some twitter gravedancing / sincerity in online conversation

I feel the same way about a lot of older sites. I suppose my issue with Twitter was never that it was 'nice' and became 'mean', but that it was Twitter. Rarely has a site 'upgrading' ever done so to the betterment of the people involved. Then again, I was grumpy when Yiffstar rebranded, and were I older would probably also complain about people leaving alt.fan.furry.

I do hate how JS heavy a lot of the web is now. Completely unnecessary. 

General reply to all that quoted me: I found all reasons described to be fair points, maybe my only objection would be to the one that FA is unused because it lacks the tools to expand one's own reach considering that it'd be exactly the same algorhythm people feel so frustrated about and shadowed by it.
To make matters short and unify all responses we could be saying "FA is unused because it got built on old standards and it didn't develop further", but we should also take into consideration the fact that we are essentially comparing an art gallery site to social media: apples and oranges. This is frankly mostly FA's fault as I clearly remember an old PR announcement rebranding the site to the "furry social media": basically they mislabeled themselves.

I personally do actively use FA. Mostly as a way to keep up with artists that post there since I can basically guarantee that I'll their posts unlike with normal social media where it is likely to be missed. Though a notable exception is Bluesky where I can easily swap feeds so I can avoid reposts and only see normal posts from people, all the way to feeds built by the artists themselves for their own work. I do also use it to post art I get thanks to how it functions more as a gallery along with having folders so I can keep stuff organized between my characters.

I agree that it is not fun browsing around with no blacklist and stuff not being tagged to begin with. Though if the post is tagged, I do have a browser extension where I can put in tags and other keywords so things do get filtered out for me. If anyone is interested, I can link to it (as long as its within the rules). Though I'll admit that I use Firefox and I'm not sure if its on Chrome or the other browsers. Though the most annoying part is having to open the posts, see if they're tagged, and manually adding them alongside potential tags that have similar wording. And while stuff does slip by still, browsing is much more bearable for me compared to before.

And while I also agree that FA can feel dated compared to other gallery sites, there's no denying that its still the best place for furry artists and creators. The fact that its made by and for the fandom makes it leagues better than traditional social media in terms of continuing to foster creativity. I just wish they can one day fix their code so we can get much needed features. I wish it was easier to connect with people directly on the site but they sadly closed down forums due to the costs and now you have to use discord which I also find annoying. And I won't deny that the site had its controversies, but of course we cannot get into that due to rule 1 (Just wanted to mention that I'm not ignorant about it at least).

Overall, I do still like FA in terms of having a gallery for art, even if its all gift art or commissions. Its a nice place to aggregate it all to show off your fursona(s) and characters. I do like how customizable the profile is to be able to show off interests and even boundaries, unlike how the bio portion of other socials are incredibly small by comparison. Its great to help keep up with artists that are active if you're nervous about missing their posts through regular social media. But alas I can't deny folks preferring regular social media due to better tools for self-curating and discoverability, even I have Bluesky as my main despite my FA link being at the top of my Linktree. (Speaking of, I added this lil place to the list of links!)

Is that extension called Filter Affinity by chance? From what I see it simply looks at what you just described. The one I use is called FurAffinity (FA) Blacklist. This one works by having four different fields (Tags, Types, Categories, Artists) where within each you type in the relevant tags. Tags is the more straight-forward one I'll say. Its the best one because it looks at submission info to help block out things. Again, its not perfect since not everyone tags their stuff but with the extra fields it can help catch much more and I've found it easier to browse with this on. The only con I will mention is that the thumbnails will take a bit to load in as the extension filters through stuff but I'm willing to put up with it if it means comfier browsing.

Hey there! I’ll try to describe to you my reasoning behind the creation of my idea, and how to be honest, it is not rooted in nostalgia, in the least.

With pretty much how I feel a majority of the fandoms prescense now tied to social media (in my opinion), I feel like that takes away a lot of avenues for in depth discussion and interactions. Twitter, bluesky, instagram, pretty much all the big ones I can think of that everyone is on, is not very “discussion” friendly in my opinion. If you asked me this question via twitter, honestly I probably would have either not responded, or it would have been very watered down. And watered down is exactly how I feel social media interaction is, shallow and lacking an actual conversation (maybe to only me, I am unsure). I feel like almost that it does not let me or at least discourages it with how I would have to make 30 tweets or blue sky posts just to write this.

Social media is intimidating for me personally, which also makes me feel kind of isolated. It is very large, I do like condensed and more focused ways of interacting with people, people who I know will be interested because that is what they came here for. What I also enjoy about forums is organized topics, I feel it is easier for to make friends when the same people pop up, I like that there is no algorithm where im force fed content from what feels like a machine. Because of my disdain for social media and my avoidance of it, I miss out on socializing there, but when I did socialize there, I hardly got anything out of it or even felt ‘socialized’.

Honestly I could probably go on about this stuff forever, but I hope this makes sense, and I apologize if this is too long

Edit for another tidbit;
I honestly like “infodumping” and I find forums pretty infodumping friendly.

I am also in plenty of group chats that are for art but I tend to not be active in most of my group chats for some reason. It is easy for me to become a bystander or something, honestly I’m not sure. I find messaging apps sometimes intimidating as well. I do not like the modern thing of being expected to be on my phone and available at all times so I have an aversion to messaging apps.

2nd edit for more bc I find this convo interesting;
I enjoy very much getting to write out everything I want to say. On social media, with how short my responses have to be and how I feel I should only be a page for art, it is lonely and I feel like nobody can get to know me, like, at all. It sucks. I feel kind of like a mascot or something sometimes, I wish I knew how to explain it. I don’t feel very authentic, or something, or like I can be myself safely (especially with how it feels like the whole world is on there).

I created this in hopes there was other people like me, that felt like me, or were just even interested for their own reasons…