Hey guys, it's Celestia, and today, I'm gonna do what I do best, and that's rant. I know I've done a video
before about my pet peeves about the art community, but a lot of that video ended up being pet peeves
relating more to the art commentary community on Youtube. But because I am nothing if not
passionately angry about 90% of what I see, there was just no way that-- that one
single video, limited to such a niche corner of the immense mountain of my art pet peeves,
could satisfy me forever, so we're back, and I'm here today to rant less about the art commentary
community, and more about the much wider range of art-related topics, trends, behaviours, etc., that
make my brain make the Kill Bill siren sound. And just to be abundantly clear before I actually
get started here, none of the pet peeves I list here should be taken as me saying that they're
all objectively bad things to do. They're things that irritate me personally, and that is all I'm
trying to say by listing them - not that you're an a**hole if you do them. It irritates me when someone
walking on the street in front of me goes less than 60 miles per hour, but I'm self-aware enough
to realize that they're probably not actually in the wrong for not sharing my unreasonably
passionate views on the value and correct speed of power-walking. [CUT TO BROOKLYN NINE-NINE CLIP] Captain Holt: Are you too inexperienced to know
that power-walking is a far more efficient and sustainable method of hurrying? burn. [END CUTAWAY]
I hold that same sentiment towards people who do any of the things I'm about to list,
so please don't feel attacked or insulted if that means you. Alright, now, these pet peeves won't be
in any kind of order, but we're going to start the list off strong with one that has been making me
unreasonably angry for the longest period of time, and I mean since my 10-year-old middle
school DeviantART days: it's the people that post an exceptionally detailed or polished piece that
clearly took a significant amount of time, and then loudly, confidently, and shamelessly say
"yeah, no big deal, I spent exactly one hour and three minutes on it". Like, I can acknowledge and
accept that there are much faster artists out there than me, and that some of these people
might not be lying, but I feel fairly confident in saying that the vast majority of them ARE
super duper lying, and by no small margin, either. I've known people to openly tell me that a piece
took them 10 hours but that they've seen people online post work with similar detail or quality
say it took them a fraction of that time, so they feel pressured to lie about how long it took them
so as to avoid being judged against that impossible standard of art speed that 90% of
people aren't meeting anyway. And yeah, I get that, I used to lie on DeviantART all the time about how
long it took me to make art when I was a kid, and I understand the pressure to make what you're doing
look effortless, or at least as close to effortless as everyone else is making THEIR work look,
but you could always just... not redundantly and unnecessarily volunteer that information.
No one is forcing you to say how long a piece took you unless they ask, so why are people out here
lying about it for no real reason when they could just not advertise that information in the first
place? I get not wanting to say "this piece took me 15 hours" when people are constantly claiming that
their similar work took them 46 minutes and 10 seconds, but rather than furthering this ridiculous
unreachable standard that's built on a throne of lies, you could always just post the piece
without unnecessary information that no one asked for that's doing more harm than good. Next
up is emergency commissions, and obviously I don't mean the legitimate ones. I've opened legitimate
emergency commissions and I've supported other artists who have, because if your pet is sick, or
you're sick, or you can't pay your bills or your rent, or some other real, genuine, serious issue has
arisen, emergency commissions are an important, valid option for any artist. But when people
are like "oh my god guys, my headphones broke, I'm opening emergency commissions to buy me new ones",
they're completely diminishing the significance of what emergency commissions
actually are, and they're making things a hell of a lot harder for artists with real problems.
I literally saw someone last week say "EMERGENCY COMMISSIONS OPEN", all caps, gigantic, bold text,
"I really want the new Animal Crossing DLC and I can't afford it, please commission me".
Like, f*ck, if that's your version of an emergency, I want your life! I also want you to stay the
f*ck out of emergency commissions tags and save that for people with, oh, I don't know, emergencies.
Also on the topic of annoying art sh*t you mostly see on Twitter, let's talk about
those people that post circles of emojis with "manifesting sales" or "manifesting commissions" or
"manifesting followers" in them. Like, shut up, you're not manifesting sh*t, you're basically just
begging for it in an aesthetic, socially acceptable way. This is just the most basic, low-effort form of
marketing out there that people pretend isn't marketing, it's just them being quirky and
cute. I know this is just me being way too easily irritated by the slightest things, but god, it just
annoys me so much. You do you, I guess, but you won't be manifesting anything from me. The next pet peeve
falls under the same umbrella of annoying Twitter sh*t, and it's "I retweeted your art, so please
retweet mine". And I don't mean "pinned-for-pinned" or people offering cross-promotion; those are actual
marketing techniques that, while I think they're annoying, are still legitimate. I mean people who,
instead of asking "hey, would you like to retweet and promote each other", they just go ahead and
retweet all your sh*t and then hop into your DMs and say "I promoted you, please retweet these posts
of mine" and then link you to them. I don't know how generally common this is, but it's happened
to me like, five times, and I've blocked everyone who's done it, because that is some next level
manipulation. Don't try to force me to promote your work when I don't know you or your art by making
me feel obligated to reciprocate a thing that you did that I didn't ask you to do. I don't retweet a
lot of things on my Twitter as I prefer to keep it as close to just my own content as possible,
and if I do make an exception to that rule, it sure as hell isn't gonna be for someone who is arrogant,
entitled, and unabashedly shameless enough to make me feel like I HAD to. The fact that I'm on my
fifth pet peeve that is almost exclusively Twitter-based says a lot about Twitter, but I can't judge
the bird app if I'm going to keep using it 700 times a day, so whatever. We're just gonna have to
accept that it's holding us all hostage and move on to the next pet peeve it has lovingly created
and nurtured, which is people who constantly whine about not getting likes, retweets, followers, or
general engagement on their art posts. And I want to be as clear as possible here, because I don't
mean the occasional tweet expressing frustration with that. I get that, I really do. I spent a good
10 years posting my art and getting one or two likes on pieces that took me hours and hours -- it's
perfectly valid to be discouraged and frustrated by the algorithm, by social media itself, and by
feeling that your work isn't being appreciated no matter how hard you try or how much effort you put
into it. What very specifically pisses me off here is when it's all a person talks about. There are
so many people on Twitter that post more about how their work never gets any likes or engagement than
they actually post their work. These aren't art accounts at that point, they're just vent accounts
that whine seven times a day and occasionally post art. Like, how do they think that's helping? It's
not gonna get them more engagement, it's terrible marketing, it alienates their followers and peers,
and at the very best, it'll earn them an odd pity like. Everyone deals with this problem, everyone is
constantly discouraged by the oversaturated nature of art social media, and while venting about that
in moderation is completely understandable, no one wants to hear you whine about it 24/7 when
they're dealing with the exact same problems and THEY'RE not spamming their followers about it. Now,
the nature of a pet peeve is effectively that it's a normal thing that shouldn't annoy you as
much as it does, so by that definition, this next one here is less of a pet peeve and more of an
actual issue that has legitimately and reasonably earned the amount of irritation I feel towards it,
but it pisses me off so much that I'm mentioning it anyway, and it is the amount of follower-based
favouritism across all forms of social media. People act like the amount of followers an
artist has is equal to the quality of their work, and my god is that so unbelievably untrue. People
don't get followers based on the quality of their work, they get followers based on marketing skill,
connections, the frequency with which they post, the fandoms they draw for, and luck. Acting like
someone is an amazing artist because they have 20k followers on Instagram is just the stupidest
possible mentality, because it takes about two full minutes of looking at any social media platform
to see that half of its biggest artists have mediocre work at best. And it's one thing when
individuals will make those assumptions about big artists, but it's even worse when it results
in the exclusion of smaller artists for actual professional opportunities. For example, zines: I'm
making this issue its own video pretty soon, and I'll go into more detail about it then,
but zines are a hugely relevant example of big artists getting preferential treatment exclusively
because of their follower count. The people running the zines don't want to bother actually learning
anything about marketing or putting in the effort to promote the zines themselves, they
just want to leech off of big artists' audiences, so instead of giving every artist who applies a fair
shot, they pick the ones with the highest follower counts instead. This is particularly bad in certain
fandoms like Genshin Impact, where all zines tend to have the same group of moderators running them,
and picking the same big artists over and over again, and then the big artists form big cliques
based on some false sense of exclusivity and superiority, as if their follower counts
actually mean they're the very best artists out there, and exclude the rest of the community. So
when new projects come around that claim to be open to all artists everywhere, it's never REALLY
open to all artists, it's open to those cliques, because catering to those cliques ensures good
sales and engagement without any effort required from the people running the projects. On the topic
of zines, we are jumping right back into nitpicky bullsh*t that I have no reason to be this irritated
about, because this next pet peeve is when artists taking part in projects -- be it zines or other
types of collaborations -- that are constantly asking for extensions. Like, okay, I get it, people are busy. But
if you're really gonna be out here saying "oh my god, I'm so busy please give me another month to
get the thing I committed to having done by now finished", while the other artists -- definitely not
me, I'm not projecting h-- ave been equally busy but put in the time, effort, and discipline to have it
done on time, I personally think you're kind of an a**hole. Same energy as when you're in school and
there's a big project that you busted your ass to have done on time, only to have some dumba** in your
class say "sorry it's late, can I have more time?", GET that extra time, and face absolutely no punishment
for failing to meet their deadlines, after you put a sh*t-ton of effort into meeting yours.
But this probably also comes down to me being an unfortunate combination of jaded old grandpa
and perpetual overachiever whose classmates always hated her guts, so maybe ignore me. Next, artists who
are constantly seeking compliments. The people who will constantly and religiously insult their own
work just to get people to say "no, no, it's so good". The people who will ask you 50 times to give them
feedback on a piece while also saying that they're not accepting constructive criticism, which may as
well be saying "tell me what you think about this, but only if you're telling me it's good". Similarly,
another pet peeve is the toxic positivity and echo chambers of compliments that come from that. The
whole mentality that you're not allowed to dislike an artist's work - that you're obligated to say
everyone's work is perfect, even if you don't think it is, and would rather say nothing at all, or that
even thinking a negative thing about another artist's work makes you a bad person. I mentioned
in my previous video about art pet peeves that I also think it's super counterproductive to
only ever seek compliments and exclusively surround yourself with people who will give
you those compliments, because you're never going to improve if you don't allow any kind of critique
and only seek feedback from people you know will say anything you make is perfect just because you
made it, and they like you. And I do stand by that take, but a lot of people said in the comments
that that isn't a bad thing if the artist doesn't WANT to improve, and is just doing art as a hobby,
which is fair, and I agree with that. But I guess my pet peeve with it is the fact that it's starting
to impact the whole of the art community now, not just the hobbyists, because of the growing culture
of compliment-seeking, the rejection of critique, and the demonization of people who don't have
exclusively positive things to say all the time. It feels like we're not allowed to dislike art or
artists anymore, even if we keep that to ourselves, because supporting other artists gradually seems
to have come to mean only ever thinking their work is the definition of perfection, because if
you don't think that, you don't support them. The other side of this, though, is ALSO a pet peeve
of mine, because what DOESN'T fill me with rage in the year 2021? But yeah, conversely, people who give
artists unsolicited criticism have also earned a place on this list, because while I stand by
my point that everyone has a right to dislike art or see flaws in it, I also think that they
should keep those opinions to themselves if the artist hasn't actually asked to hear them. People
who go around commenting on art and critiquing it without being asked probably think they're being
helpful, but they're not. If an artist doesn't ask for critique, they don't want it. The assumption
that every artist out there is trying to create art professionally and is constantly striving to
improve their work is just 100% incorrect, and in reality, there are tons of artists that are just
doing this for fun, or are very early on in their art journeys and not looking for criticism yet.
Some of them might also be hypersensitive to critique, and the reason they didn't ask for it
might be because they don't respond well to it, or find it demoralizing, hurtful, or otherwise
upsetting. Stop acting like your unsolicited critique, constructive or not, is a gift to all
artists everywhere. The truth is that most people who don't ask for your opinion don't want to hear
it, especially if their confidence is already low or fragile. Next pet peeve: artists who never
shut up about having gone to art school, and are either constantly bragging about it or using it
as a justification to say that their opinion has more weight or validity than people who haven't.
If the words "I went to art school so I know what I'm talking about" regularly leave your mouth, I
don't want to know you. There are thousands of art professionals who didn't go to art school, and your
opinion is not automatically either a fact or superior to their opinion because you DID go.
How hard is it to say "I have experience with this thing, so I know what I'm talking about" rather
than "I have a degree in this thing, so I know what I'm talking about". It's just this constant culture
of devaluing artists without formal education and giving artists WITH formal education some
redundant form of superiority and authority, and I'm physically gonna explode if I hear it from
one more person. Pet peeve number f*cking a hundred, those stupid, awful one-image art tutorials. You
know the ones -- I'll put one up here as an example. They draw one thing two ways, and say that one way
is wrong and the other is right, without giving any context or further explanation, and they call that
a tutorial. This one in particular is essentially claiming that everyone with nails like the one
on the left doesn't exist. They're anatomically incorrect. They, as human beings, are anatomically
incorrect. I-- I don't know anymore. These images -- because I'm not calling them tutorials -- aren't
always wrong, but the lack of context gives the viewer a skewed perception of what is and
isn't right in art if they don't know better. Like, sure, if you're drawing someone with long nail beds,
the first image is wrong. If you're drawing someone with shorter nail beds, the second image is wrong.
This is a tamer example, but there are versions of these that can not only spread incorrect
information about what is and isn't anatomically correct, but also deter people from stylizing their
art. I saw another one that was basically saying that if you don't draw every single tooth in a
character's mouth, it's wrong. So I guess all anime and comic art is wrong, then. Like, yes,
sure, in realism, that would be wrong, but these images usually just serve to paint some dumbass
narrative in which stylization equals bad and realism equals good, or even vice versa. And even on
the rare occasion that one of these images shows an objectively correct example of something drawn
wrong and then something drawn right, it's not like they explain why the wrong one is wrong or why the
right one is right. They're not educational, they just LOOK like they're educational. Next on the
list: humblebrags. Artists who are constantly saying sh*t like "oh, yeah, my art is so bad, I don't know
how I keep getting all these huge industry positions", or "yeah, this piece sucks, I don't
know why everyone loves it so much", or "yeah, my work isn't that great, I don't deserve the thousands of
adoring fans and constant stream of commissions". You know what you're doing, shut up. Either have
the guts and shamelessness to brag properly or shut up. Okay, this next one might also fall
into the category of legitimate grievances rather than ridiculous pet peeves, but it still makes me
angrier than it should, so let's talk about art promotion accounts next. You know, the ones with
hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers that they bought who repost artists' work, either with or
without their permission, and call it promotion. Bonus points if they're the special kind of
scummy that comments "send this to x account to be promoted" on every f*cking piece of art they stumble
upon. If you use Instagram, you know them, and all I have to read is "DM this to--" and my vision is red
with unbridled, unwarranted rage before I can even finish reading their sentence. Another pet peeve I
have is how acceptable it's become, especially on TikTok, to blatantly and publicly mock
beginner artists' work. Like, I understand, I really do-- sometimes art is so bad that it's funny, and
I'm not saying you always have to be that "uwu toxic positivity" twitter artist who never thinks badly
of other art or else you're a bad person. It's okay to laugh at bad art, even if it IS beginner
art, or even to mock it, so long as you don't do so publicly. Beginners can be easily discouraged
from pursuing art if a**holes decide to sh*t on it on the internet where everyone can see, and
other beginners who might be at a similar skill level see people making fun of that art and think
"well, mine's the same, so I guess I should give up too". No one's asking you to be constantly pure and
kind and sweet and never think anything negative about another artist's work ever, but everyone
is rightfully asking you to keep it to yourself, because while mocking it publicly might get you
some laughs and engagement, it could be destroying the self-esteem of more artists than you realize
in the process. Finally, my very last pet peeve, at least for this video, is cringe culture.
Cringe culture itself is already infuriating, but the degree to which the art community has welcomed
it into its loving arms is just disheartening. I get it, young me also legitimately and harshly made
fun of furries and My Little Pony fans because everyone else was doing it, and I was too young
to have learned that caving to peer pressure does more harm than good yet. But as an adult, seeing the
amount of people that sit on their high horses and throw verbal stones at furries, My Little Pony fans,
artists who make OCs or self-inserts, Gacha Life fans, people who like Sonic, the
list goes on and on and on, and just becomes more redundant and ridiculous as it does. The idea that
someone is cringe and should be mocked because they have an interest that you don't like, it's
just-- blatant gatekeeping of the art community, and it takes more arrogance than I can even imagine
possessing to genuinely believe that you have the authority to decide what interests are good,
respectable, and cultured, and what interests are bad, cringey, childish, or otherwise worthy of disdain
and exile from the majority of the community. People are really out here saying "stay in your
tiny corner of the community if you like drawing anthropomorphic animals, we don't want you, and we
will publicly laugh at and shame you", and that's just fine? It's socially acceptable? If you truly
and seriously believe that furries or other cringe artists are the biggest problem facing
the community today, I will pay you three whole dollars to go outside, touch grass, and find a real
problem to be upset about. And now we have finally reached the end of this video's pet peeve list.
Congratulations on making it through. Knowing me, I'll be full of rage about new pet peeves
in another few months, so I won't go so far as to say we're done with them just because this
video is over, but at least for right now, this is where I'll end it. I hope you enjoyed today's video,
and thank you as always to channel members Cafe Soleil, Lotus Dreams Art, Joseph Solomon,
Adel Juarez, and Fionapollo. Please leave a like and subscribe, and I'll see you in my next video!