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Adding my voice along to my brother from another mother's on this one.
DeviantART had it's 100 millionth art submission, or "deviation" in DA-ese. Deviations are normally digital paintings or photo manipulations, but they also have a large collection of prose and poetry. First, disclaimer, my wife, Melissa has a DA gallery, wherein you can view, and if you like, buy prints of her artwork. So yes, I'm biased. Sue me.
I can also admit, that like everything else, a huge chunk of DA's content is, to me at least, crap. Sturgeon's law, or more correctly, Sturgeon's Revelation, applies just as well to DA as everything else on the planet. But even the worst of it is someone's work. Slash, fanfic, (Before you bag too much on fanfic, keep in mind that every Star Trek, Star Wars, D&D, or any other writing involving someone else's characters are fanfic. Fanfic produces some pretty amazing work), bad photoshop brushes, all the way to some pretty damned brilliant writing and top-notch artwork is on DA, and it's all someone trying to do something creative. They start, work on, and finish their art, regardless of form, and release it into the world. Even if it sucks, it's still cool that they're trying.
So, because DA is a pretty popular site, and because the shitcocks at TechCrunch can't admit that their one attempt to actually do something failed SPECTACULARLY, (some bad Joo Joo over there), they of course have to bag on DA. Jesus, how fucking sad can you get. Even worse, there's no attempt to even write something decent, (after all, this is TechCrunch), it's just lame bagging on other people's work. If you're going to bag on someone, at least put some fucking effort in it. (I know bagging on people. Doing it well is actually kind of hard.) This shit?
I’m sure there’s some great art on deviantART among the 100 million submissions of drawings, photos, videos, and stories, but they are hard to find among the 99.9 million pieces of mediocrity which seem to fill up the site. It’s as though every kid from your high school art class who dropped out to draw dragons is on the site, telling the other drop-outs how amazing their art is. Some of it is so bad that it’s given rise to parody blog divineART, whose slogan is, “When art becomes visual pollution!”
That's just lame. I can't draw a fucking stick figure, so even the worst on DA is still gobs better than what I can do, even if I think it's crap. Erick Schonfeld however, is in a psuedo-ironic douchebag hipster groove, so he says this about someone's painting:
I could quote from it, but it is more of a deviation from good writing than anything else. I might as well just show the “Blizzard” drawing above featuring some sort of black unicorn frolicking in the snow with an arctic fox. How should I put this? There are some creations which are better left in a drawer and maybe shouldn’t be shared with the world. Seriously, would you pay $150 for a print of this drawing?
First Erick, if you're writing for TechCrunch, you completely, completely lose any moral high ground for criticizing writing. Even the most execrable Princess Peach/Bowser slash is still better than anything TC will ever do. Second, Fuck you dickhead, what have you ever created. Good bad or indifferent, what have you actually created, even if it's as insignificant as a shell or AppleScript? Well, lets look at his fucking bio for TechCrunch:
Erick Schonfeld is the Co-Editor of TechCrunch. He has been covering startups and technology news since 1993.Prior to TechCrunch, he was Editor-at-Large for Business 2.0 magazine, where he wrote feature stories and ran their main blog, Next Net, which had nearly 50,000 RSS subscribers. He also does a lot of video work and hosts regular panels of industry luminaries.
Schonfeld started his career at Fortune magazine. In 1999, he won the prize for best information technology submission at London’s Business Journalist of the Year Awards, and in 2001 he won the prize for best space submission at the Aerospace Journalist of the Year Awards in Paris. In 1996 and 1997, Schonfeld was recognized in the TJFR Business News Reporter’s list of the “best and brightest financial journalists under the age of 30.” He appears regularly on CNBC, CNN, and NY1, and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences.
Schonfeld graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University in 1993.
Yeah. He's not created a fucking thing since he graduated college, and given his degree was in government, his creative output there approaches zero too. He's just another New Media Douchebag in fuckwad hipster glasses thinking that his lame attempts at irony or dry humor turn him into the next Ambrose Bierce. Shit, the most I've ever actually created have been some rather lame AppleScripts on Versiontracker, but at least I fucking created something. Erick's entire life is waiting for someone to try to actually do something, then, if said someone doesn't properly fellate him and/or TC, to shred them.
That's the thing with assholes like Erick. They've never actually done anything. Him, Arrington, Scoble, all of them. If they'd been born a thousand years ago, they'd have been shoveling shit in a stable because that way, they'd not be fucking up something important. If TechCrunch was erased from human memory tomorrow, nothing bad would happen. They've contributed nothing, and never will. That's why dicksnots like Erick have to bag on DA, because not only can they not stand a community that has produced 100 million *anything*, (Compare DA's record to TC's. The reason for the envy is pretty obvious), but the worst offense is that they have a thriving, supportive, albeit overly dramatic community of artists merrily doing their own thing, and they don't need TechCrunch.
That's the part that really burns the hide of fucksticks like Schonfeld. The idea that a website could be successful without Arrington and Schonfeld, especially one that's been around for twice as long as TechCrunch, oh, that burns their precious little hipster douchebag egos, because it's yet another reminder that outside of their little New Media Douchebag circlejerk, TechCrunch has neither meaning nor relevancy, and never will.
If you want to know a prime reason for the existence of Angry Mac Bastards, the kind of shit that morons like Schonfeld perpetuate is the prime reason.
However, if you want to see another reason why DA kicks the shit out of TC, I'll give you a fanfic webcomic that I absolutely adore: Girls Next Door. Yes, it's Labyrinth fanfic, (along with Good Omens, The Phantom of the Opera, LOTR, Legend, and anyone else Pika feels like putting in there), but the artwork is fantastic, the writing is even better, and in 90 strips, Pika has managed to do something that is far better, and ultimately more meaningful than anything Erick Fucking Schonfeld will ever do.
So yeah Erick. You go on with your hipster douchebag self. But TC lost to DA five years before TC even existed. Hope that keeps you warm at night.
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