I started posting on Newgrounds in 2011, specifically in the Art Forum and that's primarily where I've focused my energy. Ten years have passed since then, this is a record of my experience. I joined the forums because at the time I thought that is where all the cool animators and artists I've seen post on Newgrounds came from and hang out. I couldn't really find a place in Deviantart that felt right, everyone was sequestered into their own themed groups or was too large to penetrate into. Conceptart.org still existed then and was too professional for me, as in I felt I was not good enough to post there. Furaffinity was also a no go for me because I am not a furry lmao. Tumblr seemed to work fine, but felt empty and disjointed. Thus, NEWGROUNDS! EVERYTHING BY EVERYONE!
I've met what I feel like is every single visual art based community member that posts on the forums on this site in that time. I've seen so many people come and go. The welcome was great, and there were many interesting and cool people posting but I noticed none of them were any of the people that I recognized as being Newgrounds artists or animators. I quickly realized that the "Newgrounds community" wasn't really on the site. It was on Twitter. For some reason I found this fact really discouraging. I felt almost betrayed for some reason. I joined the web chat thinking that maybe they were there. No one was there, and this was back when it was available to anyone. It made me feel like the community was abandoned to fend for itself. Rather than seeing this and just going somewhere else it made me see Newgrounds as some sort of underdog place. I felt like finally I found a community that I could be seen in and one I could actually change for the better. Moderation is done by volunteers, and they're few in number and spread out across the entire site. I tried to do what I felt would make the forum a better place. Mostly this took the form of offering candid advice and critique, making activity threads and just drawing free art for forum members. This went on for several years and I became more and more disillusioned with the state of the site. I felt like too many of the people in the forum were leaving and vanishing. I was one of the first adopters of Discord, immediately transitioning my art community to it from Skype (what a piece of crap Microsoft turned that into huh?) and started inviting the friends I had made on the forum into that community.
I still wonder if that action might've degraded the forum even faster, but I cant imagine it would've made much of a difference in the end. Those people, for the most part are still with me, and basically none of them are here on the forums or even the site any longer. I tried to get some of the older art forum users to join as well, but they pined for their Tinychat days and preferred completely fragmenting rather than moving on to a new platform. I felt guilty, like I was stealing almost, my goal wasn't to create my own community but preserve and foster the art community on the forum.
The art forum felt to me like it died then, in those days. I gave up. The people around me were all leaving and nobody new seemed interested in interacting anymore. Everyone seemed to just be posting to oneself in their art thread. Its still broken to this day. The threads that are posted are all copies of the same threads, the same questions asked over and over because something as simple as an art forum specific FAQ sticky hasn't been implemented for no discernable reason (actually there is a reason, its that none of the staff care about curating the forums) but it isn't all on the staff. Even if there was a sticky, and there was somebody at the wheel the users aren't reading the threads, they aren't looking at what's in the threads, they're looking at the thread title, posting whatever they think the OP is about and never looking back and that's not something that can be fixed. Maybe it's that the concept of a forum is too outdated. If that's the case, and I do believe that is one of the problems with the community that should've been planned for in Newground's original heyday. When Newgrounds started asking for donations I got excited, because I thought that maybe the funds would allow for the site infrastructure to be updated. It was, kind of. It was modernized for mobile users which was a good call. The forum was left unchanged however, I think we have even less moderators/moderation than we did before. Since then nothing has really changed.
- There was Jazza, who through some scheme tried to bring his youtube userbase to the forum through sponsored activites with actual prizes. A valid and honorable strategy that seemed to have no meaningful effect on the forum, as there was absolutely no overlap of interest. As soon as Jazza left the forum, it hemorrhaged all of those members.
- There was the tumblr exodus, which saw a surge in new forum members followed immediately by instantly hemorrhaging them out because of how shite the forum engagement is.
- There was Xin who successfully bridged the portal and the forum together for the first time that I had ever seen with a site wide event focused in the art forum. It brought many people from the portal into the forum for the first time ever, but lacking a reason to stay they all left.
- The Friday Night Funkin influx, which is still in progress though seems to be petering out. New members, but very young. General is often leaking into the art forum. It remains to be seen what will occur from this.
Ultimately, I feel as long as the art portal and the art forum remain separate entities that have no relationship it will never function as a facet of the community. I ask you @tomfulp to consider fixing this flaw in the sites design.
Incidents and complaints.
-
When I first joined the site Shadman was plastered all over the place. The flawed design of the art portal made it so that the highest viewed content was automatically promoted and that content was for the most part all pornographic in nature. This greatly displeased many people, mostly sfw artists, and it irreparably damaged the image of the site to me. Nothing was done about it. Nothing. I found myself constantly having to question why the site would be set up like this and I came to the conclusion that it was about money. Having been blacklisted by google, the site needed to generate income and so its primary focus is on ad revenue and pornographic content has the most traffic thus generating the most revenue. When the site started basically begging for money through supporter status I thought this would change but I'm convinced what actually motivated the site to change this was the tumblr exodus. People were finally asking questions. Being under increased scrutiny was the only reason that Shadman and the people like him were awkwardly shuffled behind the curtain. I found myself in the hilariously awkward position to then be supporting Shadman. The inconsistency and hypocrisy was more upsetting to me than the actual ethically dubious content he produced. The reasoning behind his ousting was entirely cowardly in nature and did not come from an ethical desire to make the site a better place but just to handwave it away for a better site image as soon as it wasn't convenient anymore. What happened to Everything By Everyone? It is not lost on me that many of those upper crust Newgrounds famous artists are friends with Shadman. This is the only site on the internet that markets itself to minors while primarily being funded by HARDCORE PORNOGRAPHY, and no one is questioning it. You're catering smut to kids. That's how you make your money. That's what I think this site is really about in the back end. I made a suggestion regarding how to do...you know the right thing and age gate content via a nsfw tag for an account and got this in reply:
so functionally, they have the ability to do it. They could do the right thing, they just choose not to, presumably because it would cost them ad revenue. One day people will notice this discrepancy and once again they will be forced to change the site, not because its the right thing to do but because its an easy way to handwave the bad stuff away and reclaim the site image. It is a business after all, and people have no long term memory.
-
The Community Chat Incident: I did make an attempt to talk to people in the chat and I found myself squaring off with quite an unsavory fellow by the name of DJ-RI (spoilers: he gets banned). There's just something about Newgrounds that attracts insane people, and he was one of them. Unlike most insane people however he had actual skill in programming. The chat was/is run by an administrator by the name of Brent who I had spoken with on many occasions, and I considered a friendly acquaintance. DJ-RI apparently became buddy buddy with the guy and was allowed for some reason to integrate a bot he had written into the structure of the chat. I have absolutely no idea why this was allowed but it was. DJ-RI in a fit of ...I dont even know what to call it... arrogance attempted to use the information he gained from having a bot on the server to attempt to DOX me. I have a few passive safeguards in place to prevent such a thing from happening but he displayed accurate information of a dummy identity I use to derail such an attempt. He accessed information that I assume was from my IP to get a physical description and address information from a Facebook Account and proceeded to try to torment me with accurate dummy information. Despite the joy I gained from describing and pointing out to him he had the wrong identity and evidence proving he got it wrong, it ensured I would never willingly share any personal information on this site as its clearly incompetently handled. Immediately after this incident, (I was not the only person he attempted to DOX using this method.) the chat was shut down. I made a thread in the Help forum inquiring if the situation was dealt with and the thread was deleted without an answer. When the chat eventually came back it was Supporter only, DJ-RI was banned (he quit the site after throwing a hilariously pathetic fit in which he unironically called me a noob), and I found myself surprised to be blocked by Brent. I to this day have no idea why. I assume the situation that came from his negligence got him in trouble and perhaps he blames me for it?
Honestly, writing this stuff down now, those are the two big ones. The other ones seem trivial by comparison but I'm wearing my tinfoil hat over here completely sure that the User of the Day hasn't been random for months now. If I am right about that then _good_ it never should've been random to begin with.
The Good: Despite It all
Maybe this will soften the constant rain of blows and criticism though... it isn't all bad. This is still the only place that feels right to me. The artists I've met (if you're still reading this somehow it probably includes you) have for the most part been really cool people and would be too numerous and awkward to list. I like to think I've grown a bit since I joined the site (as one should over a decade) and have mellowed out a little. Despite taking literally forever I've hit that meme number of 1000 followers. I couldn't care less. I only ever create art for myself and for my friends. I do not play the little buddy buddy social climbing games people attempting to get clout do. I'm not nice, I'm not trying to get famous, I'm not trying to make a living, hell I'm not even trying to save face. A decade of being on a site though, that's something to reflect on. If you follow me, I have absolutely no clue why, but you do you I guess. Expect more abominations in the future.
