#algorithms suck

[drawoftheluck]

Web fiction of all varieties has a major issue.

Discoverabilty.

Seriously I've been reading things on Royal road and various light novels since 2018 and its always been a problem.

For example worm (parahuman series) -wildbow, and practical guide to evil - erratic errata.

Both are posted to scribblehub blogs this means that they are only really found via word of mouth. And insures that the series despite being well regarded and often recommended they are harder to find than stories posted on sites like RR, SV and SB.

This is also true for other kinds of media on the web for example all of these webcomics are on their own individual sites.

Spinneret- krazy krow/walter gomez.

I only know this series exists due to seeing fan art and asking what it was of, i have not heard anything about it since then.

Aurora- red from osp, birdhaven - shenpai.

Both these series have independently well known authors, it only reinforces my point that discoverabilty sucks for these that when they get mentioned in videos readership jumps dramatically.

Meanwhile things posted on sites like RR or apps like webtoon (note: i heard this company sucks but idk.) Get more random engagement and are easier to find organically just due to being a site with multiple stories and a decent search function.

Granted having sites with multiple stories tends to end with up little to no quality control outside of reviews.

[skidar]

Lil Number Chasing

I stopped doing fanart online for the most part after years of making a lot of fanart for shows like GF and CR and my engagement TANKED and then I hit nearly 2 years of horrible burnout (in the middle of the pandemic too cause who does life on easy mode ayyye) in which I still desperately tried to create stuff and felt horrible that nothing I made was good enough. Not good enough to make the ‘lil numbers’ on the post go up. Not good enough to get hired and not good enough to make things people cared about.

It feels good when the lil numbers go up but that shouldn’t be why we make art. I stopped looking at the lil numbers. I started making stuff for me, the lil numbers stay really lil, but I’m happier. The few people that also like my stuff talk to me about it. Their engagement is like an addiction to create more.

Shitposts, icorrect quotes, drabbles, short stories, whole novels are because out of 8000 (mostly human I hope but lesbihonest bots are everywhere) followers I found like five that like my stuff enough to chat about it and keep it going <3 I’m forever grateful to that goofy handful of people that make creating my own stuff worth it.

I dunno why I’m writing this, I see a lot of art friends from twitter panicking about the low lil numbers on their posts these days and when I check their stuff its numbers I could never fathom obtaining, let alone complain that they were too low. It makes me anxious about my own work all over again.

So what I guess I’m trying to say, and trying to live by my own example, is not to throw all your self worth into how big the lil numbers on your posts get. I understand how engagement can lead to work and stuff and its easier for more eyes to see and spread work to actually get hired but even casually we need to stop obsessing about the numbers themselves and start honing in on our work, why we really make it and who its really for.

We can only do what we can, and not burn ourselves out trying to compete with hostile algorithms just to watch the little number go up. I hope artists can still enjoy doing what you do and it hasn’t become a joyless, feverish state to keep work in this truly terrible time to be an artist/creator out there.

Tell your favorite artists that you love their work, that their characters make you happy, that their stories are a comfort to you. It means SO much more than the lil numbers and that sorta love and engagement makes them want to make more. Without it, the only feedback artists get is the rise and fall of the lil numbers on the post, THAT’S the approval we end up chasing.

[grumpycakes]

last year march

this year june

a sketch.

A. S K E T C H .

got 100 notes

and this year, a full colored piece

a F A N A R T

not OCs no one cares about

got 36

i don't... It's so fucking hard not to take this and feel like I should never make art again. It's not so bad here, but it's also happening

or assume it's my fault and I'm not producing enough, not producing the right stuff, not as good an artist as I thought, not worthy of any attention, not making videos

I'm tired, I'm scared, and I feel like I'm falling behind when I was already behind my peers

[midaspasha]

There is something about Tumblr I just do not get. In a world where children can see a bullet thru a brain on TV or any fight brutality in slow motion, they think they have to censor photography art from ELLE, Vogue, etc. by artists like Peter Lindbergh, Herb Ritts, Patrick Demarchelier and others. We had a time in history where this happened to other artists, such as Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Paul Gauguin, Paul Klee, Vassily Kandinsky, Oskar Kokoschka, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso and many more. You simply can't leave the decision to your stupid, useless algorithms and people that have no clue about anything but virtue signaling. Every time I'm in a museum, I 'm so happy that the above mentioned artists gave a shit about community standards.

Midaspasha

[officialshojobeat]

It looks like our Yun Kouga interview was flagged erroneously as “adult content” (thank you to the reader who alerted me!), so if you come across any of these flags on our SB posts please let me know!

Much obliged,

Editor Nancy

[lethallity]

I tag like I’m fighting the algorithm tumblr let me be known

[opalthequeen]

i would love if the internet did not take my interest in the 1990s smash hit ER (the show I'm currently watching) as a desire to see the pitt content. I legit do not care that buddy is in two med dramas

[crvknight]

Being a longtime pandora user AND a huge fan of incredibly niche music is a trip, man. You'll sign up, all upset that you keep hearing the same corporatized pop/rock/whatever for years and years and be excited to finally have a place you can go for some real variety, only to find out that the algorithm REALLY wants you to keep listening to the mainstream stuff.

"Okay" you say, "I'll just spend the time to prune that out, and THEN I'll have the nice stuff I like!" And you do! It takes a while and some really creative seed manipulation in the algorithm, but you finally get a station full of awesome music you can jam out to that's filled with all sorts of barely-knowns.

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A quick aside, here: pandora is really good at finding people you've never heard of nor do you think you'd have predicted to exist. You'll come across a track called "A Treatise On The Natural Link Between Pain And Anger", play it, and hear nine minutes of the mildest electronic music you've ever heard, and then the very next song will be the most hauntingly beautiful arrangement you've ever experienced and it'll be one of three chiptune tracks by an artist called "Criecher eet shoe", it's glorious. When it works.

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And then, you run into the second part. Because of the way Pandora works, you've now trapped yourself into an endlessly repeating cycle of like 113 songs.

"Hey, songs!" Pandora will say, "My user really likes you, and I want to show him more songs like you! What can you recommend?"

"I can recommend Sir Chloe!" shouts Good Kid, exuberant, "And MANESKIN and Worse in Person, too!"

"I can recommend Upsahl! And The Pretty Reckless!" Shouts Sir Chloe.

"And what about you, The Pretty Reckless? What do you recommend I show my user?" Asks pandora, blindly.

And The Pretty Reckless will shrug, and say in the most innocent voice, "I'unno. Good Kid?"

And I wave "Hello" to Sisyphus as I pass.