Decaying World Without Art Freedom and expression
Its almost the end of the 21st century, well it ends around 2100 but most of us will be either 100+ years old or dead by then. Right now we live in the era of extreme globalized censorship, the era of control what one cannot see, create, or access. For many years artist have used their art to express themselves in numerous ways....Even back in Shakespeare's time or much further back where some artist explored stories of controversy but there were those willing enough to allow these artist to flourish and make a name for themselves. But not everyone was on board with freedom of expression.
That would explain why they became reknown and famous when they challenged the rules. Make no mistake about this, risk adverse artist have always been respected for their ideas but hated by those they might have offended along the way. Some artist and their ideas were considered "offensive" and just plain wrong so wrong that they dealt with harsh penalties and criticisms for it.
But these artist continued being artist..Doxxing existed even back in the Renaissance, they just didn't have the internet. Instead the witch hunters would show up at your house ready to burn you at the stake if you did something blasphemous with your artwork. The truth is people that live in fear make it easier for these rules to exist in the first place. Your average young person believes communism is better than Capitalism because they don't understand either system very well and are ignorant. A vast majority of young people are incredibly ignorant about a lot of things even more so than the boomers.
Everyone today is obsessed with controlling media. For those of us who are artist, rely on our art, and use it as a harmless way to cope with reality because to some extent the art we make is what we need to survive mentally. A lot of people just want to escape reality for awhile because right now real life isn't looking good, there's all this talk of civil war, nuclear war, people are just really sick of all the tyrannical reckless shit, myself included.... Escapism is becoming obsolete as we are being removed and exiled from it. Freedom to escape reality is turning into a real thing.
We allow ourselves to be abused psychologically because of fear....If fear runs your life, you'll never amount to anything. I've lived with fear of failure and because of my fear of failure I've struggled with finding employment. I would walk out on jobs if I had any reason to believe I was going to fail the first day....Fear have to some extent controlled some parts of my life, but not my desire to create if it meant keeping my dark thoughts from causing me emotional or even self physical harm.
We are being forced to face the boring and cruel real world with nothing else to do besides work low pay meaningless jobs that enrich self absorbed assholes that exploit their own workers while demanding them to do more (check indeed job ads, some positions will list over 40 goddamn task and job duties they expect you to do.). We pay taxes and fund a bunch of bullshit that doesn't even benefit us at all....Life is garbage.
The UN is one of the main culprits behind this censorship crusade along with religious fanatics and other power starving organizations that hide behind false human right narratives often using women and children as a means to justify their ends to controlling and censoring others. They've picked on Japan a few times for not outlawing specific art genres that they consider harmful and a violation of "Human rights."
The UN right now sees specific fictional content as "abusive." It was they who kept bullying and harassing Japan a few years back about certain artwork but most people do not know this, they think all of these new censorship issues is just Western banks and payment processors pushing Japan around and demanding policy changes from them on their own platforms. But it's not just payment processors attacking them. Some of it might also be big tech giants that controls all the social media platforms if they are hosting their website on a big tech server like google for instance. It's hard to say with websites like Pixiv what's going on as far as policy changes go.
Pixiv is now implementing this new rule on their own platform aimed toward location restrictions and viewership of specific content. This has already affected a lot of people and as Pixiv keeps ramping up new policies, more will just give up on the platform vs trying to find ways around it.
Artist have many doubts about the future of the art world and I understand how they feel since I am an artist myself... I create what I create to cope with depression, suicidal thoughts, and severe mental illness problems that I cannot control with traditional medication...The art I produce is my therapy for keeping my desire to end my life under control....I am very obsessed with suicide and it gets harder every year to control it. I've told my doctor many times in the past "I need this, I can't live without my creations. The darker the mind, the darker the art. But that art keeps me under control from roping myself."
Now when you try to look for certain works of art on Pixiv expect to find that a huge list of images that might be blocked from the location you reside in or have chosen even if you do not live in that region. Pixiv so far are the only ones doing this but it can easily become the standard of other art platforms if they decide to follow this path. So let's say that in some countries they don't like sodomy art or characters taking dick up the ass...You get blocked from viewing anal sex...
Loli/shota aren't the only art genres getting blocked from being viewed based on region selection either. It's other stuff condemned "offensive." Slushe.com has a policy against 80% of the work you can create which means no violence against women, no bestiality art, no incest themes, no racism unless you are being racist toward Caucasian people then it's fine just like 100% of every other site that's open to black supremacy themes where people post anti-white content without being challenged over it. Biased policies like this shouldn't even exist or be up to debate just like the whole "No violence against women" nonsense but it's okay to depict violence against men.
When I see these kinds of policies on art platforms it's like okay so we aren't allowed to produce art featuring women in abusive situations or bondage scenarios either? Well real porn feature real people all the time in BDSM themes, and I don't see real porn sites banning the fetish so why are we artist subject to such dumbfuck policies?
Pixiv is still adding this region restriction rule on the platform anyway to drive people away which will limit an artist viewer base making this platform EXTREMELY WORTHLESS once they began enforcing this policy. It seems that every year Pixiv comes up with another way to screw with their user base, I've seen the traffic slowly
die a little but not enough to hurt them yet.
Last year they introduced article 14 which attacks specific genres you aren't really allowed to post anymore on the platform the most obvious one of course is not hard to figure out but the platform still has several hundred thousands of these images that have not been removed completely. They are nit picking and suspending some users over certain content while overlooking others until they come to the final conclusion to just get it over with and do what Tumblr did in 2017 except it might hurt pixiv more than it hurt tumblr.
My advice to Pixiv is to just cut the Western processors loose and find someone less controlling to process payments through unless it really is the UN finally piercing the armor of resistance the Japanese have worn for years defending their cultural rights. In a matter of years the U.S. dollar may not be worth shit to the world anymore since everyone is sick of the West.
Which means they won't be able to control anyone once the currency is useless. Instead they'll all be at the mercy of BRICS. And that may or may not be that much better than the U.S. financial institutions having control over everything since Russia, China, etc are pretty damn strict about certain things too. I believe all pornographic material in Russia isn't allowed, and China is against gorish themes. The U.S have a bunch of rules but don't enforce a vast majority of them either. Some of these rules are just there to fuck with you. Look at all the people jumping the border, not a single person is being punished for illegally entering the country. And a lot of these people are already committing serious crimes, and are set free. You have human traffickers coming in, drug trafficking, everything! And again no one is being punished.
Pixiv isn't very clear on their changes and rules when you confront them about changes or policies. They will reply to you at least once or twice then tell you "Sorry but we will not continue to respond to this situation further:." There is no telling if or when they'll fully kill some art genres entirely but the Japanese staff who partially run the site is sending the message they have less control over their own platform as long as Westerners and numerous non-Japanese users are using their platform to host their artwork on and they are willing to comply with the bullies harassing them from whatever country have the power and leverage to make these demands.
I'm not sure if bank processors are tightening the strangle hold on Pixiv or if its just the credit card companies but each year a new policy comes into play that sounds like the West in some way had something to do with it. And so far none of these policies is put there to make the platform better just harder for people to enjoy. And Pixiv gets all the hatred thrown at them for surrendering.
Due to all their recent changes they have caused me a great deal of losses....Even some viewers were upset with me when I removed some of my images to avoid getting suspended. I am now trying to decide if it's even worth me buying a new computer to continue creating anything at all or just retire in 2024 and deal with my emotional problems and depression killing me without my remedy. Since I'm so tired of censorship and people looking for more ways to fuck over my life than it already is. I feel like just giving up. I know that's what those in power want, for people to just give up and take it, quit, enjoy serfdom because that's the only rights you have now.
I haven't created anything artistically in over a month so far and lost my complete desire to even do so anymore. The further we get to 2030 the more freedoms we will lose I'm expecting us to...Article 14 was just the beginning of Pixiv crusade to make itself Tumblr 2.0....Now they are adding region locks to content. By the end of this year or next they'll be saying goodbye to 85% of their users.
The thing for most countries is that they generally do not care enough to restrict access to certain websites like some do. The U.S. just find other ways to make sure it's citizens hate life or aren't having a great time living it like they use to. But they aren't going to block 34RuleHentai just because it has certain art listed there or some other art platform that's allowing people to express themselves freely without threatening to suspend their account. It may eventually get to this point soon since freedom of speech is constantly under attack, freedom of speech and freedom of expression are very important...Losing either of the two means a dull world full of dull ideas and absolute boredom.
I still get lots of attention on Pixiv when I do post something, but most artist on Pixiv are selling out to genres they don't really like because they know it's what brings in the large crowds from the cucked out Western world. That's why Pixiv is always recommending me some annoying QOS/NRT shit....You won't believe how many artist there is creating that eye sore... Now if they wanted to restrict me from viewing that awful junk? Pixiv would be doing me the biggest FAVOR of all. Because I wouldn't have to waste money buying a membership just to block and mute the annoying garbage on my own.
It's time to cut my losses sit back, and wait for the enviable to happen either in 2024 or 2025, we are really getting close to the very world that those in power crave so much...A world where you truly don't have the right to do, own, or say anything anymore. I thought Pixiv would at least try to go back to the way it was before...But I was wrong...They'll just keep adding more and more policies until people either stop using the platform at all or the traffic there comes to a major halt and people only use it a lot less than usual. I already notice this happening a few days ago.......
Pixiv had the largest user base for me to expand upon. I was able to really grow there which was very hard and difficult to do elsewhere with many restrictions and limitations put in place as to what I could and couldn't post on those platforms..When I went over to Pixiv back in 2016 after DeviantArt banned me forever for violating their explicit content policy..I was able to achieve the status I never would have gotten on Deviant Art without problems..But now Pixiv have changed the game too...What does this means for me as an artist? I don't know. But retirement is still a possibility for me next year.
