I broke out of this mindset, though after I started helping a working artist. She had been an artist for over 40 years and started at a young age, and her main source of income? Doing local craft and garden shows. She had owned a gallery, done gallery work, done charity work, and now mainly works in using upcycled materials to create all sorts of products.

I used to think that my only options as an artist were to become popular enough that people would commission me or just give me money via patreon, but that's not the case. You can sell at craft fairs and conventions, you can provide a specific service, you can create assets and asset packs people can pay for, and you can create all sorts of physical or digital products to sell... and that's just the tip of the iceberg!

If you are constantly turning art into a numbers game to see how you can make enough money by posting the right™ stuff online at the right time, you're only going to make yourself miserable.

The best way to make a living off your art has NOTHING to do with popularity, getting lots of engagement online, or besting an algorithm, it's all networking. It's all about finding the right people who want what you make. If all you focus on is your follower count and post engagement, you're just going to end up hating art.

@calamitytrios @shitposting-hobbits-to-gallifrey The people have spoken

Behold, The Beast

Couple of notes. Fungi and bacteria are the first lifeforms discovered to eat plastic. They both use a technique of creating biofilms on and in things to establish colonies; even bacterial and fungi that don’t eat plastic will burrow into it. Visual inspection is not generally good enough to preclude fungal “roots” in plastic. Though if the plastic has separated (forming like a bubble or a peeling away film) then microbials have almost certainly established “roots” in the material. The metabolism of microorganisms denatures plastic even if they don’t eat it; this produces toxic biproducts similar to burning plastic.

If something has grown in the tupperwear from it being left along in the wet and the dark with a growth medium for who knows how long then opening it is a bad idea. That will almost certainly aerosolize spores or bacteria that have had long enough time and sufficiently isolated conditions to evolve their own special adaptations.

“Cleaning” and reusing the tupperwear is ill-advised in that case as you’d need a lab to guarentee the plastic isn’t compromised and playing host to some nasty biofilm that is resilient against typical cleaning practices, and the plastic itself likely is coming apart in a way that will perpetuate toxicity–low grade at best– even if you did manage to santize the surfaces. Best case scenario, you’re eating microplastic and the tupperwear is shedding as it breaks down over years.