A Shrine To Saeran Choi, Mostly

Why do you guys (fandom artists in general) not want your stuff reposted anywhere? Wouldn’t reposts mean more people are able to enjoy your art than just your single audience?

Like if someone is new to MysMe and don’t know you exist yet, but then find your art through a repost, wouldn’t that be a good thing? You now have another audience member.

I’m not trying to ruffle feathers or anything, I’m just confused.

Honestly I don't care about reposts as much as I used to years ago, but the issues mainly come when they're not credited, so new people can't even find you through them. Especially for artists who don't want to cover their art with a huge visible watermark. Sometimes reposts also fuck up the quality of the artwork so bad that the watermark isn't readable anymore, or it's cropped out.

It's quite discouraging for many to see art you spent days or even weeks OR MONTHS on be reposted by a repost account with a lot more followers than you have, without credit, who then gets way more engagement than your post did, and sometimes these repost accounts are even monetized or make money in some other way, often through ads for sketchy sites/stores. Repost accounts don't have to spend ages making the art, they can repost others' hard work multiple times a day and gain an audience easily because they're able to post more often than the actual artists, and sometimes they even get money through other people's hard work.

Reblogs or the equivalent (where you just reshare the original post to your followers) are good because they actually CAN funnel more people to the artist's account, and most social media now has that option.

I think you might also be overestimating how many people actually look into the original artist when they see something reposted. A repost can get thousands of likes and the artist might just get a few more followers if any, making reposts not really "worth it", because reshares/reblogs exist. People are lazy and if they can just click one button to find or follow an artist, they're more likely to do that than look up the artist by name.

With reposts you also can't curate how people engage with the art. Because a lot of my art is pink and cute, some of my pieces have gotten reposted under fetish accounts/pages that personally make me uncomfortable, and I don't want my art associated with these fetishes. Nothing against them, I just don't want me or my work associated with them. When I post the art, I can decide what tags I associate with it and what to caption/title it, and potentially delete comments that make me uncomfortable.

This is also why I don't like reposts on sites I'm not personally on, like Facebook. I don't know what goes on in there around my art, and reposters can't tag my account on sites I'm not on, making it less likely for people to find more art from me through those reposts.

It's also an issue on Reddit specifically when someone reposts my art there on a sub I've been meaning to post it on later, but they manage to do it before I do. Then I can't share my own art because it would be considered posting the same artwork twice, which often isn't allowed in a certain timeframe. So then I have to wait 1-6 months before I can share my own art. Or if I'm allowed to post it, my post wouldn't get the same traction the repost that came first did, because people seeing it just go "I've seen this before" and scroll. I guess understandably people can't double check everything I've posted and what I haven't yet, but it is a little bit annoying to have to wait till I can share my own work regardless. But if I've already shared that art there, credited reposts are cool!