...with all the notes and comments I get here.

I'm tremendously grateful to all of you who use my art, and share your own, and I wish that there were 3 of me so that I could keep up with the comments. Unfortunately, there aren't. This morning my in-box contained 4,000+ messages and 2,000+ unread notes. If I had a broadband internet connection and keeping up with DA was my full-time job, I still couldn't do it.

Consequently, I've updated my stock usage rules (here: mjranum-stock.deviantart.com/j… ) to remove the part about leaving me a note; I won't be able to review and comment on every art-work. But if you leave a comment on an image, with a link to your work, others will be able to see it. I plan to periodically check and see what's going on, so I will still be +faving works and, of course, my stock crops up in all kinds of weird places on the site, all the time. So I'll still be watching you.

The bottom line, for me, is that doing this on DA has become a whole lot less fun. Between the idiotic "mature content" rules, the sheeplike attitude of the DA staff, and the inane self-congratulating babblings of the site's founders, I've pretty much lost interest in anything to do with the site except the artwork and artistic exchange. To me, that's a shame, because the web already exists as a perfectly good vehicle for that, and I don't need DA; DA's owners and administrators need to remember that the site needs good art and artists - not the other way around. Always remember that the people who have time to run around reporting art-works for "mature content violation" probably have that time because they're not creating anything worthwhile, themselves. For that matter, those who administer - have time to administer because they're not creating anything worthwhile with that time. Think about it. If that sounds like me being contemptuous and elitist - so be it.

What was really eating at me - and still is - was my inability to track everything you guys are/have been doing with my art. I was losing sleep. I was spending time reading my DA notes and +faving images, when I could have spent that time in my own studio, being creative. I was feeling guilty because I could not engage each and every one of you in the respectful, personal, dialogue that you deserve. But - ultimately - I can't. So I'm not going to try, anymore. It's nothing personal, it's just how I choose to spend the limited time that I have available - and I'm going to spend that on my art. I hope you understand.

I'll try to drop in at random in various places and say "hi" and I constantly stumble across art that uses my stock. So I'll be around. Now, stop reading this and get out there and create something beautiful.

mjr.

PS - my birthday is Nov 5. Do you think I'll break 2 million pageviews by then? I'll be 46. I never thought I'd make it past 40!

My latest piece of stock to get flagged as "mature" is this one:



(Edit: DA has reversed the "mature content" flag on the image. Thank you!!!)

Excuse me???

There are no buttocks in this image. Only fiberglass. There are no nipples, no pubes, no guns, no blood, no death, no pain, nothing but FIBERGLASS.

Except for the metal stand.

If you go to any major department store in almost any part of the world, you will find fiberglass mannequins like this. Sometimes they are wearing bikinis, sometimes lingerie, and - sometimes - if you happen to catch the staff setting up a new display - they are "naked" like this. And nobody freaks out because it is a FIBERGLASS DOLL.

Someone needs to go back and re-read the DA "mature content" rules. The rules read thusly:
Nudity-Fairly self explanatory. If your work contains nudity, displaying a penis, testicle, vagina, breast, nipples, or buttocks you should assign this tag.

GOT THAT? Apparently DA's own gutless admins haven't reviewed the FAQs. Let me read it to you again, in case you missed it:

Nudity-Fairly self explanatory. If your work contains nudity, displaying a penis, testicle, vagina, breast, nipples, or buttocks you should assign this tag.

Apparently "fairly self-explanatory" doesn't cover the kind of moronic fundamentalist screw-loose retarded bible-bangers who appear to be taking over this site. Someone on the DA staff needs to have the guts to tell these idiots "uh, no. THAT IS A FIBERGLASS MANNEQUIN YOU RETARD." As long as such stupidity is countenanced and hand-held we'll just have more and more of it.

Sexual Themes-References to sex or overt sexuality, including sexual based humor. This category may also cover images involving models in lingerie, provocative poses, and "skimpy" or erotic styles of dress.

It's a FIBERGLASS MANNEQUIN. If you consider this to be "sexual" you need to get to a doctor immediately because you've got serious plaster/sexual issues to resolve.

Violence/Gore-This refers to overtly bloody or violent imagery
...we can leave that off the table. HOWEVER I invite you to search "Crucifix" under deviations. What you'll get is loads of homoerotic torture art - only a relatively small percentage of which is marked "mature" in spite of the fact that it represents a barely-clad man being killed in a horrific manner. No, there's no hypocrisy here is there?? I challenge those of you who have been flagging my work as "mature" to spend your time where it's really going to help protect the kids from having their little brains warped with death-cult symbology.

Strong Language-Profanity, vulgarity, and otherwise coarse or offensive language.

Gosh, my caption suggests that the mannequin is named "Anne" - nope, no strong language there....

I support

mjr.

You may have noticed that I am now marking all my images as mature, ideologically sensitive, violent, toxic, infected, and otherwise unfit for anyone...

...who isn't a grown-up with enough sense to be able to decide what they want to look at.

I am utterly, totally, thorougly sick and tired of people who seem to think that the world should be free of anything that offends them. In case anyone hadn't noticed, it's impossible to live your life in this world without something annoying you; it's either going to be a jackhammer breaking cement at 7:00am, or chewing gum on a sidewalk, or a couple of pixels of nipple-JPEG on a thumbnail that you had to click and look at closely to verify that those might be nipple-pixels before clicking on the "report deviation" button.

So, I've decided that, from now on, my art is not available to anyone who isn't willing to say, right up front, "I'm willing to see gore, violence, ideologically sensitive, nude, etc" content. If you're willing to see that, you'll have your preferences set so that you can see my art. If you're not? One of two things:
1) too bad for you.
2) you're too young according to the stupid 18+ rules.

18+ is another topic I should not go into right now, but - simply put - it's really fucking stupid to not let an 17-year-old girl see pictures of a 20-year-old girl with her shirt off. Can we get real for just a second?

Anyone who is blocked by the age filter from seeing any of my photos, just email me and tell me what you wanted and I'll email it to you. If you're grown-up enough to email me and ask, you're grown-up enough to take a look at naked boobs. Period.

Why?

I've ranted about this topic before because stupidity in all its forms offends me deeply. What set me off this time is that some idiot complained that these two images:

Mature Content

Mature Content

are mature content. And some gutless DA drone went and sent me a "violation notice" and put a mature flag on them. Yes, a "violation" occurred - but it was only a violation of common sense. Anyone who is old enough to walk down a street in a big city, or go to a bookstore or magazine stand, or turn on a television - is going to see more "mature" content than is in those pictures.

In fact, Disney's(tm) Little Mermaid(tm) is showing more "thigh" than Sinned-Angel is in my oh-so-mature image of her. Reality check:

(avert your eyes!)

Yes, it's DA's rules and I am going to follow them scrupulously. As I said, from now on my images are all mature, violent, gory, ideologically sensitive images. I.e: they're only for cool people who can cope with the real world.

I need someone who's got a really cute little blue-eyed blond child they can lend me for a photo concept. I want to shoot a photo of a pair of proud parents gouging that child's eyes out with a spoon so that it can walk down the street safely without seeing anything "offensive."  Because, to me, the real offense is there - that people are willing to make weird intellectually inconsistent steps to "protect" someone from the real world. You're also protecting them from beauty, knowledge, elegance, and - in the long run, which is worse?

A couple weeks ago I mailed a package of porno magazines to a friend's 13-year old son. At the very least it'll save him having to shoplift a copy of Playboy, like I did when I was his age. I sent him two things: a couple copies of Perfect-10, and a couple of "men's adventure" magazines from the late 1950s. Guess which one was full of violent imagery, Nazi prison guards, gangsters, and ladies in their underwear? And guess which one was full of pretty ripe girls with bare boobs? Guess which one he liked better?  Hellloooo, america? This is a normal teen-ager we're talking about. Mask the "mature content" from him and feed him Arnold Schwartznegger movies instead of cheerfully bare boobs and maybe he'll want a machine-gun instead of a girlfriend. (the little voice in the back of my mind says: "why choose? I'll get 'em both!")

Anyway... I am thinking of starting a "get the chickenshits off the internet" campaign. Maybe if the folks who provide good content mark everything as all the mature content flags turned on, then all the cool people will look at it anyway and the idiots will be left with nothing but pictures of puppies and flowers and chubby little angels. Not mind you that I have anything against puppies, flowers, or pedophilic angel porn - being a person who's unafraid of any content, I see those, too.

I support

I am going to change my stock usage rules to read "you are not allowed to use any of this stock if you use the mature content filter." Because if you support this nonsense? My art is not for you. I am also going to create a deny list and if you're on it, you can't use my stock. If you do not support my position on this? You can't use my stock. My art is not for you.

Update:

I guess my journal entry must have pissed off one of the complainers 'cuz now I am getting more images re-tagged. Like this one:

Mature Content

Oh, yeah, that's violent and ideologically sensitive and - what-evurrrrrr....

And today's "violation report":

Mature Content

needs a mature content tag.  I guess I tweaked the prudes' noses and I'm in for a big spate of revenge taggings. People really make me want to puke, sometimes.

mjr.

The "Sky Captain" series of stock just, unfortunately, got gutted.

(UPDATE: I'm only missing #1. Anyone got it?
It turns out that my browser appears to have farted on my search and I didn't get the second page. So now I am racing to fix the descriptions on the remaining images. WHEW!)

I put the URL for Wenona's personal site on the images, as a courtesy, and I didn't realize that (OH. MY. GOD.) it's one of those evil eyeball-exploding palm-hair growing send-you-straight-to-hell porn sites. So some kind person who cares a whole lot about what you're allowed to see went and did you the favor of complaining to DA and the first 10 of the series were deleted by the fun police. If I had the copious free time to deal with this kind of stuff, I would have happily fixed it but, no, it was important to save the children's precious eyeballs because, god knows, people have been known to just keel over dead in their chairs when they click a link that they wanted to follow and wind up at a porn site.

OK, I know I was in the wrong. I made a mistake. DA has rules and I accidentally broke them, so it's appropriate that everyone who wanted to use that stock should pay the price.

Here's the problem - when I post a stock-set I don't track what I posted or which images comprised the set. So I can't replace Sky Captain #1 - #10 because I don't even know what they were. Did anyone happen to save #1 - #10 someplace? If you did, let me know and maybe I can get thumbs from you and put the series back up.

Rules for how to use my stock

I am experiencing "death by success"

...Right now I have 615 notes in my in-box here. If I were to go someplace with high speed internet and sit there for 3 solid days, I could probably clear my in-box. By the time I'm done typing this, I'll probably be at 620 notes. And, because I don't respond fast enough, some of you (it's OK, I'm not complaining) note me over at my art account, or Email me directly.

I don't know what to do. I've removed the "please note me" part of my "how to use my stock" and I gave up long ago and stopped following the tags on my top page.

Anyhow, something's got to break. I can't make reviewing art-works my full time job and I don't want to stop posting stock. Besides, I'm at critical mass in that department - even if I stop posting stock, I'll still get buried. I love seeing all the stuff you guys are creating. But it's scary the way my in-box keeps filling every time I load my page...

Love you all,
mjr.