[artist / follower d1scourse]

no one is entitled to anyone's follow, interactions, or attention just because their art is "more inspired," "more beautiful," or takes more time to make than someone else's art.

guilt-tripping people into liking something won't work.

twitter may not be the best place for creators to get their art out there, especially not with its wonky algorithm.

but it's still important to recognize that some content resonates with lots of people, and some content just doesn't.

for example:

a goofy comic in [popular fandom] gets 10k retweets because people are already attached to the original work & it instantly elicits emotion.

a fully rendered oc drawing gets 10 likes because the audience hasn't developed that attachment/emotion.

someone's art could be jaw-droppingly beautiful, but if i don't feel connected to the content, i'm probably not going to interact with it and i'm not going to follow them.

the audience can't be blamed for this. you can't force people to like what you like.

that's not to say that you can't be upset that you're not getting the attention that other artists are getting.

but guilt-tripping people into following and being rude to popular artists (as if they opened twitter and had 50k followers instantly) isn't going to help.

i used to have a following of 16k+ on another account (not huge but it was a good amount of exposure), and that was due to a concerted effort on my part. i wanted a following and i deliberately took steps to obtain it.

my 16k follower art was not beautiful! it didn't take long to make, either!

i sure didn't start out with that follower count. i was a nobody when i started out, but i was persistent and determined.

i made content for a popular fandom, i posted at statistically high-traffic times, i made it easy to find (with tags, for example), i watched for trends and incorporated them into my work, and i tried to post content often enough to stay relevant.

like anything else, obtaining a following takes work. rather than being quick to point the blame, try to look within for what's not working.

can the content resonate with a lot of people? is it easy for people to find? is there work that could be done to improve the art itself?

sure, there are some factors that are out of our control. and i'm not saying that you'd have to make dispassionate art just because it's popular, because you don't.

you just can't expect to have a huge following for extremely niche/personal content. don't do that to yourself.

i mean, even with 16k followers i got 10k+ reblogs for popular-fandom comics that took me ~2 hours to make in full, but i'd get a couple hundred likes for a smaller-fandom piece that took days to make.

how could i expect them to resonate with the same numbers?

this is such a complex issue that this barely even scratches the surface, but i wanted to at least try to scratch some of it

(i'm using "you" in a general sense here, this isn't directed at anyone i follow or who follows me. i've just seen the d1scourse in passing glances.)