Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

devi­antART: One Toke Over the Line

The art com­munity web­site devi­antART, with whom I’ve hos­ted my online pho­to­graphy port­fo­lio for over 18 months, has been through some ups and downs in the time I’ve been on-board. The recent trend has been for the artists to take a back seat to money-making, and I have put up with this as I didn’t think it was that much of a prob­lem. My pho­tos were still get­ting viewed, cri­tiqued and pub­li­cised, and that was fine.

Today I am angry. A few weeks ago the techs at dA caved in to pub­lic pres­sure and released their much-lauded “v5”, a fairly com­plete over­haul of the present­a­tion side of the site. Unfortunately they made the fatal mis­take of not wait­ing until the fuck­ing product was com­plete before they pub­lished it. Thus, a whole bunch of stuff on the site was broken or looked bad for some time until they got around to com­plet­ing those bits. This, it seems, is still ongo­ing, with many issues remain­ing unfixed.

Beyond the “reg­u­lar” side of devi­antART there is the Prints Service, a fairly pro­fes­sional and highly regarded ser­vice that allows mem­bers to sub­mit high-resolution cop­ies of their art­work and have the whole print­ing pro­cess handled for them. For this dA takes a cut of the face price of a print, but it’s a reas­on­able deal and mem­bers can set their own prices. The styl­ing of each member’s “Store” was dif­fer­ent to that of their main dA page, offer­ing a far more pro­fes­sional appear­ance to poten­tial clients.

Until a few days ago. Now, it seems, the Store pages have been tarred with the same shitty brush as the rest of the site, remov­ing the last vestiges of pro­fes­sion­al­ism from the oper­a­tion. There used to be a simple “Store” link from each member’s page to his or her Prints Store area, this is now gone. Instead a “Prints” link takes its place, which takes the user not to the store­front, but to a page list­ing the member’s prints without any other inform­a­tion at all. Nothing. Fuck-all. To get to the artist inform­a­tion that used to be present, the user must click a print, then click the artist’s name at the top of the dis­play, beside the title. This then shows the “redesigned” store­front. Are most users likely to do this? Fuck they are. And even when the artist inform­a­tion is dis­played, dA have deigned to show only the “bio­graphy” sec­tion entered by the user, not their edu­ca­tion inform­a­tion, nor their awards inform­a­tion — even the “email the artist” link has been removed com­pletely, leav­ing no way for cli­ents to get in con­tact. So full marks to dA for help­ing com­mu­nic­a­tion between artist and poten­tial client.

It used to be that the Store car­ried a more refined, business-centric atti­tude and style than the rest of the site, and this is now gone. For myself and other artists who relied on devi­antART as a chan­nel through which to sell art, the rami­fic­a­tions are not good. I have been con­struct­ing another web­site in which to show­case my pho­to­graphy, as I thought that the “gal­lery” side of dA wasn’t pro­fes­sional enough — but I was hop­ing to link inter­ested cli­ents to my dA Store to com­plete any sales. I am now very reluct­ant to do this. It’s great to see that sites like dA have the interests of their users at heart as they pub­lish unfin­ished site builds that com­pletely tear up the struc­ture and ideas that the pre­vi­ous site used to represent.

Everything is Wrong

I’m exhausted, for one thing. But I must leave off sleep for at least another hour because I have to get this down, because for the last two weeks I’ve been put­ting off get­ting things down until tomor­row, and by that time my men­tal equi­lib­rium has read­jus­ted and I can’t think to write any more.

Time is fly­ing. This has both pos­it­ive and neg­at­ive side-effects; I’m not yet sure which is in the major­ity. When you work a 9-to-5-centric job, or 8.30−6 as it is in my case, even at only three days a week, time dis­torts, you never seem to be get­ting enough sleep, and your days off become slightly dis­ap­point­ing pre­ludes to going back to work.

The only pos­it­ive thing I can think of right now is that fly­ing time brings pay­day around with increas­ing speed, but you unfor­tu­nately still have to work in the meantime.

I just fin­ished hav­ing din­ner with former school friends — what was going to be our usual meet­ing of three became nine, some of whom I hadn’t seen for more than a year. And now after­ward, I’m feel­ing shock­ingly jux­ta­posed. It was a great even­ing — the talk was end­less and fas­cin­at­ing; I was talk­ing twice as fast as usual in a sub­con­scious effort to get everything out, everything that has been nig­gling me this year. All but three of us have been at Uni this year, and des­pite being thrown to the four winds we’ve come back and found that we’ve seen the same things, and now being back are feel­ing the same slightly dis­pos­sessed feel­ings that return­ing home and look­ing back over the year brings. We’ve lived the dream, and now we’re stuck in our ninetofives wait­ing for the next roller­coaster to begin. Having been noth­ing short of Free Radicals for a year, even the most rou­tin­ized of us are hav­ing trouble get­ting used to the lather-rinse-repeat cycles of reg­u­lar, reg­u­lar, reg­u­lar work.

I spoke of get­ting halfway through the first term before the shock­ing real­iz­a­tion hit me that we were out there, that in every sense we had Gone Big, gradu­ated into some­thing else entirely. We all went to the same small school, and, it tran­spired, all found the same thing — that sud­denly here we were so far away from all that, and while not shock­ing in a dra­matic sense, it was unset­tling in a way — curi­ous that we’d made it this far without quite noticing.

In a way, shar­ing our tales and find­ing so much com­mon ground again, it was as if we’d all gone off to the same Uni, lived it all together and come back. I guess ulti­mately things go along sim­ilar lines wherever you are, just with a local spin.

So it was with a sud­den and des­per­ate sad­ness that I stepped into the car — for everything I’ve lost, and for everything I’ve gained. In times like these, the dis­tinc­tion gets some­what blurred. Reminiscing on the past, we all sud­denly felt much older — a product, per­haps, of our speed soci­ety, as we looked with nos­tal­gia on things only a few years ago, that some­how seem so dated. But I was encour­aged to note that in look­ing to next year with equal curi­ous­ity and appre­hen­sion, I am not alone. And I don’t think I ever will be.