By Renz Balagtas
DeviantArt began in the year 2000 as a platform to share custom application skins and unique desktop backgrounds. It was made up of a community of users who shared the desire to personalize the way their desktop applications looked and to deviate from default designs. This culture of community and collaborative learning eventually propelled the platform to over 60 million users monthly. Monthly visitors dropped from 65 million in 2012 to 45 million in 2015. Today, "platform fatigue" is affecting artists on newer social media platforms such as Instagram and Tumblr, platforms that DeviantArtists ironically deviated to. Users now feel alienated by content crackdowns and algorithm adjustments. Despite new platforms finding success and converting millions of DeviantArt users, DeviantArt’s presence remains one of the internet's last bastions of the "authentic" online community.
What differentiates DeviantArt from more modern platforms is that the community's foundation is focused on collaboration. While other social platforms have the capability of fostering an online community for artists, DeviantArt has always been art-centered meaning users don’t have to compete with pictures of rotund photoshopped asses, popularity contest-esque algorithm obstacles, and dank meme accounts.
When I look at DeviantArt today, I am stuck between thinking, "what is this?" and "this is it."
What began as a quiet community for friendly programmers and desktop artists quickly transformed into its current form: powerful, strange and if you get to know it a bit, very horny (not safe for non-deviant workplaces.) DeviantArt kept its doors open to weirdos before it was normal to broadcast a photo of your food. DeviantArt is what you get when you allow nerds and Otaku adjacent peoples to express themselves. It was a place for art that was, dare I say, deviant. Users could follow their favorite accounts before the term followers became synonymous with social media. It wasn’t a culture reliant on likes, shares, "snapstreaks" and double tapping for a heart icon. It was a place where creatives discovered other like minded web surfers, and for some it was a place where they found their true nature.
I created an account on DeviantArt around 2005 as a tween after I discovered it through a stick figure animation community. While browsing the site and eating lunch at my adult job office desk, I notice not a lot has changed. An upcoming site redesign announced earlier this year has gotten the attention of members deterred by its ancient user interface and prehistoric, cretaceous-period-green color scheme. As of now, the site still uses its iconic green color scheme. The content does not seem to be affected by the breakneck growth of internet culture. The same illustrations of wolves, horses, anime characters with huge breasts and moody photography that lined its pages in 2005. Not to mention the overtly NSFW drawings, which are as foundational to DeviantArt's DNA as "thicc model" posts on Instagram.
DeviantArt has been around for 19 years and survived the great social media expansion of the late 2000’s. This graph I found on the internet (pictured above) details how many users by percentage were using social media since 2005. According to this questionably reliable data, less than 10% of 18 - 29 year olds were using social media compared to over 90% today. In 2005, Tom sold Myspace and Facebook, Youtube, and Reddit had just launched. The arrival of Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram were coming around the bend in 2006, ‘07 and ‘10 respectively. Then suddenly, stride by stride, like the perfect storm, Apple’s iPhone came bursting out from the depths of the ocean, like an internet-age kaiju.
As Apple's hybrid phone wreaked havoc on what we once knew as the internet, DeviantArt stood unmoved, and unwavering.
At the time, the iPhone, like Godzilla (described as a cross between a gorilla and a whale) was the most ambitious, and powerful pound-for-pound hybrid of nature. The public was dumbfounded by its mind bending combination of tech: a quality touch screen, portable high speed internet access, and the newly introduced app store was capped off by Apple’s bourgeoning design sensibilities. It’s only fair to compare it to a fabled Japanese aquatic primate. The iPhone swallowed the mobile phone scene alive and left other companies bewildered, wondering what just hit them. Suddenly, we were able to watch quality videos online right from our phones. It was no longer cumbersome to browse the web. Once the app store started to fuel the iPhones might, it grew more powerful the more consumers it consumed and it was all anyone could to but to marvel at its dominance.
As Apple's hybrid phone transformed our culture, DeviantArt stood unmoved, and unwavering. Not even the mutation of technology could force DeviantArt to transform alongside the force of nature, which threatened its very existence. By standing its ground, and showing no fear for change, DeviantArt successfully confronted the big scary bully.
Like walking along the streets of Rome under the shadow of the great Colosseum, DeviantArt has tried to hold onto the history that has defined it.
When I look at DeviantArt today, I am stuck between thinking, "what is this?" and "this is it." It doesn't matter how weird it seems, because that weirdness is the source of its power. DeviantArt is a piece of internet history. Like walking along the streets of Rome under the shadow of the great Colosseum, DeviantArt has tried to hold onto the history that has defined it. If you browse through the site’s profiles today, you’ll discover helpful and encouraging comments on an illustration that might not fit with your concept of what art is. It doesn't matter because to at least one of those 40 million monthly visitors it is art, and it represents their interests whether you like it or not.
Some people question the content on DeviantArt, while others embrace it as a place to connect with likeminded creatives alienated from the institutional gatekeeping of Fine-Art. The truth is, the culture of our world wide web has changed since the '90s and early 2000s. The first users who logged on cultivated communities and open forums to share information and collaborate. It was what the early version of dial-up internet was born to do. Today, the internet is so fast and accessible people are afraid it might cause cancer. The internet is simply a different beast than when it existed through dial-up. Web forums have been swallowed alive by Reddit creating a homogenous culture, and sincere interactions have been reduced to smashing the "like" button. DeviantArt might look weird on the surface, but it's a true reflection of internets origins: less saturated and full of oddballs who wanted to go online to share information and contribute to their niche community. It's a living fossil from the days when surfing the web actually felt more like surfing than it does riding a rocket-propelled self-driving jet ski in a crowded ocean beside Dan Bilzerian and hot models.
The internet I remember represented a community which used its powers to cultivate the ultimate interactive library, fostered by the collaborative effort its users. It was a fertile land that was ripe and fruitful for the curious mind and it was upon this land that erected the foundational pillar of the early internet's community values. What once resembled a small town has now burst into a massive metropolis, with new people building new pillars taller, and more imposing, casting a shadow on yesterday’s values. I appreciate DeviantArt for its commitment to an internet that some users today have not experienced. For the new users born into the internet revolution, DeviantArt art is like an ancient creature who survived extinction, which makes the dinosaur green color scheme quite fitting. Who knows how it will continue to adapt to these rapid changes? Maybe it doesn't have to.
Here are some more links and resources I found while writing this ARTicle:
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