No other context is necessary

Wednesday came out on Netflix recently and that got my obsession with Addams family to come out of the grave once again. So I figure I’d take a shot at drawing them.

Am I Republican enough to be a Senate Leader again?

Found out from a few friends that Taylor Swift had some not so great stories that floated around about her from the locals of North Reading, PA and it turned out that she was just one egotistical woman who shoved one person into a locker and crashed parties she was never invited to just to gloat and I figured the fame didn't make her any better behind closed doors. So obviously, I went to work after that.

Then again I never liked her so this just gives me the incentive.

To be honest every now and then I see people who go out of their way asking other users to get followers. Obviously this is a tricky thing and while I don't have a whole lot of followers myself, it might be a little hard for me to convince people on how I feel about where getting them comes from.

However I think my opinion might give some insight based on how I've been getting people to follow me as of late. So for the newbies that might be having trouble I want to give people a bit of advice.

If people like your work or your attitude that's one way of getting them. Sure you can be an awesome animator, artist, musician, writer or whatever and that will get people to follow you if they like your work. But I would also say your behavior matters just as much if not more because playing nice matters.

As human beings however the latter may be tricky because sometimes people can get irritating. That's happened with me a couple of times with other users. However if they're giving you shit over nothing then they may not be worth your effort to be around unless they own their mistakes in that area.

Personally what I don't like is when people beg me to follow them. Seriously.

While self promotion is a good thing, on the flip side if you have to go out of your way to ask people to follow you then frankly I would question whether or not you're actually doing what you're doing because you either want clout or if you're just fixated on the numbers of people who like your work and I don't feel that's a genuine connection with others.

I don't go out of my way to do that for that reason, I just don't like being a derpy pest about these things. With that being said there are better ways to promote yourself while building an audience as much as you want that genuine connection.

What I do think is a genuine connection with others is when you interact with other fellow NGers, take part in collabs or community events, competitions, or even taking on a few requests, as long as you're not overdoing it and putting a strain on yourself, because your mental health matters and you shouldn't force yourself to make content then I would say that's probably the most effective way to build a fan-base.

You don't have to be as well known as Oney, PsychicPebbles, MeatCanyon, or any other famous online personality or artist you know of who got their start here. They got popular because they were on here long enough to build that following and expanded onto other platforms. Everyone who is well known who got their start here worked to do that and built on their success.

Maybe it's because I had an account here since 2012 and have been lurking long enough to see how things worked in the past decade even when I was busy with college or with other things that have been ongoing in my walk of life outside of the internet, and frankly being somewhat of an observer to everything on going that's how I managed to see how others did it.

At the same time, you should be doing you. Let followers come to you naturally and everything will fall into place. Might take time, but that's not a bad thing.

So that's my spheal on followers. Do good for the world, make more things, and be yo'self.

Everyone should be aware that this has become a rather big discussion for the animation community from the fans all the way to the industry professionals.

People who love watching cartoons are disappointed, several people I know of have felt justified in saying physical media is better, and animators and even the people at Cartoon Network are pissed and well... who can blame them?

Then there are people like us involved in the underground animation community, even if, its one small part.

This is really just one man's opinion on the matter because I feel like if I just posted in a thread what I think might get lost in posts that otherwise are saying a lot of similar things at this point. Because I feel like there are several people who came to Newgrounds because they've found some level of fondness to the fact that people have started their animation or art careers here given that we're still a fairly underground community of content creators who were inspired by the big animation studios like CN, Nickelodeon, Disney, Warner Bros, Etc. and even several video game studios, for some, it's been a dream to work at places like those.

Obviously, this is an industry problem but the one thing I've noticed is that what tends to happen on that level is more often than not talked about and a lot of people who pay attention to what goes on in the news with those companies does affect how some people in the underground communities feel in regards to what goes on and, it's often just.

But the other thing that I think needs to be said too is that, things that tend to happen with the industry tend to change on where animators tend to find work in. I hear a lot of talk about how people may want to go independent in the same way Vivziepop did, but the thing I don't think a lot of people understand is the reason why she was able to pull that off and give a huge "Fuck you" to the Youtube algorithm is because she was able to build a following through patreon and marketed both Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss successfully, and it worked to her advantage despite the odds stacked against her, especially with the latter since Helluva Boss is going strong and happens to be one of my favorites.

And that's the thing that I think people need to realize. Between the competition for content creators in animation to get their work noticed and picked up in the same way Vivziepop or even to a lesser extent, Becky Sloan and Joseph Pelling who were known for Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, is intense. I'm not saying it's impossible, because they clearly did it. But it doesn't make it any less difficult compared to some of the work that people had to do in order to get into the industry anyways. And that's just it.

So... what can be done far as the underground scene and the hopefuls that still have the drive to create shows or even work in the animation industry in general if things like this tend to de-motivate people?

Well... I think the thing that people need to remember is that Newgrounds is still just a small part of the underground community and I think where a lot of people should be having discussions should have to do with where people should be putting their focus on far as getting into animation.

There are still things like animation festivals such as Ottawa International Animation Festival, GLAS Animation, and so on. Even if your film doesn't get into a showing there are still things you can learn from events like those and you can also see how other animators get their work out there despite the odds. Even joining organizations like ASIFA can be good networking opportunities if you really hope to invest yourself into other parts of the animation community.

More importantly, freelance, self study, do what you have to do in order to keep going with your artistic endeavors.

You shouldn't have to let the external factors of what happens in the animation community over all, even if it's at the professional level, deter you from doing what you love doing. If anything it sucks for me to see artists and animators get bummed out by things like this even if they aren't in the industry.

And that's the thing that's been on my mind with all this.

To be honest, I'm really hoping that I don't have to give this situation anymore attention than it deserves. However, assuming someone who isn't familiar with who I am comes in from either the Political Forum, if they happen to have found the user's page in question from the art portal and read the post on their profile, this is for the record concerning Deven91, someone who I recently blocked. And I'm hoping that this will serve as a cautionary tale of sorts when it comes to users like him.

Also, please don't go harassing him over this. It was bad enough of a headache to deal with him and fighting fire with fire solves nothing.

I'll keep the story brief, my first interaction with him was when he was asking me for a commission to be done through Bitcoin. I declined and as you will see in the screenshot I am providing, he was rather insistent on this as you will see in the quote:

Then there was the thread in the Political Forum where a user asked if there were any similarities between feminists and incels which, up until he started posting his beliefs and flaming anyone who disagreed with him it was actually a pretty decent discussion.

I called him out for pushing his beliefs on everyone and his reaction was to DM me complaining about how he got banned and threatened to write a nasty post about me, so I told him to go ahead. He bothered to look at my profile and wrote a couple of nasty comments and reviews and being the wise ass I am, responded with kindness.

The funny thing is he found out my name which, if I'm being honest isn't all that much of a secret and he even bothered to come up with a fake twitter post URL making a claim that I was a pedophile just because he got mad that I wasn't siding with him, especially since he deleted a post I made on how he should be speaking for himself when I explained to him that EdyKei, one of the staff members on newgrounds that he was disagreeing with isn't a forum moderator despite having that on his forum profile when he was complaining that he was the one that got him banned (To my understanding, he runs the site's API)

I ended up making the decision to respond to his claim and pointed out that, had the link he provided been real, then the wayback archives would have provided a screenshot of the tweet he was claiming existed. However, nothing had come up in the wayback archives concerning it as shown in the screenshot I had provided in that thread. If that doesn't convince you then by all means, click here.

Additionally, if he was that serious about the claims he was making he wouldn't have hesitated to post a legitimate screenshot and to be honest, even if he came up with a faked screenshot someone would have noticed a discrepancy.

Look, to be honest, I don't give a shit if people know my name is Andrew Orluk. No, really. If I was that adamant about hiding that I wouldn't have it on my twitter, instagram, website, or any other social media platform.

And concerning the note on cryptocurrency while it is true that I did state on the BBS in the past that cryptocurrency in of itself is not a bad thing in of itself, that doesn't necessarily mean that my stance has remained the same. In fact, I did dabble with it once and I decided it wasn't for me because I ended up losing money just because I tried to transfer Bitcoin between software wallets via CashApp and Electrum because I was curious to see what it was about.

Also, the blockchain is not as anonymous as most people think it is since it can still be traced so I don't know why he's trying to use the argument that I'm only asking for transactions through venmo or paypal to get someone's identity.

It should be fair to say that I suspected said user to be someone else that I had a scuffle with on here a few months but then I realized that was a shot in the dark and I could have been overthinking there. But either way, not the reason why I'm making this post.

The morals to come out of this story are that you shouldn't let people on the internet bully you into thinking the same way they do, and you shouldn't have to bend over for them to make transactions the way they do it if you aren't comfortable doing it that way. And lastly, if something seems like bullshit, it probably is and you should question that.

And you know, I get it. Sometimes we say nasty shit to each other when we're pissed. In fact it's not beneath me to use pedo as an insult from time to time. But it's another story when you're claiming someone actually is one with nothing to back that.

Concerning the rest of the situation I've co-operated with moderation and provided relevant screenshots of what happened. Far as I am concerned, Deven91 doesn't have any real following. If anything the only thing he managed to do was make me slightly uncomfortable with how he decided to be that kind of jerk-off who wanted things to go his way, but that isn't anything new with shit people put up with on the internet. So remember, be web-smart and don't take things at face value.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/marvelous_mikee/?fbclid=IwAR2CK6hUuipWaRG4kYQStkx-oEHDl26d2MJrSbsjwXNan-yj8fjPHZM-N6Y