Crush...Yiff...Destroy!

mouse · Coadjutor Joined: 13 Jul 2003 Posts: 662

"God-fearing Yerf artificially squeaky-clean values can create a better comic strip!"

"You are too Elite, Scotty."

Yerf. I hated the site when he built it, and i still hate it.

well first off, I dont have a problem that anyone dislikes YERF

Now i know Baird dislikes it because it is a 'fursona factory' ..which while i dont feel that is true ALL the time (theres quite a few artists i think are really good on there, that do thier own stuff constantly)...im not gonna say that this is an invalid point at all

And i know alot of people dont like it because they feel it is 'elitist'

BUT, i would just like to point out ..that with all the other galleries out there , i feel that it is at least KIND OF A GOOD THING that you have a place where there is a standard that must be met and a control on content (fair or unfair, stifling creativity or not, im strictly talking about the principle here)

Are these people pricks? maybe , but look everywhere else in furry , these people cant even criticise each other, not even constructively without all kinds of drama starting up

thats why half this shit is so terrible, no one apperently has the balls to tell someone - "no, this looks like shit, you are going to have to keep trying" nor, on the rare occassions when this does happen, is the party recieving the criticism mature enough to learn from whatever mistakes they have made
no, instead they flip out and 'quit art'

Also, with all the lousy porn pervading furry fandom, yerf has a clean reputation ..if some of those artists ALSO have VCL accounts for all thier porn art, thats besides the point. When bobby mentioned that Yerf was looking to get yiff.com for a yerf-like X-rated gallery, i thought that was a terrible idea because at that point the 'clean' reputation of yerf is gone...they will have a 'sister site' thats for porn
yeah they would still have the 'quality' aspect ..but its still gonna be just as fucked up as the VCL. Is Chris Sawyer (for ex.) a good artist? Sure, why not, im sure he would make the cut to get his stuff on the yiff.com, but its still gonna be his gay dino porn ..

(im not taking a stance against porn here either, im just saying there is enough of the shit already..and its nice that there is a gallery where it is completely totally absent)

anyway, i was just kind of curious to hear a little bit more on exactly where this animosity some people have towards yerf is coming from

bobby · Rasophore Joined: 27 Oct 2003 Posts: 70

Re: animosity - Yerf is a very large clique. Some people who can't get into the clique lash out at it. It's a somewhat natural reaction.

I used to be on Yerf when it was the SCFA (I actually requested that my account be removed about 5 years ago). It was generally a better archive then. The change to the site occured at about the same time that a large number of teeny-bopper teenage girl artists began to join furry fandom. These people at the time were uploading huge amounts of anime/sonic-style art, lots of badly drawn art on lined paper, etc. The site's administration changed hands and they basically washed the site clean of all the drek with the current policies. Over time it's become stricter and stricter, the bar's been raised more than once.

For the most part the current site policies are there just to get rid of teenage artists who view the internet as a refridgerator door to put their crummy sketches up on. The sites switched theme from being an archive, to a gallery.

I don't like Yerf. Mostly, I don't like the people who surround it. The Gene Catlows and Kat Ellis-es of the fandom eminate from there. It draws large amounts of 17-25 female artists who dabble in furry then drift away later on as they get hired doing graphic design or something non-artistic. Read Yerf's forums sometime, the amount of injokes, cliques, subcliques and other strange inner circles and things there make it a creepy place to relate to if you're not part of the "new furry" as some would call it.

Blair · Rasophore Joined: 16 Jun 2003 Posts: 52

When I first heard about yerf in 97 i figured it be a great place to show some of my clean, non-sexual,non-violent artwork. And for a year, it was fine, until somehow, my images started gettting very anti-religion. Im not Anti-religion, im christian, but i was drawing things that started to piss off the other so called "christian artists" on the site, and i was either asked to tone down the material or leave.

It was censorship in the realm of conflicting ideas, not porn, not over the top violence and gore, but religion.. and that pissed me off to no end.

The Clique that bobby describe's is true, and I'd be quite happy to see a lot of these "candyfur" female artists fuck off and go back to anime or whatever fandoms and stay the hell away from here.

Now im not saying that christian anthro artists are bad, but some of them are just as hypocritical as the rest of us, drawing porn under aliases, or condeming porn but drawing it as expressions of love to their mate or spouse or fuck of the week or whatever, then posting said porn on their website.

I met scotty once at Ac. He's not a bad guy, but i still hate him for what happened to me on yerf, since it was his site and he could have stepped up to the plate and asked those who were being vocal to shut-up in the name of fairness.

DA · Coadjutor Joined: 06 Jun 2003 Posts: 320

Erm..peeps..people are people whether online or out in the world, I've been told I'm going to hell because I draw the figure first and then put the clothing on.. :P

Fact is the most hated thing about Yerf is that every ickle kiddy who thinks they can draw when they'd be hard pressed to draw a stick figure can't get on there and get all the adoration they see the artists on there as getting. :wink:

And quite frankly Having hung around Yerf myself, I've met places far far worse and not all furry either :shock: One non-furry forum I used to visit became so stiff with buddy buddiness and in jokes and impressed with itself that it was horrible and now they are sitting around wondering why the forum died? Um maybe because it's boring? because no-one else gets what the hell the 20 or so regs are talking about? Because if you disagree with someone once they start dregging up personal stuff and flaming you with it? And that is a non-furry forum still artists though so.

Another one, was so against the idea of anyone having a slightly different idea to them about life and stuff that they climbed the walls if you even suggested they didn't have the answer to life the universe and everything.

Hey, I'm 17 to 25 and female XD I don't think I'm gonna drift away from art, that'd be like giving up breathing for me. :wink: Mind you I'm marginally more sane than most :roll: Some of them are so paranoid it's untrue :?

bobby · Rasophore Joined: 27 Oct 2003 Posts: 70

You sure do use a lot of smileys, DA.

mouse · Coadjutor Joined: 13 Jul 2003 Posts: 662

Re: animosity - Yerf is a very large clique. Some people who can't get into the clique lash out at it. It's a somewhat natural reaction.

well yeah, and im not surprised that people react that way at all. I personally havent seen that too much of it other than a reference made to some sort of anti-yerf livejournal comunity. But thats a whole different thing than what i was refering to. I was more along the lines of people who were not rejected from yerf, but seemed to take issue with it.

I used to be on Yerf when it was the SCFA (I actually requested that my account be removed about 5 years ago). It was generally a better archive then. The change to the site occured at about the same time that a large number of teeny-bopper teenage girl artists began to join furry fandom. These people at the time were uploading huge amounts of anime/sonic-style art, lots of badly drawn art on lined paper, etc. The site's administration changed hands and they basically washed the site clean of all the drek with the current policies. Over time it's become stricter and stricter, the bar's been raised more than once.

For the most part the current site policies are there just to get rid of teenage artists who view the internet as a refridgerator door to put their crummy sketches up on. The sites switched theme from being an archive, to a gallery.

ok, I understand the difference between an archive and a gallery dictionary-wise but in this context, what is the difference as far as functionality is concerned? For example: if you had an 'archive' and a 'gallery' (definitively), how exactly are they different?

i wasnt around for SCFA, so im not entirely sure what it was like compared to yerf. When i think of a gallery i think of , for example, a single artist showcasing thier works. Or a specific exhibit (maybe a theme) at an real-world art gallery. So i see sites like Yerf, VCL, Fanarchive, side7, deviant art, , basically all as collections of artists' individual galleries. But i dont really see these sites themselves as serving that function. It seems the terms are almost interchangable.

Yerf has standards but it doesnt seem to have a specific purpose or a goal of any kind. It would seem that with thier standards/policies, that the whole thing would better function as a sort of online APA/Zine, where people are exchanging ideas on that particular art style , or to promote it to the general public (kind of similiar to how that American Journal of Anthropomorphics was supposed to be a directory of artists that companies could use as a resource for finding artists to create logos/mascots and whatnot).
Otherwise why be so cliquey if all you are doing is offering server space so artists can put thier stuff there and then point people to it?

I don't like Yerf. Mostly, I don't like the people who surround it. The Gene Catlows and Kat Ellis-es of the fandom eminate from there. It draws large amounts of 17-25 female artists who dabble in furry then drift away later on as they get hired doing graphic design or something non-artistic. Read Yerf's forums sometime, the amount of injokes, cliques, subcliques and other strange inner circles and things there make it a creepy place to relate to if you're not part of the "new furry" as some would call it.

I dont know that many people in furry fandom to know who makes up the yerf art-clique or what else they do - but i have found a bunch of artists on there that I really like, or that I feel could actually be very successful with thier art

As far as the forums, I actually know exactly what you mean there as i couldnt read that far into them. One thing they do there that i think is cool is where anyone can upload art to the one forum and have other yerf artists critique it and show you how to improve certain things. How useful or correct that critique is - I have no idea, but it would seem that is at least a step in the right direction.

Ethan A. Stanger · Rasophore Joined: 23 Oct 2003 Posts: 53

Yerf gets credit for being a better archive than it's counterparts, but they still lack a professional representation of anthropomorphic art.
Think of these archives as role models. They're showing me that anthropomorphics, as a subject matter in art, isn't a serious effort. It's just a fucking hobby that all the fans do.

Anonymous · Coadjutor Joined: 01 Jun 2003 Posts: 767

Yerf gets credit for being a better archive than it's counterparts, but they still lack a professional representation of anthropomorphic art.
Think of these archives as role models. They're showing me that anthropomorphics, as a subject matter in art, isn't a serious effort. It's just a fucking hobby that all the fans do.

I’d rather see furry art as a “hobby”, with the profusion of crappy artists, and a small selection of the highly skilled… As oppose to it being eaten up by the corporate cash machine, and everything being devoted towards the singular aim of parting gullible teenagers from their cash (as with “Anime”), (Excepting of course, the parting of cash from gullible teenagers on furbid...)

however, commercialisation (under capitalism) would (and does) breed a monoculture, whereas at least ATM as a hobby, it’s diverse. Even If one must sift the chaff from the grain,

As for yerf… It’s the disgustingly hypocritical superstitions that envelop it like the stench from an open sewer.
(Turning churches into grain stores. grumble grumble. Confiscating their wealth. grumble grumble. Removing their secular powers and influence. grumble grumble.)

DA · Coadjutor Joined: 06 Jun 2003 Posts: 320

You sure do use a lot of smileys, DA.

Thats due to the first board I mentioned...I mean seriously those people need remedial english, they read what they want to read so I got in the habit of slapping smilies in to establish the emotional context much more strongly.

I mean these are the people for whom 'I'll post more later when I'm better' became 'waaahh you meanies, I'm leaving' They can't even tell the difference between definitive and subjective. Not to mention the amateur psychologist diagnosis's were just plain weird. :lol:

I'll try and cut them out more, after all most of the people here are intelligent.