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Perceived aloofness vs. Popularity

It is an old trope that there are popufurs that are too good to speak to the common furry folk.
But what if it is inevitable at a certain popularity? The more watchers you have the less time you have to allocate time for every single one. So I did some research and I checked the watcher/comments ratio of a few popular artists here. Here are the results.

Ratio of watchers to average comments per work (the artists' own replies are not counted here!)
0.05% to 0.30%

So if you have 1000 watchers you get 0-3 comments per picture
If you have 10000 watches you get 5 to 30 comments per picture

It depends what you draw of course. If it is a controversial picture you get more comments.

Now lets say our artist wants to reply to every single commenter.

5 secs for a simple "Thank you"
30 secs for a meaningful reply.
So 10 secs per reply on average.

Now how much time does the average artist have to spend every week to converse with his fans?

1000 watchers:
0 to 3 minutes

10000 watchers:
5 to 30 minutes

20000 watchers (I think the maximum here on inkbunny is around 18k)
10 to 60 minutes

60000 watchers (a big artist on furaffinity)
30 mins to 3 hours

So if you have a large fanbase and want to reply to every single comment you lose 0,5-3 hours per week. And that is a low estimate as it may to take longer than a few seconds for a meaningful reply and since my sample size is rather low it might be the wrong number.
Also Journals and any comments on those are not counted.

Yet there is so much more an artist can/has to do to engage with his/her fans.
- Maintain social media (such as writing journals, tweet stuff etc..)
- Discuss commissions
- Do streams
- Post information about conventions
- Advertise your stuff
- etc...

And the art process itself also contains "non-value added" time after it is technically finished, such as uploading art to different galleries, tagging the art and writing a description, reformat for different websites (like censors for pixiv).
You lose tons of time on things that don't earn you any money or make your fans happy.

Eventually if you get big enough you have to start cutting corners.

Viewed:	99 times
Added:	6 years, 4 months ago 18 Feb 2019 20:27 CET

9 Comments on this Journal

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whitepawrolls

6 years, 4 months ago

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Too much math...makes my brain hurt :)

Furlips

6 years, 4 months ago

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And then, some artists are just assholes.

Bunners

caramelthecalf

6 years, 4 months ago

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Edited 6 years, 4 months ago by Owner

Its completely true. The more popular you get, the more you realize you can't constantly be open to random messages from fans and continue to get drawings done.

I had to turn my discord into business only.

Though artists, actors, anybody of any level of popularity tend to go to conventions so people can hear a neat story, an autograph, and maybe exchange a few words.

Zippo

6 years, 4 months ago

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Edited 6 years, 4 months ago by Owner

The math is off. It is more like 0.025%.

The ratio is so much lower as the artist masters do not dare encourage the pee-on public masses with even a morsel-sized hint that you in particular are any kind of worth the few seconds of response, mostly in fear that it would give you the slightest hint that you are any kind of welcome in their sealed inner circles of popularity/friendship, in fear if given a chance, that you will keep pestering them enough to be welcomed; making sure to avoid any chance of wasting their time on anyone else more than they really have to and/or that they will make any effort to have any opinion at all about the content that they like or dislike. The dismissive attitude is hardwired and automated. Most just do not give a shit, and a lot just care about the currency income as it's a wide field of others to compete with. However, to be fair, I only draw for me and not others on request, so I am quite useless to them and they want nothing to do with me, which appears quite normal even though it sucks. Oh well huh.

skyboxmonster

6 years, 4 months ago

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I did that on my +watch list. I used to keep it up dayily. then weekly... then monthly... and now i have 5200+ submissions to sort through.

its worse on FA: 117,441S, 1,386C, 9,748J, 146F, 736W

ZephonTsol

6 years, 4 months ago

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You could always just take a shortcut for thanking anyone who replies on your work in a positive way.

"If you leave me a positive note, I'm grateful. If you grouch at me, I'm not."

Simple, yeah?

Hammy

6 years, 4 months ago

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Edited 6 years, 4 months ago by Owner

also you have to consider peoples personalities and emotions.
they might be reclusive, they might be shy, they might have depression.
lots of things contribute to a person not replying to every single comment they get.
just because their drawings are popular doesn't mean they stop being a person.

could also be some comments are not easy to reply to, some might not warrant replies either.
"yay!" or "<3<3<3<3 :P" what do you even say to comments like that?

foxboyprower

6 years, 4 months ago

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I used to think about this a lot.

BlaueRatte

6 years, 3 months ago

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It's how it is. Once you've reached a certain popularity, talking to people who aren't clients. patreons or other popular people keeps you from working. It's why I don't talk to popular artists. It's a waste of time for everybody involved.

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