took off from there. DoodleAddicts were just not something I could work with, especially with the limitation of one upload per day unless you got a subscription. I departed from there as well.
The remaining three I still use to this day. And even though I refused to touch DeviantArt again even with the AI being front and center of attention, I have FurAffinity a try and even with the bits of content I consider not my cuppa, it's not a bad place. I eventually got to give Cara a chance and eventually gave Artfight a go this year.
Side note to mention: I also considered going back into pixel art but there's little to no sites that support it much. I do remember one that I had been on but because of the behavior of the admin that ran the app I left. Plus I had forgotten to add that I had tried Medibang's art social but left there after a bit...
Between my social anxiety (or general anxiety to be fair) and the fact that I sometimes can't grasp that I'm better off not reacting to stuff, I have had less than stellar experience with online connections. Granted, even my physical ones are very few. There's already a few I knew I forgotten like Toyhouse, Unvale, and Character Hub - but for the most part, those are more lax and are just character depositories than anything else I would think.
---
The reason for all that backstory drop is because - I had a couple of times where I thought it's best to just disappear for good... I equate that to anxiety and such but it just seems like the only contribution I give is more frustration and slop even though it's not always true. I guess for me I wanted to just give people a reason to smile and feel like it's not always going to be hopeless even though I had those moments as a kid.
I've been trying to limit my time online in social media and such. Most of my online time is just Neopets/Subeta and YouTube. I even play my Switch/3DS or even touch grass in the form of housekeeping. I guess it just seems like I need to give myself grace and allow myself to breathe while trying to create my own boundaries in the cyberspace realms.
Sorry for this long read, but thank you if you've read all of it.
