Here comes Spider bitching about Furaffinity again, quelle surprise, but I'm probably going to put a logic thing to this too, so bear with me.

In a recent discussing I've been having with friends, we were going over FA yet again. Yes FA and the userbase there is rancid and terrible. On the technical side, lethargic and useless admins, bad code, laggy, frequent website outage, etc. On the user side, FA is composed of a bunch of disgusting, tasteless, shallow people looking to get their fix for their fetish or porn.

It is repulsive how often real quality art is overlooked or pushed to the side for some base, fetish fulfillment. It has gotten to the level of why I quit dA in terms of how only anime and fandom artwork gets any attention around there, same applies to FA and fetishporn. Furaffinity is not an art site anymore, it is a porn site.

So why am I bitching today, this is nothing new I'm griping about? Even me bitching about other sites like tumblr and Weasyl not getting more deserved traffic and commissions they should isn't new. The reason I'm bitching and ranting today is to "explain" where it comes from.

When an art site sucks ass, the first people to leave are the actual artists. I've noticed this on Weasyl and tumblr that the majority of people to ditch FA are long term, fairly talented artists. Artists are seeking a better artist community, a better interface or ability to manage their gallery.

CLIENTS, or people who come to art sites to just "consume" the content are the ones to linger around much longer. These consumers have less of an incentive to leave. They just stay as long as they get to view what they want. When you are watching 200 or so galleries, what difference does it make when about 10-20 of em leave. Since commission artists tend to stay where the money is at, they aren't going to back off right away, and lets not forget galleries composed of other artists.

Now for me skirting around and generally avoiding going to FA because of the diseased, filth that generates there has lead to actually some interesting results in my commissions- I've been getting more commissions that are more FUN.

Let me expand on this. Many of the commissions I've gotten lately have been more creative, interesting, have had more effort or design put into them compared to my past at FA. The reason for this has to do with what was explained above- artists.

On Weasyl, there is a much larger concentration of creative artists- illustrators, writers, composers, etc. Artists actually request better commissions, they have a more reasonable eye for design, composition, and storytelling. Their characters are more well thought out and interesting. This is very much different from the other clients who don't do much creative on their end, have fan characters, ask for the same fetish situations over and over. These clients have no desire to expand on what they get, to create a more detailed and narrative composition with feeling or emotion behind it. Its about basic fulfillment, not actual...yaknow...ART.

Now when it comes down to it, yes, it really sucks for commission artists that business has not transferred over from FA, but keep these things in mind: on Weasyl and tumblr, your smaller communities will be more artist oriented, and while you get less feedback and commissions, the ones you do get will be of greater value and quality due to the smaller, more art focused communities behind them.