Why is reposting art bad?

A small thread about how reposting art without permission is negative for artists (and communities) based on my own experience and what I've seen from the artist around me.

Please take a second to read it and share to help spread awareness

You lose control over your art:
Art is very personal and often times it reflects the artist’s state of mind and beliefs. In a couple of months I may believe in a completely different thing, I might feel like I exposed myself too much and talked about something that is way too -

personal, I might believe the art doesn’t represent me anymore, etc. When the art is only on my own accounts, I can easily search for it and delete it but I cannot search for every single reposter and ask them to take it down;

In case of doujinshi (fanzine), a lot of franchises don’t mind the selling of fan made content as long as it is in a specific event or period of time (usually with limited number of copies as well). However, the artist could get in trouble with copyright in case the content -

gets all over the internet. Art that gets reposted too often makes it hard to track the original source and creates the “but I found it on google” problem, which makes it a great target for ill intentioned people to make money out of someone else’s hard work.

From cloned good on AliExpre*s, fake accounts with stolen content on sites like REDBUB*LE, INPR*T, SOCIET*6, to local event sellers who take advantage of living away from artists who will never find out their art is being stolen.

“But if I repost with credits it will give you visibility!”
No, it really won’t. You can count on your fingers the number of people who will actually care enough to the original artist at all. The people willing to check the original probably just stumbled upon the reposted art-

by accident anyway. Reposter account followers just want all the content they can get at the same account so they don’t have to follow a lot of artists. They settle for convenience in detriment of the artists who help build the community they love so much.

“But some artists allow repost.”
That is exactly my point. Art is not a job to every artist. A lot of people don’t need to rely on art to make ends meet. A lot of artists are hobbyists and don’t mind if their art is reposted with proper credit. You could still keep your-

repost account running just by reposting those.
Please respect the artist who don’t allow reposts!

It gets in the way of job opportunities.
Whenever one of my art posts performs well, I get a new batch of jobs. I have never (ever!) received a job offer or even a small commission from someone who saw my art reposted. Reposts get in the way of job opportunities -

and it makes it harder for artist to make a living.

“But then, why do you share your art on the internet if you don’t want it to be stolen?”
Because the internet is my portfolio. You don’t go knocking at every studio’s door with a massive physical portfolio anymore. They won’t even talk to you.

It also depends on the part of the industry you’re interested in and where you live but a lot of companies will hire artists with a big social media presence. Damn, you have famous illustrators like Saito Na*ki saying in some of his youtube tutorial videos that twitter is the-

platform he and his illustrator friends get most of their job offers. That is an artist who work with major names like Pokem*n saying that yes! Social media presence is import in now-a-days industry.

I will never be able to build myself an audience if all my content is seen outside of my own social media but at the same time, I have no other choice but to expose myself to that danger of getting my art stolen. I need to rely on social media to widen my list of contacts -

and get my name/brand known.

It takes its toll on the artist's confidence!!
How many times have you seen an artist complaining about how the art that was reposted had thousands of notes but their original post didn’t break the double digit barrier?

It certainly happens to me a lot. My original post sometimes has two (2) likes and the repost has twenty thousand (20k). It means that the art is not bad and the community really enjoys it but the feedback never reaches me. I will keep thinking “people don’t seem to like this-

type of content, maybe I should stop drawing it”, when in reality it was very welcomed and a lot of people loved it, I just can’t see any of that because they are not replying to my original post.

Do you understand?
The person who drew it doesn’t see the “I love this”, “this is so cuuuuute”, “I wish there was a sequel to this short comic”, “I want to know more about this character”, etc.

BECAUSE YOU ARE TELLING ALL OF THAT TO SOMEONE WHO DIDN’T DRAW THE THING!!!

If you said that to the artist directly, you might get a sequel to the comic you liked! If you told the artist you like their character, you might get their whole profile and a character sheet.

YOU GUYS MISS OUT ON GETTING MORE CONTENT YOU LIKE BECAUSE YOU DON’T TELL THE CREATOR YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IT!! You like the content, support the creator! Not some random person on IG who didn’t do shit!

I just wanted to point out how serious (on a professional level) this can be instead of just saying "oh it's bad stop doing it". Hopefully it will be able to help someone out there. Thank you so much for reading it

I've seen way too many of my favorite artists quitting because of this issue and I hope it stops happening