Alternate title: A short list of complaints
This monkey wants a word with you. It's been over five years since I joined Newgrounds. Everything I do today has directly or indirectly stemmed from the attitudes Newgrounds used to be about - the attitudes I love. Everything. Isn't it understandable that I would be upset about how much it has changed?
People don't have their own personality anymore. As far as I can tell, most posts I see on the BBS could be from the same person. People seem to be satisfied being given a generic persona in exchange for being accepted and liked. That is the definition of sell out.
I don't think Newgrounds has completely sold-out, at least the creator hasn't. He has been doing what they always do and I am a big fan. The community has and there is absolutely no question it has. The majority of people are stupid, so if you aren't stupid, you aren't accepted; easy success for the people involved. Anyone who thinks that this isn't the situation might be delusional or have a bad memory.
Or maybe they just don't know any better. Maybe they are too lazy to know. Maybe they don't want to know because it would spoil their "fun" and they would have to get a personality. Many of the users signed up after the 4chan epoch. I despise 4chan. I love Anonymous, they get things done. People can confuse the two but they are very different. Please understand that what I hate about NG is the community. /b/tards are the scum of the Earth. Their dumbass "mind mentality" persona has infected Newgrounds and it is a tragedy. Mind mentality is what starts wars and what helps socialist groups like PETA and Greenpeace push their terrorist, backwards, counterproductive and harmful agendas.
The people who repost memes, force them and repost them again aren't the real /b/tards. They are the rejects that couldn't even fit in at 4chan. The real ones are terrible but the fake ones are worse.
I hate how some people are not allowed to fit in because their art is blammed (there is a word I will never use again). Newgrounds introduced me to the idea that art isn't something that you pay for, it is something that you do and something that you experience. It is something that you live. This site's claim to fame is that it is a platform for underground, controversial and cutting edge people... except that it isn't because any 13 year old who doesn't understand it can vote 0 and it will never be seen again. If you NG wants to keep its shocking facade then it must begin accepting everyone's work, regardless of quality. It seems the times changed and so did NG, but they drifted into different directions. The portal, no matter how much you like it, is a flawed system. If you are going to have a voting system, it should be 1 person, 1 vote, but voting on what content should be allowed to grace your site is an insult to artists. The way I see it, which is the only right way to see it, you must allow everyone to contribute their work to your site. If you don't, you are a fascist. This is black and white. Art is something you live. What kind of fucking communist, socialist bullshit is this site? What gives you the authority to say what belongs on the portal? What gives you the authority to say what people should like? Who the fuck are you to tell me what I should and should not like? Go fuck yourself. I'm not talking about rights and freedom. Of course the owners of the site can decided what they want on it. That does not make it right. The flash portal has been reduced to a place where people go to inflate their internet stats. They don't vote on what animation is good and meaningful, they vote on what they think other people will accept. I remember when Wade Fulp deleted all of my stats a long time ago and he messaged me saying that if I want them back, I should apologize to him for spamming the forums! As if I was supposed to care about them!
I hate - and have never liked - all of the rules, they are unnecessary. Do not listen to people that say a community would become a spamfest if people weren't afraid of being banned. We all know better than that, not that there is anything wrong with a spamfest. The answer to a problem is always more freedom.
I hate that you get banned for being yourself. The rules only allow for boring, nonsense conversations. Now that there is a forum for video games, the general forum is completely useless. Is Newgrounds trying to go the same way as Yahoo and Myspace? What is next? An automotive and romance forum? Delete the useless forums.
This one is more of a complaint, but it is such a fatal flaw that is encountered a lot so I thought I should include it in here. I don't like how you can only have 35 characters for your topic title. One of the rules is to make your titles informative. This is nearly impossible if you are only allowed 35 characters, including spaces. All of them have to be boiled down to something stupid like "COD4 RULES" or "my brother sucks" or "My car". The emoticons make the titles look even more stupid.
I hate that it is built into the rules that you can't complain. If this was a topic on the BBS, I would be banned for what I am thinking and saying.
I hate most of the moderators. I consider them to be egomaniacs who think they can't be wrong. They are completely convinced of their own importance and vitality to the site that, every now and then, they form up into a little elitist tribe they call a "Mod Meetup". They get drunk, venture out into a city and then come back and get even more drunk. After a few days - just like Burning Man, an equally self-indulgent gathering of people who assert that they are better than you - they disperse and go back to their meaningless hobby of policing NG and trying to convince themselves that they are interesting by posting pictures of their gathering. They are only fooling themselves.
I hate how the community has brought itself to the lowest common denominator instead of elevating itself. A community that is exclusive when it comes to art and inclusive when it comes to personality is a poor one. Art imitates life. Pick out a random poster on the forums and look at their profile. Does it reflect any sort of meaningful personality in any way? I'm not talking about a Paint doodle of a kid with brown hair looking down and holding a weapon. He might as well be wearing gloves and baggy pants with chains if they have that bullshit as their display picture. I am talking about a personality that has advanced past middle school. If there is a quote about life or love, it isn't. It will be pretty hard to get this far. There are a lot of stupid motherfuckers floating around this site. If you do, go look at their flash. Does that reflect any sort of personality to you? Is it a though-provoking piece? Is it a beautiful expression of human emotion? Humor? If you wouldn't give it a 10 in a review, then it isn't even close. The great animations were always few and far between from what I remember. The top 50 had 5 good things on it at best and they weren't even properly appreciated. They were passed over for "entertainment" garbage, the shit that gets posted on the front page of NG. You entertain a chimp, not a human. Half a goon and half a god. A man's not made of steel.
I hate the web 2.0 redesign. Web 2.0 is one of the worst concepts of all time. The site doesn't look better. It looks worse. Cluttered with graphics and uninteresting information. An ideal website is just text, navigation links, links to the bare content and maybe a textured background. Anything else is an unnecessary distraction. The last thing you want is for people to be distracted on a site about animations, games and music.
Newgrounds isn't a place where you can go to get famous. It is more of a place to show off the work you do. If you focus your efforts into trying to get famous on NG you are doomed to fail. You will only be popular among a small portion of the potential viewers you could have if you just made your own website and promoted it. Little kids will be fighting about if your art sucks or if it is genius. The truth is probably somewhere in between. The characters you enjoyed writing for and animating will, at best, become mascots for NG. Not for you, but for NG. As if they had anything to do with all the hard work you did.
Musicians shouldn't even bother with the audio portal. If it isn't another useless techno loop or video game soundtrack remix it will not be accepted. I have personal experience with this. One of my alts got banned from submitting music to the audio portal after some songs were rejected. That gives me the message that people with my taste are not welcome here and they should just fuck off.
So that is what I am going to do.
I'd like to say goodbye, even though most of the people reading this, or even this far in, know me outside of NG. My account will probably be inactive for a long time. I could come back every now and then to post in a topic or look at a flash from the good ol' days. I'm not sure. Newgrounds has broken my heart.
Newgrounds is dead to me. I'm tired of the bullshit. I'm tired of arguing to revoke irrational ideas with irrational people.
When someone we love dies, we should remember what we loved about them and how they changed our lives for the better.
Perhaps I liked Newgrounds because I have been a member for what seems like a long time and it has been a bad place for a comparatively small amount of time. There have been many communities I have seen that went under pretty quickly and I don't worry about those. An emotional attachment has formed to the ideas that I grew up with and now, after trying to help by nudging people in the right direction, I feel I have to sever it.
I remember that Newgrounds used to be a close-knit community, not just a group of idiots who didn't know anything about each other. They were fans of the flash and music artists. The portals are filled with great work by great people.
You could really connect with people. The really great friends I have all come from NG. I even found out about Toothpaste For Dinner because of topic on the BBS. Got shoes and money, good friends, too.
They allow me a little more freedom in this area that could be confused for my blog. NG blogs are subject to most of the same rules as the BBS. I can't post dickgirls or make a joke about condemning all people with a specific genetic outcome to death, so it isn't really my blog. It is more of a joke. I also want this to be about what I have done since I have been a member here.
A few months after I signed up for an account I found out about the people who are my favorite artists. The most important thing is to listen to the recording of music. I have great friends and I am happy making music and learning new things. The things I have created are something I am proud of and I am glad a few people like them as well. I wish I had something profound to put here, like a major life experience but I'm just 17. My life is uninteresting by definition. I am working towards my goals and sometimes I think I can get to a point to where I can realize small bits of my delusions of grandeur. Does that make me crazy? Probably.
None of this makes any sense.
But let's all keep working at it.
