Community is a word that is used on dA a lot. It's a huge part of the site and the main reason why I love this place so much and have stuck around for so many years, even when I haven't had time to indulge in my art or felt like sharing it for whatever reason. I've made true friends here who I care for deeply and can't imagine not using dA in some capacity to keep in touch with all of you wonderful people.
The thing with a community, in my opinion, is that it's kind of a by-product. I don't mean that in a bad or belittling way. What I mean is that you can't actually force a community to thrive, or even to exist. You can provide a context (like a website or a message board or a physical-world organisation) and tools (like comments or chat features online or a room to meet in for offline events). You can invite people to join in, encourage them to interact and even moderate destructive or negative behaviour but you can't make a community - it's something that happens by itself, through the involvement and passion of the people who create and maintain it.
Conversely, I don't believe that a community can be destroyed by the introduction of additional features to the context. For example, I've seen so many people complaining on dA (for the entire time I've been here, not just recently) that things like prints, merch and Points are killing the community. You know what? They aren't. Yes, they are additional features for people who use the site and yes, they generate (OMG!) money, but they don't actually prevent you from engaging with the people you care about, interacting with strangers, making new friends, creating and sharing art, commenting on, critiquing and collecting other people's art or doing all the other things that make this community what it is.
These additional features don't (or at least shouldn't, in my opinion) reduce your desire to be a part of the community that you create just by being here, being yourself and doing your thing. You may choose not to get involved with areas of the site that don't interest you, but they don't actually stop you from enjoying the things that DO interest you. We are not only more than the sum of our parts, but we are more than simply the context and the tools provided for us.
Sta.sh
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