Instagram and DeviantArt
Jul. 15th, 2022 08:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI recently saw a conversation between some artists I follow on Twitter complaining about Instagram, and I am in full agreement. The platform has been going downhill for years, and it's gotten really bad recently.
I can't speak to issues of engagement, especially for artists. My own follower count has remained steady since I started posting art and stopped posting "lifestyle" photos. This doesn't matter to me, since I'm not a professional and mainly use Instagram as a type of Facebook Lite™ to stay in touch with friends.
That being said, Instagram has been aggressively boosting sponsored content in a way that makes it impossible to tolerate for more than a few seconds. UNLESS! you use the desktop version, which displays posts in chronological order and doesn't insert ads into your feed. I use Instagram almost exclusively on desktop (usually in conjunction with an Instagram-specific photo downloader to save full-resolution art tutorials and reference photos), but that sort of defeats the purpose of Instagram as something you scroll through on the train.
I guess, as an alternative to Instagram, DeviantArt is still going strong. It has more of an ArtStation vibe now, except it's retained its old social elements and doesn't try to sell you software on the landing page.
What's also nice about DeviantArt is that there's no pressure to post photos of an Ikea-perfect workspace or create videos of yourself packing Etsy orders. I understand that professional artists need to game the algorithm in order to maintain their businesses, but I still hate to see that sort of thing.
And there's always Tumblr! Which is still broken and weird, but it's calmed down a lot since 2018. Also, I think Japanese artists are starting to discover Tumblr, which is good and excellent news for everyone.
I can't speak to issues of engagement, especially for artists. My own follower count has remained steady since I started posting art and stopped posting "lifestyle" photos. This doesn't matter to me, since I'm not a professional and mainly use Instagram as a type of Facebook Lite™ to stay in touch with friends.
That being said, Instagram has been aggressively boosting sponsored content in a way that makes it impossible to tolerate for more than a few seconds. UNLESS! you use the desktop version, which displays posts in chronological order and doesn't insert ads into your feed. I use Instagram almost exclusively on desktop (usually in conjunction with an Instagram-specific photo downloader to save full-resolution art tutorials and reference photos), but that sort of defeats the purpose of Instagram as something you scroll through on the train.
I guess, as an alternative to Instagram, DeviantArt is still going strong. It has more of an ArtStation vibe now, except it's retained its old social elements and doesn't try to sell you software on the landing page.
What's also nice about DeviantArt is that there's no pressure to post photos of an Ikea-perfect workspace or create videos of yourself packing Etsy orders. I understand that professional artists need to game the algorithm in order to maintain their businesses, but I still hate to see that sort of thing.
And there's always Tumblr! Which is still broken and weird, but it's calmed down a lot since 2018. Also, I think Japanese artists are starting to discover Tumblr, which is good and excellent news for everyone.
