recognition
I've been at a loss as to where to put my art since the death of Twitter. I've been on Tumblr since I was a very young teen, but I stopped posting my art on there years ago because I suddenly became very uncomfortable doing so. There are definitely things I appreciate about Tumblr, but knowing that someone could reblog one of my posts and have it stay on their blog until the end of time, even if I delete my original post, did not sit right with me. There are past drawings and doodles I've done in the past that I would now like to keep in an archive just for myself, which I cannot do with the art that I've posted on Tumblr.
There is Instagram, but I do not create nearly enough to warrant a separate account, and unfortunately with these sorts of platforms, creators are often negatively impacted if they do not constantly put out content. I do post whatever artwork I do onto Instagram, but I have a very little following consisting of mostly people I've met in real life/friends I've made.
My friend sent me an invite code to Bluesky, which is not so bad so far, but ultimately it is still in beta and sort of exclusive. I'm kind of at a loss as to how to find people with common interests, let alone build a following on there.
A lot of people would say that you should create for your own sake, which is not to say that I don't—however, it's not wrong to want to show off the things you create and seeing people's reactions to them. The things I do draw are in fact for my own sake, because outside of commissions I only draw things that I want to draw. But to expand on the commission point: not having a following really hinders my ability to get commissions. I heavily mentally prepare myself whenever I re-open my commissions because of my executive dysfunction, but even when I open them, I rarely get one despite how much I undersell my artwork. To be honest, I only ever make the decision to open commissions when I really feel like I need the money. But what good is it if you don't have the following to even get one?
Unfortunately, a lot of it has to do with luck. Much like big YouTubers, even though most of them do put in a lot of work into their content, luck played a huge part into how big they ended up being. There are plenty of people who make amazing content but barely have any followers. And for people who want to make a livelihood these ways, it's incredibly frustrating, but not something new. We see this sort of thing even throughout history, with writers, artists, poets, etc. only receiving recognition posthumously.
While it is frustrating and a bit disheartening, we can still find comfort in the small audience of people who do value the work we put out. It might not get thousands of likes, but that doesn't mean the few comments and likes you get are less significant.