Over 8 years ago, I suddenly found myself left without any foundation online. The admin team of FurAffinity, the only site I'd been actively maintaining my presence on, neglected to address a fatal vulnerability that had been identified prior to the eventual attack, taking the site offline for weeks.
I spent that time migrating as much of my art as possible to as many sites I was permitted to post them to. I then made some artwork to commemorate completing the task, entitled "Omnipresence." I've never looked back.
Since then, I've always maintained at least 8 separate galleries at any given time, replacing them as they either went down, or kicked me off. Today, I'm revisiting that concept in an effort to share my philosophy of being present online, and encourage others to take a page out of it.
This is long, but if you've seen or felt the effects of sites clamping down on friends or your favourite artists, I believe you owe it to them to read it. Please do either way.
Part 1 of 2
On Belonging Nowhere, As a Digital Kink Artist
I've been thinking about writing this for a long time now, mixed in with my crazy little trans artist life's goings-on, so intertwined with the many folks I care about. I've had a lot on my plate, even without the need for sites I called home either dying or turning hostile towards my existence helping to spice up the pot.
I wish I could've have more time to write this, too. Cohost's planned closure simultaneously stoked and set a hard deadline on the need for putting these tangled, clamoring thoughts and feelings out on digital paper. I didn't want to miss the chance to commit them to the most appropriate canvas before it got frozen in time, in anticipation of its untimely end.
This is something I've felt in the air for a long time now, and the changes have been coming ever more rapidly as time passed. Capitalism and tech's rapid "race to the bottom" continues to increase its kill count with no signs of stopping, and we, the misfits and dreamers who've used this platform - the Internet as a whole - to thrive on for so long have always been the main victims of this creeping malaise's unstoppable march.
I'll try (but fail) not to belabor these points for too long, but I feel they're worth revisiting from a more personal perspective to emphasize the effect this has on us as individuals, as part of a community. I don't want to sound like I'm fishing for sympathy, but the fact remains that they did happen, they happened to people like me, and we shouldn't forget that. This is a trend. It will continue.
Tumblr was the first biggest loss during my career. It was and still remains the fastest growth I've ever seen in my active followers on any single platform. If you've paid attention to my exploits beyond the art I make for any amount of time, you'll know that I've struggled to build my follower counts anywhere as quickly as most of my peers, and it's been a source of stress for just as long as it's been a thing. No adult content or "female presenting nipples" allowed was a dangerous standard they set that would continue for a while.
Several of my friends chose to filter their work to remain active on the platform. Maybe I should've done the same.
I caught wind of a so-called "rogue moderator" on Patreon telling another hypno artist that the implied dubcon of their work was not acceptable on the site. Patreon's terms of service had to be reinterpreted in a form of modern sophistry in order to reach such a verdict, but their decision was ultimately what mattered. I took this as a sign, and although I'm certain that many at the time saw my response as an overreaction - effectively pulling teeth to get myself migrated off of Patreon and onto my own website - I was vindicated four years later when several artists got banned, days before their monthly payout.
The morning that I'm writing this, I saw another furry artist get banned off of the platform.
On the eve of an extremely important trip, I opened a tab I had kept with the comments I received on a recent upload to FA, so I would remember to reply to them later. I wrote my thanks to one, hit reply, and the site responded with notice of my suspension. I should have seen it coming, given that others had also been subjected to this months prior, and even though I'd made a conscious choice not to go along with the change in policy, this was still the one that hurt the most. The ruling was frankly questionable at best, and completely undermines the safety of the site as a whole. Ultimately though, their decision is all that matters.
I could continue to post my work while filtering it accordingly, but I refuse to do so within the broader spaces of the community I've contributed to for most of my life. Even if I did, I can't trust that the rule's catchment won't shift again to have me purged in spite of my compliance.
The confluence of feelings that these events - and more besides - have stoked and kept burning in me for years now have mostly become part of the background radiation of my life. This latest one, though, having come quite literally from inside my own home, has left me feeling pained and restless.
With FA's consistent mismanagement, tumblr's policy change, Twitter's loss of competent leadership, cohost's unfair and untimely demise, AI encroaching upon all of our spaces like some malicious grey goo, and FA now taking a page out of other platforms' censorious playbook, it's hard to stay motivated and feel safe online as a kink artist any more. I also think that this is a breaking point though, and we need to do something about it to avoid things getting any worse.
Centralized administration for hosting art clearly doesn't work long-term, especially when operating within a capitalist society. We need to start reclaiming some form of control through shared acts of community however we can, and I think we should do so by rekindling the older ways of the Internet.
To that end, I have an idea. It's a fairly simple and perhaps somewhat ambitious one, and it'll take time and combined effort, both of which I have little of and even less control over, but I believe it will help, even if in some small way.
I didn't want to risk it getting buried under what might come across as one artist's impotent rage in the form of a long-winded rant, so that'll come in a second part as soon as I can make the time to work that out too.
Please share this around. Either way, stay tuned, and thank you for reading.
