Quote - Some of you recall... Any of you had similar lows in the hobby?

 

It's been forever since I've posted here, but this question really made me think. I've been involved with Poser since the first version of the program and yes, I have defintiely had a number of points where I've thrown up my hands and walked away from it, though not so much from Poser itself, but more from some of the company/community politics behind the scenes. Once I started making my living primarily from producing content for it, that phenomenon increased exponentially. It's the primary reason I post very rarely. I know there's always some "old-timer" groaning on about how much better things were back in the late '90s with this stuff because the commercial aspect of it hadn't reached the point where it was the driving factor behind everything, but they're totally right. It wasn't all good, mind you, but nothing ever is. Still, the various forums back then were much more open and people weren't sequestered so much into these falsely cliquish "communities" with ridiculously restrictive rules governing damn near everything people can and can't say. My biggest issue these days with the entire hobby isn't the hobby of Poser or the artform of 3D, but the companies who are the gatekeepers to the overall community and markets. I've actually spoken to people now who are stunned to find out there's anything beyond Daz. The same happens with people here and elsewhere. The cross polination of companies, communities and the entire experience of creating and sharing art and ideas in the broader scale of this community just feels dead more often than I care to think about. It used to be that I would take time to continue those interactions in the forums as much as I could, but over time, more and more rules are heaped on, many of which have more to do with creating a false kind of boundary or tunnelvision for people interacting in them that I have to question even the most innocuous of statements I might wish to make to the degree that most of the time I just shut up and move on. I absolutely hate how much that specific thing has had a silencing effect throughout the ranks of so many folks I've known for 14-15 years. Facebook has sort of started to present a decentralized alternative, but it's still nowhere near what I'd like to see, and the level of thought control posed from the top down in so many places really makes me feel alienated from a community that I've been a part of since it's earliest days. It's sad. I've made some long standing friends through Poser, and through conversations and experiences that would not be able to happen given the restrictiveness of the climate across the board. It's a problem I could ramble on about and speculate on for ours, so I'll stop here: I've been around this stuff long enough, know and am known by many if not most of the individuals who have personally been responsible for policies and motivations that have made it this way, and frankly, they should be ashamed. A community of openness built this entire hobby so long ago. That same community spawned a market that has become a key piece of the working life of many of us as professional 3D artists. A small number of people, fortunate enough to have ended up in positions of athority, have allowed their tunnelvision and lack of respect for the nature of what built this community and thus the market to pervert the entire thing for many of us. I appreciate deeply the unbridled interactions I get to have in a certain couple of places which I don't even think I'm "allowed" to mention in here, and am deeply saddened that those kind of interactions which used to be so common are now a rarity in my experience. The hopeful thing, though, is that nothig lasts forever and that includes blind, monolithic control. -Les