kaladis-artist:

glasworks:

mlpartconfessions:

Ever since I started skype, I was aiming for people who wanted to talk to the mod of my blogs. But when I started adding artists in my contacts, things started to become a bit different.

A year later, every artist who I used to talk to, well, just doesn’t like to talk me. I even pissed one less popular artist off. What I’m saying is, I wish I never added a single artist in my contacts list, or I wish I never made a Skype account.

And yes, I know, this really isn’t an art/artist confession, but I really wanted to get that out of my system.

– Submitted by go-ask-sweetie-belle

(First off: Not a native speaker here, so please bare with me while I’m trying to express my thoughts as good as I can)

Okay, I feel like I need to talk about this. In my name, in the name of some befriended artists and I’m sure many other artists in demand feel the same way. While I understand your feelings we need to be heard, too, and we need understanding. We simply don’t get much sympathy. Instead, people prefer to think of us as “Booohooo I’m sooo famous boooohooo” when we try to explain ourself.

See, I do not consider myself a very popular fanartist. Yet I can’t go online in skype without getting up to 20 messages by different people within minutes. I know that every single one of them has their feelings, and that they might get hurt when I don’t answer them, and this puts me – and other artists – in extreme stress. 
We are not bad people. We care about the feelings of others, but unless we want to spend our free time completly on responding messages (and stop drawing), there’s sadly no other way then letting some people go short.
Now consider that there’s not only skype, but also maybe other messengers, tumblr, deviantart, facebook + many of them have a private live, a job, private friends … I already get a bunchload of asks on tumblr (I really CAN’T reply to all of them, I just can’t, even though I really want to), how many will artists get who are even more famous than me? I don’t even dare to think about that, because I can’t imagine.

There are often people in my livestream who get angry or sad when I don’t response to their statements. The same with asks. I get “What have I done wrong, why are you ignoring my messages?” daily. Those people force me to take my very rare freetime to respond. Daily. (Unless I want to feel like an arse) 

I even got a message from a girl who wanted to kill herself because I didn’t reply to her message.

This is rather unfair, because we really don’t owe anything to anybody because of our social status. Even when people make us gifts. Nevertheless people try to make us feel bad for not being able to give them the attention they are willing to give us.
Again, I understand why you feel this way – especially since I was in a very alike position when I started with tumblr and my role model artists “ignored” my messages – but please understand us, too. Understand that we don’t want to hurt anybody. Understand that we are trying our best. 

So in short: Please don’t feel offended when artists are offhanded in skype or even don’t reply at all. Don’t do this to us. We never want to hurt people with our behavior. In fact, every famous artist I know is trying their best as good as they can without slighting themselfs.

You don’t need to abandon your befriended artists though. Here are some things you can try:

• Never wait for them to write you messages. Never. Unless they really are good friends this are high expectations you’re subjecting them to.
• If you write them, don’t write simple “Hi”s or “wazzup”s. This is not very personal. There are many “artist diggers” out there who just want to have a famous friend and are not interested in them as people and only want to talk to them so they have talked to them and can say “Weee yes I know famous artist XX we talk once in a while”. Having such people around you is always hurtful, regardless if you’re an artist or not. And especially the more popular artists need to protect themself from such people.
• Instead, as hard as it seems, write them your honest feelings, your fears, your wishes.
• Say “I’m afraid I’m getting on your nerves, but I really like you and I don’t know how to behave in such situations” or “I was just thinking about you and I wondered how you feel” or “I just lost 100 followers, how do you deal with that” – I don’t care, just be honest. 
• They didn’t response to a message? Write them again. Maybe they missed it, maybe they forgot it. Maybe there was just too much happening. Give them a second chance. Or a third. Just try it again and again, just don’t be a stalker who writes them everytime when they come online.
• Never make them a gift so that they “have to” reply to you. Make them gifts because you like them and to show your appriciation. Don’t expect anything back.
• And most important of them all: Don’t feel offended when they still don’t react. Maybe it’s simply not ment to be. 

(^those are some personal tipps – every person respectivly artists is of course an own individual.)

A last nice rule for life in general: If you want to be close to a person you don’t know very well yet then it’s up to you to make it happen. Don’t put others (them) in charge.

Over and out.

^THIS