The entire internet had become so seemingly hive-minded and centralized that it's not fun anymore. One day, I saw a shitpost in my timeline and figured nothing of it, later that same day my sister tells me to look at a funny gif, it's the same post. Later that day my friend from across the planet sends me the same image, then again I see it in a discord server. It begins to sink in how much of our internet intake is nearing total similarity, designed by a series of numbers so well understood yet so poorly fought against. In 2040, our children will not ask us where "The Algorithm" came from, it will have always been and seemingly always will be to them, and I'm scared. Good people, awful people, left, right, it's the same jokes, same rhetoric by everyone. We have devolved to the point that the things we enjoy are used by the other to create a visage of us before we even learn their names, and more often than not it's fucking true. I know what it's like to hear voices all your life, to have debilitating obsessive compulsive disorder that makes you second guess every action until you can't take it anymore, and I fear the modern internets' constant propagation of this "ideal content creator" this fucking impossible to fulfill notion that the artist has an obligation to exist for their audience, to exist for their wish fulfillment and to exist as someone who can do and say no wrong is akin to the voices, I fear for my own sister sometimes and the bullshit she has to even consider as an artist in 2023 who aspires to do more with themselves than fanart and cred-seeking low effort twitter bait. I write this knowing my words will change nothing, I write this not to hope but to have this in a place where there is a possibility someone gives a shit. I want artists to fuck up, I want them to say questionable things, I want them to make things that only make sense to them and watch as their nonsense project ends up being adored. I can't stand seeing all of our collective aspiration be limited by those who perceive us. Even the horror genre as we once knew it is another thing to be added to the list of casualties by the consumerist ideal, nobody wants to be scared, to be challenged culturally or morally, it's just something to react to, to make into a fucking product, and if you think it's bad with horror games, give horror films a run for your money, it's JUST THE SAME SHIT.

I'm so tired, and if you've ever wondered why I put everything on my Newgrounds page, important game dev or fetish fuel, this is partially why. I want more to learn more than the names of those who make the things they play, and learn what happens when an artist doesn't exist solely as a name with no known history, someone with flaws, desires, hates and loves, a human fucking being.

The audience is a byproduct of work, not the other way around.