i think us artists should have a conversation about how hashtag events can be beneficial, but also can be handled wrong and hurt ourselves + creative peers- esp. if they’re black/a POC, they aren’t a visual artist/they work in another medium, and/or they're smaller in audience.

i’ll preface this saying there’s nothing wrong with hashtag events alone. they help us find more creatives, promote our work, and support others. they’re meant to be celebratory and welcoming. however, timing of these events and how they’re made can easily make them... not this.

we’ve seen this many times before already with, say, black creatives making hashtags to celebrate blackness in art in some way, with nonblack users jumping to make a new tag during or right after these events because of seeing the amount of support black creatives got.

myself and others have also personally seen it for events celebrating other forms of creativity such as writing. the #/NeurodivergentWriters event was something meant for ND writers only, to help boost them on a platform it’s especially hard to grab attention on for their work...

however, during the event, i saw people posting in a tag for ND artists suddenly made that ultimately took away traction from this event that needed it to highlight a group of creatives not always seen easily on this site because of the medium being what it is.

another example just happened today- i don’t blame anybody for not knowing about 1) what people were using the tag for and 2) not knowing the original BM concept is fake, but #/BlueMonday was meant to help spread mental health awareness that COULD be through themed art...

...but many artists thought this was another form of the #/BlueArt palette challenge event, and posted art with emphasis of the color blue in it in order to show off their work in the tags- all under a misunderstanding likely inferred from their own timelines and artist circles.

there’s also oversaturation with scheduling of these events that can make it overwhelming for any creator to participate in and make/show work for, and- because of how twitter functions- this can make it harder for smaller creators to find the boost they could potentially get.

i point all this out, but i have no idea for a proper solution here. hashtag events to celebrate creativity like this are relatively new, and we're all still looking for better ways to hold them, schedule them, spread the word, and find support through them we would like.

that's why i bring this up with my platform in order to start this conversation. we can do better to highlight black/marginalized thoughts, thoughts from smaller creators, and thoughts from creators that aren't visual artists so we can handle things right.

it's hard to spread the word about a lot of these ideals even in just the twitter art community because of how vast it is- but a general understanding of etiquette and self-care for all creators participating in these events should be more clearly established, i'd think.