The death of DeviantArt

I recall vividly that all my friends that didn't come from forums, came from deviantart.

I never saw myself as an exceptional artist, but I recall meeting sonderful people with the same hyperfixations as me. People that even to this day I kept a link with, making a jump to real life.
I remember the first time I got my deviantart subscription and just how excited I was to be able to make my profile look unique and personalized.
I still cherish the feeling of getting my first commission there for a handful of points as a little teenager.
At one point, you saw some people moving to tumblr, mostly because of their policy of being okay with NSFW content (ah yeesh man, that aged badly lmao). But I recall vividly still being around deviantart and tumblr at the same time... And in the end, I give up on it. When personalizing your page was removed. Suddenly, it was no longer fun, and as with many users, I just migrated.
With time, the website would become a disgusting and irrecogniseable pit that sold their artists art without consent to oil the AI machine. And I was thankful that by then, I was long gone...

Still to this day it shocks me to see such a fall from grace... Making a void that still to this today, artists have a hard time to fill. Twitter, instagram, tiktok... Art in the middle of regurgitated slop and vile actors... Platforms that you are only a number to... To betray the ones that made your website, just to cast them out, it's vile.

Internet of the past

I cannot be the only one that just misses the internet of the past.

I'm not saying that it was without its own flaws... But people were aware of how important anonymity was. I would never see a soul giving their name, even less their face away. There was this rooted knowledge that the internet was the "wild west" so you needed to keep yourself safe.

With all this knowledge that we had, we would navigate this internet and forge friendships in our own ways, after many years of contact and trust.

Even if anonymity was a given back then, there were very few cases in between of people being rude or unpolite, since this medium was so niche, there was a thight sense of community that has been lost over time. Nowadays people will say the most vile things possible, and protect themselves under the excuse of "anonymity", not understanding that they are as vunerable as they ever been just by doing something as simple as creating a darn gmail account.

Yes, dear reader, the internet sucks nowadays, but the indie web is here and I am sure we can make something wonderful to express ourselves and keep ourselves safe.

And please, for the love of pink, just change to Proton or something.