I hope everyone had a good holiday bonanza and a happy new year. I spent some time with the family and had a good Christmas get together.

More importantly though, I was actually looking forward to New Years Day, the day I set some resolutions, goals, expectations of where I should go, what I’m doing, and how to get there.

This new job I was able to get has so far been a godsend. I’m thriving in the office environment, making things, helping people in need, learning loads of new stuff, etc etc. I polished that C# book cover to cover and it has been nothing short of a fantastic learning source for my career. Mainly I’m making things in Visual Basic .NET, and now I’ve moved onto ASP .NET and in my spare time, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) construction. Both fields of study have been exciting for me and hopefully will advance my profession onto better and better things as the months go on. The way Microsoft is really pushing the envelope with its development tools is amazing.

So one resolution of mine for this year: Learn ASP .NET as quickly as possible.

The winter weather here and the winter solstice was nice, got some good pictures of the snowfall and country roads. It was nice to have a chance to reflect on how far I’ve come.

Also, my paintings I’ve been very happy with. I’m happy that I’ve learned new techniques and skills to get where I am today with Photoshop and Painter. I took a while to look through all the pictures I’ve made, all the sketches I did, doodles, cartoons… I’ve come a long way.

One other thing I’ve come to reflect on, is my time here on this site, deviantART. I’ve been here since late 2005, so roughly three and a half years. When I first joined this site, there was a thriving community. A community of people who were more or less, happy. The day I joined, four people welcomed me here, which I responded and talked with for a bit. The community was vibrant, the forums were better than most places, the chat rooms were alive. Good times.

This is something I wish to write into my Journal to reflect how I’ve felt about my time here.

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of people disappear, leave, get into some publicity trouble, watched epic flame wars, watched people attack others… watching the kind community turn bitter and sour. And this I’ve noticed too with myself, people whom I’ve spoke with on a regular basis just disappear and drift away, speaking with them less, and less, or snap back at a piece of constructive criticism I leave on a painting or photograph.

Now, I'll be the first to admit, I have a bad habit at being very shy and cautious around new people. Talking with people and hearing no response from them always makes me nervous, which is something I'm working on.

I’ve reflected on how I’ve interacted with this community these three and a half years. Made trades with people, talked with people, participated in contests, gave pictures and gifts to others, heck, even helped give a sub to one or two people. I even helped run one of the biggest clubs here on dA: *UnseenArtists.

As I was doing these things, I couldn’t help but notice a sense of unnerving dead-air with a lot of people I’ve briefly interacted with. You know, that feeling you get, when you’re in a room with a couple of people, and you want to start a conversation but it’s dead silent, and it starts to eat at you. That feeling is what I felt with a lot of people whom I've briefly conversed with in the past.

For instance, I’ve done some trades here and there, and it always hurts when the other half never comes. It hurt quite a bit when I helped people in that club and no one was really grateful for anything I did. I’ve tried to shrug it off, knowing what I was doing was helpful, but during my reflecting it came back to really sting.

It hurts to see the forums here have more or less decayed into a troll-fest and cesspool of disgust. [link] [link] Post in there at your own risk, someone’s bound to viciously attack you unprovoked because, you like Coke and they like Pepsi. It hurts that the Chat rooms have become so closed, that any outsider attempting to engage in conversation get turned away, ostracized, or better yet, kicked and banned.

Why? What has happened with this community I once knew?

After three and half years I can tell you what’s wrong with this community: The never-ending lust for popularity. It’s a plague that’s rooted itself into a lot of people here. I’ve watched some people here engage in some absolutely distasteful behavior all for a few more page hits.

And even better, this site encourages people to behave this way. I want to make this point clear: The people who engage in this behavior aren’t the problem, they’re a symptom of the real problem.

How does the site encourage this problem? Here’s a great example. I received an email from the site on the 22nd of December, which read, quote:

<sub>Hi Bri-Rock,

You've recently given one of your friends the generous gift of a deviantART subscription, and 'tis the season to be jolly once more!

You know how great it is to be a subscriber and have that *(asterisk) next to your deviant username. So why not pass that feeling along to someone special?
[...]
Happy Holidays!

Thanks,
Fella
…</sub>

Actually, enlighten me. What is so great about having that asterisk next to my username? For me, a guy who isn’t really going to become a professional artist… what’s the point? No ads? I remember back in the day with Version 5 of the site, a claim was made that by getting a sub, you’d experience no slowdown. This claim was such a farce, as the site would constantly go under and be inaccessible. I remember a time when many of the ads here were fraudulent. And if you clicked on them, you bet you’d be infected with some kind of spyware or Trojan within the hour. Many other things with a sub are… not, absolutely necessary to use the site.

So what's the point of a subscription? Even the site acknowledges that this asterisk is beneficial for everyone here to have. Why? Obviously to help the site operate amongst the absolutely heavy load of all the users who surf here, but that’s not a negative statement, as other sites do it too. And for the people who don’t have a sub, the ad revenue will more than make up for them freely using the site.

So what’s the point of getting an asterisk next to your name? Popularity. By getting that asterisk next to a username, you show others that you are serious about posting your artwork. The current mentality of this association is thus: If you do not have this asterisk and instead have a tilde, you are not a serious artist. You don’t care to showcase your work, and you should not be paid attention to. A great example of this was when version 6 of this site was made, which I’m really impressed with. Many people started up news articles wishing to discuss the new interface. Yes, that’s not news, but people did this anyway, probably for more publicity. Many subscribers attacked regular members, imposing that they were superior to ordinary users, saying that they were leeching off the site for free and therefore have no merit or valid opinions about the new interface, and to more or less… piss off. And, I actually railed into this one person about this dismissive behavior about superior subscribers and ordinary parasitic members, which I felt bad about afterword.

This is exactly how Apple Computers market their Macintosh and iPod products. If you don’t have a Mac, you’re not a serious graphical artist, you do not have style or personality, and you don’t like being part of the hip urban culture. And you know what? This kind of thinking is very toxic and unhealthy. And this unhealthy environment is something I really don’t want to be part of.

But I digress...

I was encouraged by my friends during the days of college to come here. I planned to come to this site to engage in friendly conversations with people, learn how to draw and paint, laugh, get to meet new people, and enjoy my time here with many other like-minded people. This has almost become a fantasy. Is deviantArt about the art and community anymore? Or is it nothing more than an artistic popularity battle?

Good question. Hence, why I reflect.