I think it’s high time I took advantage of my “privilege” of being unable to sell my works on more “mainstream” websites like YouTube and Twitter, and thus not having any financial reason to stick with lousy websites if I don’t want to.

I proudly jumped off the Twitter ship long before Elon Musk ensured it would sink faster—I probably would have been “cancelled” if I had stayed, anyway, considering by far my most Liked/Re-Tweeted post before leaving poked fun at the “poor, poor billionaire”—but sadly Twitter no longer seems to have the monopoly on actively scaring off its otherwise-addicted users. Perhaps the only “popular” website I still use besides Discord is YouTube, and while they are at least being a bit less abrupt about the changes, YouTube is still becoming an increasingly-cumbersome way just to watch the latest episodes of OneyPlays or SnapCube, let alone figure out a consistent way to get people to see my own videos. It honestly kind of hurts that lousy animations I made when I was only 16 consistently got hundreds of views while the stuff I make now struggles to even get double-digit view counts because YouTube’s algorithm is just that hard to figure out now—I’m just figuring out now why none of the people I follow seem to post on weekends anymore, but by the time I adjust my upload schedule to days that people are more likely to watch YouTube, that could change, because the algorithm is just a “Chaotic Neutral” now, I guess.

Combine that with YouTube’s own attempts at punishing free users rather than making YouTube Premium more worth the money, other websites like Reddit and ArtStations having meltdowns, “Fediverse” alternatives like Mastodon being too weird and complicated for most, and the simple fact that once I do get a desirable animation-related job that forces me to go on hiatus online, I will likely have to start over on my follower account anyway as all the fair-weathered fans unfollow me, there doesn’t seem much point in me advertising myself on various online spaces anymore other if the websites themselves are becoming more unpopular. Oh, also the fact that most of these websites now actively discourage you from advertising your other socials on their sites and increasingly make it difficult to even see the website unless you set up an account, first, which obviously hobbles my ability to make people aware of where on the Internet I’m most active.

Until we get sites to fully replace old guards like Twitter, Reddit and YouTube, I will probably be more casual about posting for the sake of my sanity. Mostly spend most of my time on Newgrounds here, since it seems to be the last “fun” website for me (also, ironically more people are likely to see my works on NG instead of YT because it doesn’t have an unpredictable algorithm), use Discord for communicating with freelancers and clients, still post demo reels or something on YT for my parents to watch my stuff on their TVs (though it’s not worth it at this point making a serious attempt to grow on that site), and of course, focus the majority of my efforts on my portfolio website so I can get a job in animation and never again have to put in all this effort getting noticed by companies online, outside of that portfolio site. Yes, I would rather deal with Hollywood or the “triple-A” gaming industry’s problems at this point than the entire Internet’s.

If I MUST stare at a screen for long periods of time (my skin burns easily, can’t spend ALL day touching grass), it’s probably a bit better for my mental health anyway to just play more of Zelda TOTK than use up my free time scrolling the increasingly-miserable modern Internet.