Back in the day, there was Xanga. Xanga was a blogging platform that coincided with the time of like LiveJournals and any other blogging sites. Anyway, there was a popular perception that Xanga was the blog choice for all Asian people, given the fact that 4 out of every 5 Xanga sites seemed to be run by an Asian blogger.
Perception becomes reality to the eye of the beholder.
I’m convinced that when it comes to costume photography, DeviantArt is pretty much anyone not in the United States. 4 out of every 5 times whenever I see a picture that I think is really striking, and I wish to see more of it, and the rabbit hole eventually leads to me to a DA account, I’ll notice that the user’s profile states that they either live somewhere in South America or Europe. So much for those opportunities to cyber-stalk fantasize about meeting these people in person to crush on and hope to fancy with my wit and charm.
Really though, it’s the same song and dance. See pretty picture, mentally go ‘whoa.’ Seek out more, find DA page. DA page written in a completely different language, discover they’re in South America or Europe. Feel modicum of disappointment that I’ll probably never meet or photograph said person.
Regardless, switching gears somewhat, I kind of feel bad for DA pages, from the trends that I’m noticing. In some capacity, given the self-aggrandizing promoting society we live in today, DA is sort of turning into the platform that’s used because it’s free cheap exposure, but ultimately left dormant until another hit of promotion is needed.
In a way, it’s just like the Geocities site of the 90s, the MySpace page of the 00s, and the endless array of .blogspot and .wordpress sites that are left unmaintained, uncared for, and neglected, but exist for no other reason than that people thinkthey’re supposed to have an online presence in order to become internet famous. In almost every instance of a DA page I come across, they act as slightly more maintained portals to Facebook and Twitter pages, where people still neglect those, because attention spans are short, and some people don’t like having to juggle having both a personal and a “persona” social media landings. It’s tiresome always reading “sorry I haven’t updated in so long!! I’ve been busy with school/work/excuse/excuse/excuse!!” if they even put that much effort into the façade.
I’m also convinced that people on the internet are lazy, and I wish they would stop starting all these online endeavors that they will inevitably never truly commit to. Additionally, I also wish all these sites had vastly more stringent participant policies, that made sure users actually made efforts to maintain and at least acknowledge the existences of the things they started, instead of the mass cybersquatting that so many people simply do instead.
