I'm sorry to bother you but I have a question. How do you deal with people mocking art or artists for no real good reason other than to make themselves feel better? I saw people making accounts mocking artists in a different fandom and it's so utterly scary to me that theres a chance that my art will be reposted and mocked, that sometimes I just wanna try to find another passion. I really do love your art and I love following you, you seem really kind and patient, and I really wanted to ask you
I’m frequently facing that challenge and I don’t really know if there’s one good way to deal with it… Because, let’s face it; those people are mean assholes with a superiority complex. And other people enjoy reading nasty gossip and laughing about posts like that. And I can’t understand how they just don’t care about other people’s feelings.
I’ve been the target of such things since I first posted my stuff online. And the very first time it happened around 10 years ago I was devastated. I read the whole thing, I had a very stressful phyiscal reaction to it and I cried for hours. I was in utter disbelief that someone could be so horribly mean.
And then on tumblr this continued up until this day. People making posts mocking me, gloating about my flaws from up on their high horse of internet anonymity (and a warped sense of importance). And I still wonder how people can be so nasty. And the thing is often they’re not content just being nasty somewhere in their dark corner of the internet, they need me to know that they were nasty about me. It’s not fun if it’s totally behind my back.
And I still get horrible anxiety about it. My heart starts beating so hard and fast I feel I will faint, I start sweating and I think “here we go again, a stranger on the internet has a bad opinion about me, the world is ending”.
But the difference now is that I can at least put it in perspective a bit. It doesn’t matter in the end. Don’t read anything they say, you don’t need to give them the satisfaction of hurting you. I know social media has this danger ouf sucking you right in, because it’s hard contextualizing things. You see the opinion of one troll on the same level as the news reporting from a serious paper. Everything has immediacy, everything is there and loud and wants to be heard. But they don’t matter.
I’m firmly against this stupid idea that if I put something on the internet I have to accept that people will be mean to me. It’s ridiculous. Nobody has to go out of their way to be mean about someone - especially a fellow fan. Be mean about highly paid and published comic artists who can’t get women’s bodies right. They at least got paid already and can buy some tissues to wipe at their tears if they see people on the internet say something mean. We fan artists don’t. We’re just trying to share something we’re passionate about.
So to sum up; it hurts and it sucks but don’t let it keep you from drawing. Because those people and their mocking are insignificant and there’s no point in arguing with them because they’ll twist everything you say and hide behind stuff like “it’s just my opinion, deal with it // you weren’t supposed to see that // I’m right and you’re gross”. They won’t be sorry. That person who made that rant post about me on LJ 10 years ago (fun fact: they had a Sam and Dean icon. Not relevant since it was about the DGM fandom) probably has long forgotten about it and moved on, but I’m still here remembering it because it had hurt so much.
Also, there’s a block button. If you see a blog that is only about mocking things, just put it on your block list. You don’t have to see anything on there.
(But maybe this won’t work for you. I don’t know. The fear is still always there and it’s something we have to live with. But we don’t have to accept it. If it hurts you, it hurts. You can’t just brush that aside. But your art deserves to be seen and given more weight than some nasty ass violins with a bad opinion.)