The great unviewed

“Is #art on social media more about #voyeurism than #creativity?” http://t.co/DCCjzmcr7K pic.twitter.com/anrKEtWoHw
— norton elissen (@sighclone) November 25, 2014

I'm not writing this out of malice or even much research, this is really more about some observations. I have enjoyed trying to get back involved in the social side of the web, well mainly on sites other than facebook.  Specifically I have sent myself the challenge of doing something (eg a sketch Creative each day and post that). I started out trying out tunblr, and I really like the tumble log idea and simplicity of how to post.

The real problem I have with tumblr is I remain largely unwatched. I've tried hashtags and reposting as tweets but I have so few hearts/likes I know I am posting into a void. The few I have followed up seem to be from the more voyeuristic, reposting porn side of the troll community and I'm sure my art doesn't appeal to them. However there has been more interaction via twitter, particularly once I found #thedailysketch hash tag. Twitter still feaes like posting into the void but the trolls there are mainly celebrity chasers or wanna be celebrities and a tine community of artist who don't mind sharing their inspiration and some of their works. However it is two services I have used for a long time (and had drifted away from that clearly gve me the highest interaction. They are Flickr, and I know most of the folk that still interact with me have known me for a long time and Blogger, which still gets a reasonable number of hits/views daily (without as many comments). A little surprising is my google+ profile, which I only set up so I could keep using blogger (it was almost 100,000 views?) and it definitely brings folk to my blog posts (hopefully those that can understand and appreciate it.

So enough navel gazing. I think there can be community on the net for art, and a good place to practise and share but there is a lot of superficiality and trolls to avoid. Perhaps it is important to think about where and who with your want to share rather than number of hits/views/likes or 1+'s

with apologies to Lord Lytton for the misquoted title