This articulates something about the different between value and validation that I didn’t previously register on a conscious level.

This is why I tell people I feel more like an entertainer than an artist.

I want to hear them laugh, chat, comment, speak, roar, cry, get irrationally angry, I need people to respond to my art and get inspired and need more.

I don’t want a note, I want a response.

Responses are very nice. I like reading over them. They make me feel fuzzy. Of course, likes and reblogs are also very appreciated, but responses make me feel a special kinda fuzzy.

That’s the thing about the “oh, create for yourself, don’t worry about other people!” attitude (that almost exclusively comes from non-artists and people who have tons of followers and routinely get tons of validation for SOME reason) that doesn’t quite work. I guarantee you, most of us already ARE creating for ourselves above all-

But we POST our creations for human connection, and that’s not a bad thing.

I’m not sure when we all got to the point where wanting validation for something you worked hard at is seen as a bad thing. That you’re pathetic for wanting.

If you think that way it’s not only toxic as hell it’s killing creators.

Creating isn’t easy. When there’s nobody to look at your work and say, “You did a good job. This was hard.” The drive and ambition disappears, then so does the work.

Give your content creators value.

Reblog content.

This also seems to heavily fuel the AI bros’ and AI supporters’ views on why artists should be happy to keep creating. There’s this belief that artists will keep on arting even with no money available “because they have to for themselves” and while yes, many artists try and keep making stuff for themselves regardless of their financial situation, it’s untenable to make the pieces they used to get when paid for it on the same kind of frequency or scale, and how many of us know folks who have had to trade their art entirely for working because the modern lifestyle demands folks work 3 jobs and have no downtime except for sleep.

One person I know even claimed that ancient cavemen working to make their own pigments was the same as a modern artist working a regular job to buy their art supplies, which… No. It was part of their art back then! And they would have had help doing it, because community. Same with feeding themselves, if the artist was also a hunter then great but if the artist wasn’t one of the hunters they’d still get fed because community. So unless you’re buying the artist some supplies, or some food, or paying some part of their rent, it’s in no way the same now as it was then.