
The Rise and Fall of Internet Art Communities - hardmaru
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-rise-fall-internet-art-communities
======
skilled
As soon as you introduce any kind of an algorithm that favors activity, it's
no longer a community. It's a dopamine cash cow waiting for people to
naturally fall off because they lose interest. There might be other factors,
but this is definitely high on the list.

The same goes for many other modern "communities". Everything is robotized.
Configured to feed you with stuff rather than incentivize discovery and a
sense of curiosity.

Of course, it's sad that old school forums are literally non-existent.
vBulletin, phpBB, IPB -- these are the real internet forums. These days,
people want flashy colors, but most importantly, everything handed to them on
a golden platter. Albeit, this is likely an issue with concentration and
attention span.

 _A vicious cycle._

~~~
cheschire
Old school forums are far from non-existent. They are simply not money makers,
and typically focused on specialized topics. They still exist in large
numbers.

One of the biggest shifts that has hurt the visibility of forums these days is
not in everything becoming gamified with internet points, or "robotized" with
preference-oriented content.

IMO it's actually our societal inability to pay attention to one topic for
more than a few minutes at a time. We've become so well trained by the
constant drip feed of randomized content, and the chase-the-rabbit research
methodology of wikipedia, that when you encounter a forum in your search
results, you probably didn't even consciously realize it because you skimmed
it for the content you were looking for and moved on.

~~~
the_duke
Specialized forums certainly still exist, but according to my perception, the
activity on many of them has decreased A LOT compared to 10-15 years ago.

People spend much more time on FB, Instagram et al.

Reddit is an interesting hybrid. it does allow for specialized communities,
but still engages in the "content feeding" mentioned above.

In forums, deep discussions can/could go on for weeks on the same topic. This
completely impossible in today's main platforms.

Hackernews is just as guilty of this!

Few people read submissions older than a day or two, and a miniscule amount of
them comment. Because no-one is going to answer anyway. That's my biggest
gripe with this community.

~~~
meko
I've developed a bad habit over the years: just reading the comments. Articles
are always so structured and long winded, it often feels like you get the
entire gist of the link from a headline and the comment discussion. Trying to
change that by reading more of the headlines (at least skimming or reading
sections), but it costs more time.

~~~
silversconfused
This is worse here where many frequent front page domains behave distastefully
toward their users (paywalls, clickbait, Ads on top, bottom, right, inline,
and in popovers...). Luckily, originals sources to poor articles are often
posted in the comments too.

------
silveroriole
If people wanted the community feeling back, they’d go back to old-school
forums. They have few content-discovery mechanisms (limited search, no post
rankings, no reblog mechanism, chronological post ordering), so your
experimental content has the same chance to be seen as the popular stuff, and
they have easily-created subcommunities. I’ve seen long-running threads
develop their own community feel. Forums were built for that exact purpose;
they don’t facilitate content aggregation and sharing like modern platforms.

There’s nothing stopping everyone going back to forums, except that when it
comes down to it, people seem to value being able to share/see/rank content
easily more than they value a sense of community.

~~~
jaredklewis
Just my opinion here, but I don’t think our lizard brains are quite so highly
evolved.

I don’t compulsively check my phone because I “value” the content. I value
what I read in books far more. But my attention span seems to be in free fall
and I haven’t picked up a book in months.

I think it is _very_ possible to want something (I.e. a return to old school
forums), but not act in a corresponding way.

Social media is digital drugs.

~~~
baud147258
> Social media is digital drugs.

Old-school forums are drugs too, I'm addicted to one myself ;). Mostly for the
drama and back-and-forth.

------
com2kid
I'm sad that Elfwood wasn't mentioned, many now very successful fantasy and
science fiction artists were present on Elfwood back before professional
artists homepages became the norm. It was a really fascinating community for
it's time.

~~~
teddyh
Elfwood had its own problems:

[http://www.wastedtalent.ca/comic/elfwood-
part-1](http://www.wastedtalent.ca/comic/elfwood-part-1)

[http://www.wastedtalent.ca/comic/elfwood-
part-2](http://www.wastedtalent.ca/comic/elfwood-part-2)

~~~
lobotryas
First time I heard of WT and was sad to see it ended in 2016. Was any info
ever given as to why? Was unable to find an answer on the site or searching.

~~~
teddyh
The last few comics are about this, although they are somewhat vague. She
seems to keep posting on Patreon, though, but only patron-only posts, so I
couldn’t tell you what’s in them.

------
artur_makly
About 6 years ago, I decided to take a crack at redefining how Art was
generated, consumed, and shared :
[https://vimeo.com/73825583](https://vimeo.com/73825583)

Thus JuicyCanvas.com was born :
[https://JuicyCanvas.com](https://JuicyCanvas.com) \-- With a bold Manifesto:
[https://juicycanvas.com/manifesto/](https://juicycanvas.com/manifesto/)

It was the first social marketplace where visual artists & designers could
upload their work to be 'forked' aka 'remixed' by 'remixer' users [1], who
then could curate, share, and sell to their friends, fans, and communities.

We managed to attract +500 incredible artists from over 50 Countries who were
bold enough to allow their works to have such freedom of re-interpretation.

It was to be the end of 'zombie consumption'..and the beginning of `active
consumers` who could finally break free of mass produced art & fashion.

But like all new behaviors/habits, these things take a lot of time to catch
on...and time was sadly not our side this time.

Perhaps one day soon, such an idea will rise again...and stick around with
more...juice.

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPMQYwnPaVg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPMQYwnPaVg)

------
itronitron
It's sort of weird that this article which focuses on community engagement
around art production would be posted on artsy, a site targeted toward people
addicted to the art world.

------
ThJ
I used to run one named ArtGrounds.com between 2005 and 2012. It was one of
those small and cozy Internet communities. Three things killed it:

1\. I kept twisting knobs to make it grow faster until people got fed up and
left.

2\. Internet art communities were dying in general.

3\. Sketcher, the Java applet I had developed for multi-user real-time
collaborative digital painting using pressure sensitive Wacom digitisers — the
main draw of the site — was rapidly getting outdated as the Web began to
reject Java. HTML5 was still a few years away, making it impossible to
implement high-performance graphics apps in the browser. By the time WebGL
made the kind of rendering I needed viable in a browser, the site was long
gone.

That era of web development was a frustrating time for me. Java in the browser
was abandoned without offering a full replacement for its number crunching,
graphics and media capabilities. My strong suite was the kind of software you
typically write in C/C++ and the web ecosystem just wasn't able to do that
kind of thing at the time. I basically sat there and wanted WASM and WebGL and
all these other rich web technologies to exist, but they just didn't.

------
ArtWomb
Not sure if anyone else remembers it as fondly, but one of my all time
favorite online Art experiences was Ryder Ripps' Dump.fm. Just infinite
scrolling chat. With endless streams of animated gifs. Artists would "riff" on
each other's works in real time. It felt like a Global Party of the Mind. And
perhaps a terrific group therapy session at the same time ;)

------
Raphmedia
One community that always amaze me with its resilience is Newgrounds. It has
been around since 1995 and even survived the death of flash.

~~~
baud147258
It's still active, in terms of new content being uploaded to it?

I spent a lot of time there around 2006-08 (I think). There was a lot of good
content, but finding it wasn't easy.

~~~
Raphmedia
It is. There's also more than games (for a little while now). They have an
audio/music section and a visual art section.

~~~
baud147258
I think I was there when the visual art section opened, but I never spent much
time there.

------
mirimir
Interesting, but it doesn't mention hell.com and the many related sites. Lots
of seizure-inducing flash. I see that
[https://medialounge.org/](https://medialounge.org/) is still there, but I
don't have flashplayer installed.

> <meta http-equiv="content-type" name="medialounge - metamash mediation"
> content="There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer
> not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite.
> The possibilities of the art of combination are not infinite, but they tend
> to be frightful. It is a constant interplay of ideas, a collection of story
> synopses that work better than novels ever could. Ideas are thrown away as
> quickly as they arrive. An incomplete, but not false, image of the universe,
> I am a mistake, a ghost" >

------
bane
The demoscene has its ups and downs but is active and vibrant as ever.

~~~
krtkush
There was something amazing about having your cracked key generator adored
with art from the scene.

------
nuclx
I expected ASCII and ANSI art to be mentioned. But well, that was at least
partly the pre-internet era.

------
keyle
I thought Tumblr's 'adult content' ban was due to the Apple appstore refusing
to host the app? If not why would Tumblr ever make that decision? There were
so many other ways to approach it - shadow banning for example.

~~~
eveningcoffee
Tumblr is dead anyway for me because of their faulty and illegal GDPR support.

~~~
kleiba
Care to elaborate?

~~~
eveningcoffee
Foundational Partners

Oath works with select partners that process your data to provide significant
functionality for our products and services. For more information about these
partners, and to understand and manage their use of your data, see:

    
    
        Google (Privacy Policy)
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        Facebook (Privacy Policy)
        Teads (Privacy Policy)
        Nielsen (Privacy Policy)
    

You cannot turn off Facebook tracking for example.

This is in violation of GDPR because it is not possible to access essential
functionality without tracking.

This illegal implementation is even worse than before because it now forces me
to explicitly agree with the tracking.

It essentially means that I could not access Tumblr anymore.

~~~
kleiba
_It essentially means that I could not access Tumblr anymore._

But that's actually okay, no? I mean, you can make a decision what's more
important to you...

~~~
eveningcoffee
Yes, this is not my tragedy.

------
pojntfx
Capitalism is inherently incompatible with how art (and culture in general)
works. This is quite funny to me; the US "soft power" of the 20th century was
based on the fundamental acceptance of differentiation (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiation_(sociology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiation_\(sociology\)))
and thus won agains the authorititarian left; now by ignoring this we are just
destroying ourselves.

I hate this timeline.

PS: A Discourse forum would make for a great platform IMHO.

------
trpc
Mark Zuckerberg ruined the internet

~~~
have_faith
Internet users ruined the internet. Mark is a facilitator, sure.

------
granaldo
Gosh those days. Tripod, angelfire, and geocities... young people wont
understand it today

