Nearly finished, social media sucks (Patreon)

Scroll to see the steps. I'm almost done. Still looking for a title.

I just posted this on my subscriber Instagram and it was removed. Demontized until May 21st. Fuck Instagram. I think I can safely say that on this platform. and I need to say it somewhere because its been happening a lot and its really annoying. Fuck Instagram. Sorry for this rant, but:

I hate social media in general. At the same time, I rely heavily on social media for my income. Most of my income this year has come through instagram. Between being monetized on there and through sales that originate there. I'm basically trapped, like all the other artists I know. I hate it, but I rely on it. 

It's not just their dumb content moderation policies. It's not just the trolls and losers who hang out in the comments. It's not just the addictive atmosphere set up to steal your attention. It's all of that. but to me, it's the instability of these platforms.

It's been okay to me this year, but if they make some small tweak to their content policy, it could cut my sales in half. Or if they change their algorithm in some way, I could lose income. And there's nothing to do about it. 

I've posted plenty of paintings like this before on instagram. So I don't know what the problem is, and they don't tell you. they just say "demonetized" and ask you to familiarize yourself with their 50,000 word content policy. 

Fuck instagram. I set up patreon to share my process, try and help you with your artwork and create a better community atmosphere. But also, ultimately, genie in a bottle, to limit my reliance on social media. 

So I'll close this rant with a huge thank you to everyone who is helping me do that. You're the real ones. I have 100k followers on instagram. I have less than 20 subscribers on here. and you're more real to me than the 99,980 followers on instagram. 

You're not just helping me financially (as a matter of fact, if I only cared about the money I'd just keep making reels on instagram because I made way more from that than I have on here.) You're helping me create something more stable, independent and real. 

The art life is about living a meaningful life. And you are a source of that meaning by being here. By caring about art. Not just my art, but your art. And art in general. This is way more valuable to me than the money I'd make doing this for 100k or a million people on social media. So thank you.