Tyrone 04 Article 12

eZine lover (@eZine)

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Tyrone

 · 4 years ago

  

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Artist Prostitution, by meatpod 
--- 
        It's not exactly prostitution. That would involve sex, and sex happens 
to be scarce, for some reason, in the realm of the doodleboys. Maybe I should 
call it artist Mormonism. The Mormons, as most of us know, are allowed to take 
more than one wife. However, I am fairly sure that whatever the angel Moroni 
said to Joseph Smith when he appeared out of the ether, it didn't apply to the 
ascii art scene. Put simply: THE SCENE ISN'T A MORMON MARRIAGE, AND IT 
SHOULDN'T BE. 
        Here's the problem, people. We are fast approaching a point where there 
will be more groups than artists. What's more, these groups are formed, 
release, and die all in the span of a few days, like a sad, sweet little 
butterfly. This scene-wide problem is two-fold. 
        Fold number one: Artists join way too many groups. One artist will be, 
at any time, in 2 to 6 groups, and only have enough work for one -- the physics 
of the scene and the human body dictate that one artist will be able to draw 
between 1 and 5 pieces of work in an average month (multiply this number by 10 
for oldschool artists). This is plenty of work for one group's release. This is 
not plenty of work for 2 or 3 groups. As a result, packs become rather sparsely 
populated, or worse, the same work goes out to all the groups. That's boring. 
If anything can hurt the scene, it's boredom. 
        Why does this happen? Why do artists marry themselves to several 
groups? It does nobody any good at all. Is it for your egos, guys? Don't you 
bigamists feel it at crunch time, when you have to put out and have trouble 
making ends meet? Here's a solution: pick one group, and stick to it. Yes, quit 
all your other groups. Two examples of former scene groupaholics are Pariah and 
Discyple. If these guys, the worst offenders, can clean up their acts, I think 
we all can. I'd also like to commend ACiD's ascii division, Remorse, for their 
new anti-dualing policy. 
        The other side of this problem lies in the spur-of-the-moment formation 
of art groups. Twice in the last week I have been approached by founders with 
join proposals (not to brag, of course). What's the deal here? I'm in a group 
already. You want me to dual, you say? That hurts everybody involved. I have to 
work harder than I want to, and both groups get less work. Oh no, wait, you 
want me to permaguest and I don't have to release anything ever -- just be on 
the member list. To me, that seems even more ridiculous than dualling. 
        Why do you want to form a group? That question is pretty relevant, and 
will probably determine how long your group will last. Are you looking for 
prestige and fame? Likely, the road to such spoils is long and difficult -- you 
cannot simply jump in and expect everything to be skittles and beer. "Gosh, I 
killed my group because it was harder than I thought it would be and everyone 
thought we sucked." Maybe you're doing it because of some altruistic drive to 
"help the scene." In that case, you should really think about what's going to 
help the scene. Here's a hint -- rounding up existing artists and assembling 
them in different member lists isn't going to do it. 
        Okay, this article has been very weird and meandering, but here's what 
my point boils down to: DEDICATE YOURSELVES. Sure, the scene is just a bizarre 
ephemeral thing, you can do whatever you want, but if you want to prolong its 
existence, I recommend you pay attention to what you're doing, and pay specific 
attention. 

meatpod out. 
SAUCE0019971031µ

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