Birth of a Deviant

This month I joined a new virtual community on the internet. I joined deviantart.com. This community was chosen because it provides great entertainment as well as support for some areas of my life. Deviantart is a place where creative people share their art with admirers and other artists and receive feedback about their work. They can also sell it. I am not a professional artist by any means but I do like to dabble in the creation of art every once in awhile, whether it be in drawing, paintings, poetry, crafts, music, or photography. I have always known about Deviantart and every once in awhile it is one of the places I visit to kill time and look at a lot of great art. Deviantart reminds me of some of the great things having the internet has brought to the world. I can look at art from all over the globe and see art I would not have seen if I wanted around for an exhibit that has been approved by some rich person or some art expert. I can be my own judge and be exposed to all kinds of art and meet the artist and learn a bit about them. I believe that no matter what they say about the internet disrupting our reality and stopping certain communication it definitely increase our communication internationally.

This month I finally became a member and shared some of my favorite photos I have taken as well as some paintings and sketches. Getting compliments on my pictures made me feel great and it was good to know someone else out there thought it was a special photo as well. I assimilated into the group by adding my art into the site and choosing favorites of other people’s work, I also needed to upload an avatar and share some personal information about myself (favorite movie, artist, music, etc…). One of the biggest things about being part of the group is having an avatar. I noticed I got much more replies when I had uploaded my avatar. I think it was a way for someone to give me an identity and know I was serious about becoming a member. I got into a slight disagreement with a man the other day (6 days ago). He took a picture of an Aries tattoo and called it a Taurus tattoo and I corrected him on it. It made me kind of nervous because I was wondering if he was going to be a crazy person and would try and insult my pictures or something to get back at me, but he didn’t and just replied “yes…I think you are right…about that…J” I don’t know exactly how to interpret the “…” in between each of his words, but the smiley let me know he was ok with me correcting him. So I wanted him to know I meant no harm by the comment and replied with a” :-P “ It seems that emoticons are a big deal within the Deviantart community and they are commonly used to display how someone feels about the artists work or the discussion they are having. It was great for me to be able to just “ :-P” him because I had really nothing to say but I just wanted him to know I was “ok” with him and without being able to physically let him know through tone or facial expression I could with an emoticon.

This whole situation reminded me of netiquette, which Wood and Smith discuss in chapter 6. One of the main punishments someone gets online if they do not have proper netiquette is to be ignored! Or their comments may be deleted from the user. This is usually a last resort. The person has to be very bad to receive such a punishment from an individual. This is how rejection can truly translate over into a virtual community. Yes people may feel more risky and capable of being someone else online because they do not see others online but they can always be ignored or blocked from user’s which is a way to reject someone. I remember when I used to play online poker and we had a chat room for all the players and if someone got blocked by everyone they would feel completely rejected and usually burst out with hurtful over the top language and then leave the game even if thy were winning! So, with my own experience this kind of rejection can still be tough on someone.

ALL PHOTOS are from Deviantart.com and are linked to the artist.