Reminder to please continue defending artists when their art is stolen or in any way disrespected. It’s an unfortunate truth that people will continue to respond negatively when they’re being called out. It doesn’t matter how nicely you ask, for some reason, when it comes to being called out for art theft or the such, people get extremely defensive.

I’ve been on both sides: and as someone with good ole Anxiety, it gets a little overwhelming to ask someone to credit the original artist nicely, because I know I will literally be boo-ed and yelled at. Yet, I love artists, and I want to continue showing them that someone is standing up for them - I also know for a fact that many artists have deleted their entire accounts and portfolio because of the ridiculous amount of art theft they endured.

But it’s being in the position of the artist that has helped me rationalise how much this happens to everybody, not just me because I’m somehow speaking wrong or my username is too ugly. I have seen people rightfully defend me and be met with insults and many downvotes, even though I, the artist, agreed with them, and their supportive comment was a huge relief to me. This was even more ridiculous since the main example of this I can recall was of someone making a rude, honestly ignorant request of me. The person who told them they couldn’t ask that was right, and they were punished for defending me and other artists.

It’s baffling to me, and yet; this is a situation in which we have to push through despite our arguments being unpopular. I believe this is mostly due to people being very aggressive and defensive online, as a cultural and general thing. Please continue to defend artists, ask for credits, let people know when they’re being blatantly disrespectful to an artist, because having to deal with it all alone WILL make artists stop sharing their art, if not stop creating altogether.

If I knew the solution to make people 1. less ignorant about artists 2. take a chill pill when they’re faced with disagreement online, I would have put it into action long ago.

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