#that quote from the new hbomberguy video feels particularly applicable here

[bleaksqueak]

Man.

So, of course, the rampant theft and disregard for artists has never been ideal, but Pinterest has always been an invaluable tool despite that since it's a paradise for reference and discovery (so you know, always tag your art.. .in multiple places. I started tagging mine with more subtle watermarks in the dead center since uploaders were cropping my tag out, even though like, with the elias respite image, it ruins the composition by ruining the card look and frame... Why do you want to crop my sig out so bad to ruin the composition lmao) Anyway Point being, I have gotten more use out of pinterest as a reference archive than any annoyance it has ever brought me. I've found some artists I absolutely adore using it, too, especially when people use it as its (mostly. sort of) original intended purpose, being a huge communal bookmark/pinboard... those that leave the links directly to the art/artist are saints. However, I really, really hate seeing it being over run by generated Aye-Eye shit. Especially since, apparently, no one ever told the Aye-Eye bros the common sense of "DON'T make the exact same picture 500 times with only an ever so slight difference, are you stupid?" (rhetorical question, ofc.) But it's getting harder and harder to keep the search feeds tailored because these morons cannot understand the value of quality > quantity, so I love being flooded with the slightest variant on the same gd picture over and over. I really hope this bubble bursts or the world gets its act together and outlaws it/heavily regulates it soon. I've said before I wasn't even completely against it as a potential for a fun tool back when it made actually cool dream-like collages of really wacked out whimsical shit, but even then it was like "... but you shouldn't have free reign to just steal to make this stuff. At least it looks nothing like the source, I guess?" but the "Better" it gets, the more uselessly souless and obnoxious it gets, and the more "well that's just straight up obvious theft" it gets. I see so ,so so so many recognizable styles , sort of just hollowed out husks, in these awful things... but hilariously, the more over saturated they get, the more they seem to just feed off of each other, and they start looking like the most homogenized, soulless ero-game style art I've ever seen. Anyway, I just needed some reference for a specific cut of dress pants, and somehow *that* started turning into a feed of nothing but the same soulless pseudo-anime twunk generated over and over and over with bulbous buttocks stuffed into passable pantsuit pantaloons. so I guess i'll just get my ref the old fashioned way - going to specific websites/blogs with actual photos. I'm just glad that for the most part tumblr and bluesky both are strongly anti-aye-eye, they're the only two places where I rarely have to see the shit.