DeviantArt - your experiences with it?

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I’m thinking of signing up because it’s a well-known place for various creative artsy folk to hang out. When I first heard of it, back in '09, I was put off by the name. Today is the first time I ever lurked and checked it out. I see there is an option to not view “Mature Content,” so that’s good, I’m just looking for science fiction and steampunk and general things like jewelry.

I also noticed in the terms of service that one of the offensive categories forbidden to be posted is “blasphemous.” And that got me thinking. I wonder how much that is really followed in today’s politically-correct environment. When a Christian can be accused of “hate speech” for defending the faith (and I’m not talking Westboro Baptist loonies), if some liberal wants to post something that mocks God, Jesus, the Blessed Mother, etc., will the admins of a site like DeviantArt be as even-handed in dealing with that?

This is a huge extrapolation, I realize, from my simple question of whether I should get a DA account. However, I would be interested in hearing of others’ experiences about the site and others like it. It’s difficult to be a faithful Catholic artist when the art community tends to be way more left/liberal. 🤷
 
3DOCTORS said:
I’m thinking of signing up because it’s a well-known place for various creative artsy folk to hang out. When I first heard of it, back in '09, I was put off by the name. Today is the first time I ever lurked and checked it out. I see there is an option to not view “Mature Content,” so that’s good, I’m just looking for science fiction and steampunk and general things like jewelry.

I also noticed in the terms of service that one of the offensive categories forbidden to be posted is “blasphemous.” And that got me thinking. I wonder how much that is really followed in today’s politically-correct environment. When a Christian can be accused of “hate speech” for defending the faith (and I’m not talking Westboro Baptist loonies), if some liberal wants to post something that mocks God, Jesus, the Blessed Mother, etc., will the admins of a site like DeviantArt be as even-handed in dealing with that?

This is a huge extrapolation, I realize, from my simple question of whether I should get a DA account. However, I would be interested in hearing of others’ experiences about the site and others like it. It’s difficult to be a faithful Catholic artist when the art community tends to be way more left/liberal. 🤷
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Deviant art has some good fanart, flag designs and nature capture shots on it, but it also has become a haven for those to post borderline/extreme/inappropriate art that would not be tolerated at a site like Elfwood.

What this means is that someone who wouldn’t even bother with Elfwood may post their art on deviantart, and if it’s inappropriate, I do have confidence their staff will remove it…but it order to do that, they have to know about it.

I’m not sure how well categorical filtration works on there these days, but there are plenty of what could be softcore porn and other bizarre portrayals such as characters appearing immensely overweight.

I would say that most of the art on there is fairly decent, but there’s plenty of room and then some for the strange.

When considering these issues, it’s important not to be so afraid of seeing something bad and sinning but you also should take care not to hope to run into something you shouldn’t and be mindful of the filters.
 
I just googled deviantart and the word catholic behind it seems they have a catholic club but some of thier stuff is weird and disturbing but Im sure you could filter it somehow? seems not that bad of a place to me if your looking for artsy stuff
 
SuperLuigi said:
Deviant art has some good fanart, flag designs and nature capture shots on it, but it also has become a haven for those to post borderline/extreme/inappropriate art that would not be tolerated at a site like Elfwood.

What this means is that someone who wouldn’t even bother with Elfwood may post their art on deviantart, and if it’s inappropriate, I do have confidence their staff will remove it…but it order to do that, they have to know about it.

I’m not sure how well categorical filtration works on there these days, but there are plenty of what could be softcore porn and other bizarre portrayals such as characters appearing immensely overweight.

I would say that most of the art on there is fairly decent, but there’s plenty of room and then some for the strange.

When considering these issues, it’s important not to be so afraid of seeing something bad and sinning but you also should take care not to hope to run into something you shouldn’t and be mindful of the filters.
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That’s interesting - I do have an Elfwood account but haven’t used it much. I suppose I could make a DeviantArt one (the name bugs me for one thing :rolleyes:) and try to just go directly to the things I am looking for; chances are I’d get lucky and not encounter too much of what I don’t wish to encounter. Then if I find the experience negative I can just let the account go dormant.

There was a site I stumbled upon this morning, ConceptArt.org but I was having trouble with database errors trying to visit it. Then I learned via Google that on DeviantArt there was a thread about ConceptArt being either in the process of moving to different website hosting or undergoing renovations. That’s when I thought, well, maybe DeviantArt has become mainstream enough that I shouldn’t close my mind to it; maybe there’s a way to navigate it safely.

Then that bit about blasphemous content caught my eye and made me wonder whether that’s ever enforced on artsy websites. :rolleyes: Maybe it is. I suppose it’d just be best if there were no blasphemous content in the first place, but I know artists who have no respect for the Judeo-Christian tradition sometimes like to vent their angst and resentment, or attempt to shock or titillate. :mad: So I’m pondering this in the abstract; I haven’t actually run across a specific example right at the moment.
 
Lovely.

I’ve only perused it a few times, usually for video-game related stuff. Most of it seems fine but I’ve never gone very deep.
 
I’ve probably viewed pictures from this site from time to time when searching Google Images for things I can use as wallpaper or for inspiration for my own art/craft. I haven’t ever stopped by the site itself so I didn’t even know there was a “blasphemous” section… sigh
 
Honestly, I used to use it a lot a few years back when I was an art crazed wacko. Not good. I used it when I was in a bad spot in life (into a lot of gothic stuff) and believe me there’s a lot of scary stuff on there. I mean you type in something seemingly innocent like panda and you’ll find pictures that I’m fairly certain go against the commandments. There’s some good stuff on there, sure, but with all the bad, I tend to stay away from it. Not to mention I was bashed for defending the Catholic faith. Gotta love being called a close minded idiot and a hypocrite by doing the right thing, huh?
 
That’s interesting - I do have an Elfwood account but haven’t used it much. I suppose I could make a DeviantArt one (the name bugs me for one thing )
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Well, the thing to understand it’s a European (UK) website. The name is certainly a marketing ploy and believe me, users who may have content removed on a site like Elfwood can and do find a home there. Deviantart’s standards aren’t as high, but if something illegal or actual porn with sexual acts is posted, they’ll remove if it they see it.

Elfwood to me represents a more mature, professional crowd whereas deviantart is more accepting.

The good part of that for me is I’ve been able to find more fanart I am interested in by artists who may think their art isn’t good enough for Elfwood or simply don’t know about it or don’t want to sign up because deviantart is more popular.

Elfwood (run by a webmaster out of Sweden) actually adjusted their standards about, meh 7-9 years ago. Part of that, I think, was that the site started off with “mature” artists, but as teen/college angst and drama, among other things, started to appear, they had to address it, probably because their original and regular users wanted nothing to do with it. A lot of websites around this era went through the same thing. I noticed some of this on fanfiction.net as well.

There used to be nude pics and pornography of sorts freely floating even on myspace facebook.

This was in an era when more legitimate (normal, if you will) sites would be more vulnerable to spam attacks and users posting porn which I guess was supposed to impress people. :rolleyes:

But these days it’s sort of standard operating norm for most and major interactive forums and websites to have monitoring.
and try to just go directly to the things I am looking for; chances are I’d get lucky and not encounter too much of what I don’t wish to encounter. Then if I find the experience negative I can just let the account go dormant.
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If you’re not looking for bad stuff, I don’t think you’d be morally responsible anyway and while you may stumble across things that are more bizarre than you’d find on Elfwood, it wouldn’t necessarily be pornographic or something shockingly illegal. It’s a fair argument that you may be more likely to find something bad on deviantart than Elfwood, but I don’t think one needs to be so scrupulous as to run and hide.
Then that bit about blasphemous content caught my eye and made me wonder whether that’s ever enforced on artsy websites.
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That may depend on what gets reported. Deviantart is run out of the UK, so you can bet real money if something on there offends Islam, it’s going down. I don’t know what to make about anti-Catholic art because
but I know artists who have no respect for the Judeo-Christian tradition sometimes like to vent their angst and resentment, or attempt to shock or titillate. So I’m pondering this in the abstract; I haven’t actually run across a specific example right at the moment
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I’m sure there are people like on deviantart, but a hateful troll won’t get much attention, and deviant is much more interactive than Elfwood.

So if someone wants to hateful—or even take an activist stance, there will eventually be push-back.
 
IfYouLeadMe said:
I’ve probably viewed pictures from this site from time to time when searching Google Images for things I can use as wallpaper or for inspiration for my own art/craft. I haven’t ever stopped by the site itself so I didn’t even know there was a “blasphemous” section… sigh
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Not a blasphemous section, rather in the terms of service the site says it forbids things like obscenity, hate speech (wonder if that includes against Christians? :hmmm:) and one of the things it says it forbids is blasphemous content. What I was wondering is, say some artist made a blasphemous against Christians work and I saw it and reported it - would it really get dealt with . . . that’s all.
TheologyStudent said:
Honestly, I used to use it a lot a few years back when I was an art crazed wacko. Not good. I used it when I was in a bad spot in life (into a lot of gothic stuff) and believe me there’s a lot of scary stuff on there. I mean you type in something seemingly innocent like panda and you’ll find pictures that I’m fairly certain go against the commandments. There’s some good stuff on there, sure, but with all the bad, I tend to stay away from it. Not to mention I was bashed for defending the Catholic faith. Gotta love being called a close minded idiot and a hypocrite by doing the right thing, huh?
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This tells me a lot of what I need to know right there. There’s a bias at work.
SuperLuigi said:
Well, the thing to understand it’s a European (UK) website. The name is certainly a marketing ploy and believe me, users who may have content removed on a site like Elfwood can and do find a home there. Deviantart’s standards aren’t as high, but if something illegal or actual porn with sexual acts is posted, they’ll remove if it they see it.

Elfwood to me represents a more mature, professional crowd whereas deviantart is more accepting.

The good part of that for me is I’ve been able to find more fanart I am interested in by artists who may think their art isn’t good enough for Elfwood or simply don’t know about it or don’t want to sign up because deviantart is more popular.

Elfwood (run by a webmaster out of Sweden) actually adjusted their standards about, meh 7-9 years ago. Part of that, I think, was that the site started off with “mature” artists, but as teen/college angst and drama, among other things, started to appear, they had to address it, probably because their original and regular users wanted nothing to do with it. A lot of websites around this era went through the same thing. I noticed some of this on fanfiction.net as well.

There used to be nude pics and pornography of sorts freely floating even on myspace facebook.

This was in an era when more legitimate (normal, if you will) sites would be more vulnerable to spam attacks and users posting porn which I guess was supposed to impress people. :rolleyes:

But these days it’s sort of standard operating norm for most and major interactive forums and websites to have monitoring.
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Tell me about it - I was trying to help a friend find something on Twitter just this evening and saw some really icky stuff some teenager posted - pass the brain bleach, please. :mad:
SuperLuigi said:
If you’re not looking for bad stuff, I don’t think you’d be morally responsible anyway and while you may stumble across things that are more bizarre than you’d find on Elfwood, it wouldn’t necessarily be pornographic or something shockingly illegal. It’s a fair argument that you may be more likely to find something bad on deviantart than Elfwood, but I don’t think one needs to be so scrupulous as to run and hide.

That may depend on what gets reported. Deviantart is run out of the UK, so you can bet real money if something on there offends Islam, it’s going down. I don’t know what to make about anti-Catholic art because

I’m sure there are people like on deviantart, but a hateful troll won’t get much attention, and deviant is much more interactive than Elfwood.

So if someone wants to hateful—or even take an activist stance, there will eventually be push-back.
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Oh, I’m not meaning it in a scrupulous way; I don’t seek out the bad stuff and I know if I saw something accidentally and got right out of that page it’s not my fault. What I’m more concerned about is seeing the stuff and being disturbed by it and not being able to un-see what I saw - again, the need for brain bleach. :eek:

It’s sounding thus far that I’m not going to miss out on that much so I think I won’t go on DA at this time and probably never. One site I like a lot is Wet Canvas - it’s a huge artist’s site, and they do have a science fiction section. Another thing that might be what I’m looking for now would be YouTube where I found some tutorials on sculpting aliens and critters. 😃

For now, I appreciate the insightful commentary about DeviantArt. :thankyou:
 
IfYouLeadMe said:
Ooops eeeesch sorry I have no idea how I misread your first post… Sheer laziness on my part… 😊 :doh2:
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Well, my original post contained quite a bit to wade through and I wasn’t sure myself if I was making things clear enough! :o
 
If sign up just to showcase your talent, then yea, no problem. But be warned: it’s a site that is mostly secular in personal beliefs and it shows in their artwork.

Sites like DeviantArt, movie boards, city/world forums, and workout sites are hostile to almost anything remotely conservative or religious. I participate in three of the four sites, and it’s best to just stick to whatever theme the site is dedicated to ie talk about movies, talk about urban planning, talk about specific diets & exercises.
 
I’m going to pass on it for now. The instruction in artistic technique I desire I can find from more neutral sources. It’s become apparent to me in the last year that I have to carve out my own path and not worry what others say. :cool:

Sadly, there’s some great creativity going on in the artistic circles, when it’s not used in misguided ways. In Christian and Catholic circles I find some support but also some who think artistic talent should be confined to representational art and sometimes only to religious subject matter.

I respect the good intentions behind such a view but I believe the Catholic Christian artist can “sanctify” a broader scope of the visual arts - or any arts - than that. For example, I do abstract expressionist style paintings, and I have had people say they evoke happy associations or are fascinating to contemplate the interplay of colors. Which is, to me, glorifying the God who gave us colors and eyes to see them with! :yup:
 
petitfleur said:
I love how the term furry porn is used all casual, like it’s an everyday phrase that everyone is aware of.🙂
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I kinda feel like I’m defending deviantart on this thread a bit, but the fact is they will not tolerate art with sex acts.

However, it’s my understanding there is plenty of nude art there which can easily become pornography.
 
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