yijingc--Assignment 2

deviantArt is the social media platform for artists of all creative backgrounds, ranging from painting to video to plastic arts to costume design to literature to web design to anything else you can think of (except music, pity--SoundCloud beat deviantArt to that). As a community of artists, I would expect to see much more diversity in profile pictures than a more generalized community. Personal images are kept to a minimum on deviantArt, and for good reason. As the website is an art community, avatars are a 50x50 area to present what you do or what you like. A snapshot of the person tells us little about what he or she can create--unless, of course, it's a stunningly composed photographic piece.

But of course, what is the website known for? It was Tumblr before Tumblr rose to notoriety, with wildly raging fandoms, quirky subcultures, and, of course, a reputation as a site where you can find any artwork possible--good, bad, or ugly. A random user's avatar is more likely to be copy-pasted character art from some franchise rather than a laconic representation of the person's talents. Sturgeon's Law is much more prominently recognized on an art website.

Well, those are some assumptions I'm making. I'm sure that my watchers do not provide a neutral subset of deviantArt's demographic, for the above reasons and the following reasons:

• I am known mostly for pixel icons and Pokémon fan art, so I would assume my watchers are also fans of pixel art and Pokémon.

• As a middling producer, I don't expect that I would attract the peak crop of artists as watchers. The majority of my watchers' art would likely be of, uh, lesser talent.

• Pixel artists tend to trend less just because of the accessibility of the art. It would be like being able to see the entirety of a video just from the thumbnail. If you can get all of the information right there, why click and add to a video's viewcount? With that in mind, I would expect my audience to be composed of more active watchers, skewing the demographic toward pixel art and Pokémon fans more.

Let's see, shall we?

For reference, here is my avatar, a pixel representation of my online character.

And here are the avatars of the 50 most recent watchers I have, sorted in rough categories by content (not source). I had intended to use 100 avatars, but I noticed that the second half of the list of avatars tended to be of people who were involved in the 'adoptables' trend, and that unbalanced my results.

What do I notice?

• Female watchers tend to have non-human designs as icons. Male watchers tend to have more typically-expected profile pictures.

• Character art is popular. My avatar is of a character, too, so I'm in that group.

• A noticeably large amount of people use external images from pop culture, despite my impressions of the site inspiring personal creations. I suppose being a Pokémon artist helps with that.

• There is a sharp drop-off between the first three categories of avatar and the rest. The images we may expect to be popular on other forms of social media--photography and icons--are of less popularity here.

•• A mere three avatars are of real-life images, and out of those, one of those is a photo of an amigurumi (crochet toy), showing the artist's talent. As expected, avatars tend toward being art rather than being the artist.

•• Two of the avatars I interpret as being a brand of some sort. There are many more independent artists than 'establishments'.

• Twelve of the avatars are of pixel art, seven of the avatars are of Pokémon art, and three avatars are in the intersection of pixel art and Pokémon art. That's a pretty large number for my sample size.

• Most watchers display an avatar. This can mean one of few things:

•• Most people who make an account on deviantArt are artists. There is a high ratio of producers to consumers.

•• People who watch me are artists, perhaps seeking my art as an inspiration or reference. As a pixel artist, there may be 'lurkers' who view my art passively and not actively to scrutinize it.