In an effort to fight modern techbros, all modern human writers start churning out Oulipianesque texts, and reading books is cast once again as a passtime for weird (perhaps dangerous) nerds.

…actually, there’s some half-decent stories you can tell and ideas you can bat around with this frame informing both format and content. The title Samizdat jumps to mind when thinking about some of them (I know there’s a contingent on Lemmy who might not be thrilled about the connotations, but it’s a good word). Hmm.

Ngl, I’d watch the fuck out of a movie about juggalos toppling a surveillance state. Culminating in the cinematic final showdown I’ve always pictured in my head when listening to I Want My Shit..

I almost feel like someone needs to do a write-up of the [email protected] debacle - while not a 1-for-1 example (it wasn’t a migration attempt that functioned the exact same way as it would with PieFed), it’s a good case study for userbase-community owner-instance dynamics that should be considered, specifically the bit in your last sentence.

Out of curiosity, have you got a link or something for these workshops (and are they done in English or French)? I’m out in Ottawa, seems like a useful thing to have in my pocket to share with folks since there’s a lot of movement between the two cities (and if online geography isn’t a barrier).

If not, no worries and keep up the good fight.

Ha ha ha! What a story, Swab!

Fuck yeah, Pocket Paint gang.

I think part (though not all) of the issue is discoverability. There’s other communities where this isn’t as prevalent, but a) they’re not always easy to find, and b) for this as well as other reasons, they might not be super active (if people don’t know it exists, who’s posting?)

I get around the first bit by trawling All New once and a while. One feature I will say I liked on reddit was the random community function. But while I like that it’s a smaller userbase here for some reasons, it does mean less diversity of interests.

Real question: what do you call art?

I’ve seen plenty of art here. Subjective quality/technical prowess certainly varies, but art nonetheless.

Hold up, I always thought James wrote the shitty fanfic, then rewrote so it wasn’t a Twilight thing anymore. Curious as to the actual story.

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The amount of times I’ve thought about liberating one of those sushi waiter bots you see sometimes is more than zero.

Lol, here is just fine. I usually put my crap on Art Share (originals using few/no collage elements), or Low Effort Memes (a blissfully permissive community that hasn’t given me too much shit for my collage stuff yet).

I’m a firm believer that it’s OK to be an amateur in public. Yes, you might get downvotes/people saying you suck/whatever. You might also get tips to improve, or encouragement to keep going. At very least you can point at something publically and say “Hey, I made this!”. Maybe someone else points at it and says “I can do better than this”, then picks up a tool to try and prove it. Bam - you just made another artist.

Quoting from noted philosopher Violent J: “If he knows what’s so dope he should make it himself, and quit fucking judging every-fucking-body else”

This is a good start! Hell, this is what 90% of my drawings looked like when I was a young guy. At a certain point I stopped, and didn’t approach art of any kind for decades. An old friend of mine at pretty close the same skill level kept doing it, sharing the results with interested folks, kept honing their craft, and now they’re a professional animator with credits in award-winning shows. Thank you for sharing!!

Good point, and I understand where you’re coming from. My counterpoint is basically “the best tools to start making art are the ones you already have”.

In my case, I had a phone and the ability to download Pocket Paint (think OSS MS Paint), and that’s what got me started. For others, it might be basic paints and paper/cheap canvas from a dollar store. For others, it might be crude pigments made from old coffee grounds and charcoal remnants from a hobo fire they came across, applied to junk mail newspaper with kitchen utensils. For still others, it could be a rock and another, harder rock for etching.

Shit, there’s people out there making paintings with Excel.

You can always explore different techniques and materials as your interests develop and/or budget allows, but for the person who just wants to start making something, whatever you have on hand that captures your fancy is the best first choice IMO.

These are cute as fuck and I love them! Definitely understand the appeal of traditional media over digital (my stuff’s digital mostly because of accessibility).

Man, I suuuuck at drawing and painting. But (up until the last couple weeks I guess) I’ve been making and posting my shitty ass, MS Paintesque paintings and collages. Why?

Because you and I are humans and creative expression is our fucking right.

Because you don’t get better at anything unless you keep doing it.

Because people, at least here, prefer a technically shitty artistic effort to a better looking image made by a insanely thirsty software architecture owned by greedy technocrats.

Because fuck it, we can.

Post those drawings homie.

Not quite the same, but a recent idea that’s been stuck in my craw is ordering a bunch of cheap credit card style mp3 players* and loading them up with local artist tracks to share with interested people. Maybe with some weird/fun stuff saved to memory if anyone connects it to a computer (though noted this would be a piss poor security practice)

*Something like this:

See, you broke the rule - vote, don’t articulate. Never let 'em know your next move. /s

For folks waking up to a weird morning: “I’m pulling for ya; We’re all in this together.”

I’m currently waiting for people to wake up to open presents and start the usual (and potentially last instance of the) tradition of Christmas Vine compilations (rip Vine, similar collections of Tik Toks just don’t hit the same at all)

It almost always comes down to set and setting, imo. You (mostly) get out what you put in.

Don’t get me wrong, it can also just be a fun time, but even that should be approached carefully and with some respect to the substance (most of the stories I’ve heard where someone gets psychically bitch-slapped is when they start getting a little frivolous in their approach. SWIM told me about that once…)

Edit: Also noted they’re not useful/good for everyone and that’s ok - important to know, even.