One of my best friends is a western (Brazilian, to be exact) anime tiddy artist and for a long time she's been all "oh there's no point in me making the leap to fedi because Twitter is all Western porn artists HAVE now, its the only way to get noticed and get ahead."

So every day she deals with Twitter's absolutely putrid environment. She deals with the endless politics, the abuse, the constant corporate shilling, the secretive and malevolent moderation techniques.

A while ago she drew a meme picture that wasn't porn at all, and it absolutely blew up to the level that Yoko Taro retweeted it.

After that, she struggled to make the same level of impact any more, regardless of what kind of pictures she drew. I watched it slowly poison her creative process as she tried to work out what would resonate with people.

A few days ago, she found out she's on like twenty blocklists - several "alt right" ones (even though I regularly lightly roast her for being a lefty) and a lot of "ugh ban this sick filth" tier ones, including ones for lolicon (which she doesn't draw and never has, it's not her thing.)

In light of this revelation.... She rationalised to herself that she should just keep going. Somehow.

We might joke about Tumblr banning porn and their refugees pouring into fedi like Gab's did, but let's be real - the rest of the Internet is fucking horrible, and it's getting worse. We are one of the last pockets of it left that aren't poisoned by pandering to advertisers, pandering to social justice advocates, pandering to corporate interests or pandering to governments and other puritans. By this place's very design, it can NEVER fall victim to the venom that is crippling the wider internet - just look at how every power play Eugen has made with Mastodonâ¢ has ultimately failed. Look at the pathetic non-splash made by e-celebs and other "brand builders" here.

We're immune. We're low key, we're not profitable - and I hope we never are, not in the big sense - but we're immune.

I hope we DO get Tumblr refugees. I hope instances like Pawoo and Baraag grow and burgeon. Not just the porn ones either - I hope places like comics.town grow also.

You might not like what some of these people do or bring with them, but you can always block or mute them if it really gets too much. The point is to have people - PARTICULARLY CREATIVE PEOPLE - in this environment that fosters freedom above all else.

I'm not a technically inclined person, but when I first joined fedi in 2016 I could see how this place was giving technical people the ability to discuss, organise and collaborate freely without oversight or influence from "above." Let's hope this place can do the same thing for artists.