Although i've not been on this site as long as many others, i've recently past my 4 year anniversary here and can honestly say i've completely devoted my life to it for at least 2.5 of those years. I've dabbled in the art side of it, Shitty drawings/ slightly less shitty photography. However I was especially involved in the "community". I lurked in the forums for the first year of my existence here and in August 2004 I joined the Whores Chatroom less than a week after it was created. From that standpoint I made friends, got tips about art, went to devmeets and even dated someone for a year. There was also the drama, oh the drama, not just in Whores which did have it's fair share but generally around the site. The biggest one to mention was the Jark / Spyed issue and the (still ongoing) aftermath.

Trying to think back about some others all I can think of is some stuff St00pidgurl did in the forums and people "dying" and coming back to life. Random Casualty being actually one of the last. I'm one hundred percent sure that a hell of a lot more stuff happened but in retrospect didn't actually matter in the real world. Being in so deep so a prolonged length of time meant it was difficult to get out and I went through the whole idea of "Fuck you all i'm leaving!" and coming back a week later. We've all done it, only few have managed to actually do it. Then do we notice? Sometimes my mind is jogged back 3 years or so to a conversation I had with someone i'd have called a regular in Whores. I would never know what had happened to that person. They'd just sopped coming in. Sure we'd know about all the fallings out (drama) but never if someone just stopped coming in.

Being moderately young when I joined, all under the pretense of "Art" the "community" was fantastic, as far as I was aware. In the fact that the dA system supported it. It was relatively easy to leave messages, had a complete forum and then when chat came along it was the icing on the cake. It became less about art, more about the "community."

DevMeets added an extra dimension, that parents worried about more but made it less "nerdy" and even less about art. Judging on the exact 20 minutes we spent in an art related place on the last DevMeet, art was completely out.

At the highest point I had about 100 Deviant Art friends on MSN and about 6 real addresses of Deviants. Not forgetting the 15 phone numbers. For late 2004 as far as i'm aware this was pretty good. I think it was before broadband became mainstream and the majority was still on dial up.

Anyway, to the present. The last 1.5 years I've not been on this site for more than 20 minutes in one sitting, when I used to be on here for roughly 6 hours a day. It's not that I didn't have the time. It's not because I was doing different things, it's because I grew up. Which is exactly my argument for everyone bitching about the "lack of community" People were bitching back in bloody 2003 that it had all gone tits up and it wasn't about the art anymore. I think the community has always been a constant and it's just the people involved with it that have changed. People come in - love it - get slightly bored- blame lack of community - leave. I've seen it happen so many times. Sometimes for badly masked other reasons but it's generally a consensus. However i'm happy to say, i'm not interested anymore because I grew up, found different interests and slowly moved away from it. There is absolutely no point bitching and moaning about stuff that happens around here. It's on the internet. Yet if someone said that to me 3 years ago I would have gone completely batshit insane at them.

Although having said that after about a year of being away, I came back, int my old chatroom Whores in which i'd spent a good 2 years of my life. And it was empty. Not just a load of new faces (usernames) but completely empty. Well 4 people who'd been idling for the last 12 hours and were in about 7 other chatrooms. * Oh!Oh! I've remembered another one... admin not giving the "skins" feature back after version 2 came up! That caused absolute uproar. Yes everyone got indignant over a fucking skin for a website .

You see? In my opinion the site has only changed with the times, done what it has to survive, expanded. But by no means does that mean it's got worse or lost it's "community spirit" I go on other sites, create a user and in no way does it compare in any way to how Deviant Art is NOW, currently.

* After I logged on after the spell of absence and found nobody I'd been friends with years ago, I actually got physically upset. Where was Jack, Dan, Matt, Brian, Nate, Will, Katie... WHERE? I felt like I had wasted 3 years forging relationships, being part of a community. I cried and cried. Stupidly I know but that's how devoted to this site I was and I felt it had all gone down the pan. Not the site but my part in it.

However, I see now that all of it was productive in some sort of way, it was a socializing tool without any consequences, if you pissed someone off, it didn't really matter. If you did something really wrong then it would just be a simple 24 hour ban. Pfft. No that I ever got one of those. I really learnt a lot about "people" real or a facade in those 3 years and that's why I value Deviant Art and in that respect it has not changed one bit. DeviantArt needs to be respected for what it is, a site on the internet which the main subject matter is art and caters for many many different types of people. And that's what it is, has been and probably all it ever will be.

If you don't like it anymore then have a re-access. Do you need dA anymore and does it need you? It doesn't need me, I know that now and after probably 6 months of umming and arring I'm going to go now, tonight. I was part of something really big but now I need to move on just as many others have and many others will come to fill our places. Just because we're gone doesn't mean the community will fail or get worse. I'm betting Deviant Art will live on for another 5-10 years. I'll check in from time to time, keep in touch with those I still hold dear who aren't ready to let go (not in a bad way).

It was after the summit in 2005 that an admin said to me after I promised him i'd go to the next one in 5 years. He said "To be honest I don't see dA lasting that long" Well, Deviant Art you're over halfway there, keep on going.



Excuse the typos, my fingers have not got used to this keyboard yet and if anyone wants to contact me then the email is still the same with MSN attached (jennyvdp@hotmail.com)



Goodbye everyone, and for gods sake stop the whinging.

Jenny xxx