It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
Rule 1: All posts must include links to the subject matter, and no identifying information should be redacted.
Rule 2: If your source is a reactionary website, please use archive.is instead of linking directly.
Rule 3: No sectarianism.
Rule 4: TERF/SWERFs Not Welcome
Rule 5: No ableism of any kind (that includes stuff like libt*rd)
Rule 6: Do not post fellow hexbears.
Rule 7: Do not individually target other instances' admins or moderators.
Rule 8: The subject of a post cannot be low hanging fruit, that is comments/posts made by a private person that have low amount of upvotes/likes/views. Comments/Posts made on other instances that are accessible from hexbear are an exception to this. Posts that do not meet this requirement can be posted to [email protected]
Rule 9: if you post ironic rage bait im going to make a personal visit to your house to make sure you never make this mistake again
:deviantart-cool: 
I just came back to this site recently and it seems like it's turning to shit
Half the results for stuff I look up is AI sludge and it all looks like shit
Incredible choice for a site supposed to be about creativity to encourage and offer tools to automate away creativity
Israel-owned company, BTW.
Ohhh interesting 
I used to get most of my business on Deviantart, since they really started pushing this AI stuff the site has died. It technically has more traffic than ever, but actual artists barely get a fraction of the attention they used to. Most (including myself) have moved onto other platforms, because it has become so hostile to artists.
I didn't realize it was so bad :(
I never really used DeviantArt a whole lot in the past but I started browsing again in the last few days and it's definitely different in a bad way
Yeah, it's pretty much impossible to find any new artists to follow and so much of the site is dedicated to getting people to pay for their shitty AI art that just rips directly from actual artwork on the site.
What are some good platforms? I keep forgetting sorry
Cara.app, no AI is allowed. I've been using it for a month now and the vibes over there are overwhelmingly positive and chill.
Depends what you like, Furaffinity is pretty good for that sort of stuff and pixiv is good for anime stuff, a lot of artists use twitter but it's twitter. Other than that, niche discords and forums are the only places I really know about these days, it's much, much smaller than it used to be.
doesn't pixiv have a massive pedo problem
I don't know. Probably does, I've only ever really dipped my toe in there, but I wouldn't be surprised, it's anime focused art site after all.
How's Art Station?
No idea, I don't use it. Seems like it is more a site for making and selling video game assets though?
Check out Cara.app it was founded by Jingna Zhang who famously had a massive following on dA and had her art stolen and entered into art competitions. They also don't allow any AI and there are no ads.
DA pivoted to AI? I thought they were pivoting to compete with OF. It's like declaring war on your own userbase.
probably better to let them charge for it than to have AI witchhunts which would inevitably target a few real artists too. But that point is moot since they're outright encouraging and profiting from the AI tools directly, they aren't just a neutral marketplace