The nails hammered in place to build and sustain the drawing community.
Choosing to invest your time into this community is a big decision. With such a commitment, we have to weigh the pros and cons of joining. What makes them stand out from the rest? What unifies people? Why should “we” care about joining a community that we just discovered; recently? What are some of the possible risks? These big questions are the starting point that will lead us to that final decision.
The Reddit drawing community is alive and thriving because of both the participation of members and the overall type of content that is actively being shown. This widespread effort is what keeps this boat from sinking. From what I have seen, not only has the quantity of content been a key factor in people not losing interest, but also the motivational comments published throughout multiple peoples’ posts. For example, people such as, “am-watercolor” can be seen in multiple people’s posts giving motivational and invigorating speeches. The result of this treatment makes people want to stay and spread the positivity they were shown, to give back.
Furthermore, this inspires people to be more creative and active in the community, accordingly to members like ilikepintobeans this variety of creative content is inspirational. And keeps them motivated to post, too.
There are many benefits and merits to participating in this community. To list a few you obtain feedback that improves your skill, you get exposure and start to build a name for yourself, you get to see what others are doing and keep up today with contemporary trends, and you make friends and build lasting connections that have the potential to change things that happen IRL. This is backed up by the Concept Art Empire website where they said, “it can be invigorating to see how much progress others have made in their artistic pursuits.”, and “you could be a big inspiration” if you choose to continue to be involved with the platform community.
The overall, whole community benefits from every independent member. The process is similar to a rolling snowball down a hill; as more members join and get involved, both the quantity and quality of constructive criticism will increase. Besides, there will be more funny jokes; and encounters that will happen, because there is such a large variety of people now involved; both professional and new; I have experienced this by coming across a post that showed someone’s drawing of the cool kid “S”. There was some negativity; however, the overall majority of the comments were positively hilarious.
To make a connection to Because internet, McCulloch says, “you’re ostensibly there for the content. But if you keep going back, you start to recognize people, people start to recognize you” continued participation in the community is what builds connections, connections that lead back to the place you first made them. In turn, people start to come back because they have to build those genuine connections that will be hard to break.
