Steal a photo!

This has always been a thing, but I'm noticing it a lot in the new uploads; people who for whatever reason won't try to draw their own background and just stick in a photo thinking "Yeah, that looks good."

No it doesn't. It looks horrible.

This goes doubly so for beginning artists; if you stick an awesome photo behind your awkward looking character, you make your drawing look worse by comparison. Plus you're not getting better at drawing backgrounds, because you're not drawing backgrounds. By the time your figures look awesome and you realize you're going to -have- to draw your own backgrounds to get that special feeling you're looking for in your next project? You're going to struggle a lot.
You might think drawing backgrounds sucks and is hard, so is drawing hands. Get over it.

Oh, and slapping a filter on a photo? You're not fooling anyone. Everyone can still tell it's a photo and it still looks awkward as fuck.

P.S. If you absolutely must use a photo for your background, search Deviant Art for people who offer free stock images especially for that purpose. Stop ganking shit off Google Image Search. You don't want people stealing your drawings, editing it and taking credit for it? Why the fuck are you doing it to photographers like they're not artists with rights as well?! Insufferable thieving twerps.