So... To anyone who's been on dA for more than - oh I don't know - a month, you'll have noticed that the front page gets filled up mainly by three major things:
-Anime/cartoons
-Ironic/Sarcastic stamps
-Photos
And in that "photos" category, most dA artists can agree that at least 30%-50% of all popular photos that appear on the front page are what one might consider "porn." IE: naked girls, men, that aren't "artistic" in the slightest. Within that percentage, there's also a good chunk of "camera whores" which are Myspace and Facebook-esqu self portraits, usually with a shitty camera at a shitty Dutch angle and often times in a mirror. A lot of times when these pictures pop up, one of the first comments to be seen is "This isn't art." So, because I have nothing better to do, here's my comments on the whole debate.
Here's how I think the situation should be handled. Instead of insisting that it isn't art, why not judge it as art? If it's on deviantART, there's clearly a justification by the person who posted it that it's a certain type of art. On a personal level, I think that anything can be considered art. My general rule is: Art is anything you can get away with. Or, if you want to be pretentious about it, art is the expression of the soul, and who is to say that someone's soul isn't that shallow except the person with said soul?
The method of judging a camera whoring piece as art is very effective. Especially if you feel the need to tell this D-cup blond girl to take her camera and shove it somewhere... ahem. Mainly because if someone keeps hearing "This isn't art" over and over again, it's the equivalent of being hit in the head with a hammer. After a while, the person passes out and doesn't even feel it. Or gets so much brain damage that it has a reverse effect.
However, if you view their scratchy, web-cam, half naked-ness as a œuvre d'art and point out that they should have used a better lens, better lighting, a better angle, so on and so forth, it actually makes them stop and think.
Basically, this is just a really petty way of getting back at view whores. Plus, it's a really fun way of making them kinda scratch their heads. Sort of like if you put something shiny in a monkey's cage. Though to be fair, the monkey is probably smarter.
Derpy Approves
