Please read! Don't let it happen to you!

[lasupaman]

Hi everyone! First off, i'd like to say hi! Glad to be in the company of NICE illustrators.

So here's my short little true story that happened today...

It was 1 AM Wednesday night/Tuesday morning and I was bored out of my mind. I decided to go on AOL and chat it up for a few until I felt tired. So first, I wanted to hit on a few girls... just kidding! *cough cough... Anyways, moving right along... I went to a chatroom called Authors Corner or something to that extent. I thought that being in the same (chat)room with other creative minds would be a positive thing. And I also thought that this would be a good place to meet a few writers who could possibly in the future be a good contact. Isn't anything possible? Couldn't hurt to try, or so I thought.

And so I started to ask around if anyone was interested in doing collaborative... anything! Some of the people who responded were interested what kind of work that I did, so I just said "here's my website, go look at it." Within a few minutes the whole topic of the chatroom was art in general.

Then one guy mentioned Impressionists and Impressionism. "Oh! I like Impressionists stuff. I like their color! I think that their color is a lot more vivid than anything previously done," I thought to myself. And so, I said that out loud.

Next thing I knew, two people were on my case calling me stupid and idiotic for thinking that way and for being pretentious, telling my I lack artistic intelligence, and being (most absurdly of all) whiney about it. And what the heck would you have done if someone, out of the blue, starts challenging your opinion? Of course, I defended myself. (If you're wondering, this story does have a point to it... so bear with me)

This argument was so ridiculous, especially from their side. They just would not hear me out. Because of they way they were speaking with such contempt, even to a lowlife like myself, I couldn't help but wonder who these people were.

One of the guys was said, "I've been in the advertising business for 30 years, I know what I'm talking about. You don't!" Heck, fine by me if the topic had anything to do with anything relating to that, but this was about my artistic opinion about an artistic movement and my observation about it. (I said that to them, but they still didn't listen... They called me immature for some reason, but dang... The immaturity didn't seem to be coming from me)

I later found out that that other guy was an illustrator. So, two illustrators on my case for saying my opinion, whether right or wrong, and insulting me because of it.
Wow... What is this world coming to when you're not even allowed to have an opinion and be respected for it, whether right or wrong.

I'd like to think art overall is either good or bad relative to its viewer, wouldn't you agree? If you think one painting sucks while another one moves you, that might not be the same for someone else. But when someone thinks and acts like their opinion is superior than someone elses, it's just wrong. Especially with art. It just destroys the purpose and meaning of it.

but heck, i could be wrong, this is just my opinion...

sorry for the long rant.

please comment if you wish

[gekitsu]

i know where you're coming from, mate :)

i have no idea why, but if you have your own opinion, you will inevitably find someone who doesn't like it and therefore bash you.
that's basically the two ways you will find today:
case one is frightened or whatevered by your opinion and/or the fact that you have one and will therefore start bashing you. most often, he'll do that with ridicolous arguments, i have no idea why, though.
case two will do the exact opposite, talking your opinion beautiful. no matter what your opinion is! he's the "tolerant, openminded guy with political correctness", so you can expect him to find everything you do fine with him.

if people resorted to talking about the things they are proficient with (for example, having the argument about OPINIONS about impressionism instead of FACTS about impressionism - when i see i don't have a deep art history background, how am i qualified to give statements about art history facts? i do have my own opinion, though and can give stements about it. it should be labelled as being my opinion, though) and understood that you can also tolerate people whose opinion they don't share (basically, that's what tolerance is about... having your own mind about something but tolerating people who have different minds - tolerating someone whos thinking the same than you is an easy feat), there would be a lot less stupid arguments.

[jester]

Those people are just stupid - how can they think themselves to be judges over someone's taste? What's wrong with Impressionist art? It's a period in art history that made new approaches to create pictures possible. Thus, the only explanation for their behaviour is that somehow they wanted to get on you. The reactions would have been the same if you had said that you love J.C. Leyendecker. Or Rembrandt, or Michelangelo or whoever. Maybe you offended them somehow. Maybe they were just envious of you and your website. Don't worry too much about this, leave this place alone. They can say they are 30 years in advertising - but in truth they may just be a frustrated housewife who always wanted to become an artist... who knows on the Internet?? ;)

Jester

[agflash]

Originally posted by jester
... but in truth they may just be a frustrated housewife who always wanted to become an artist...


Yea Jester i also thought this while reading the post.
Anyway although there are "rules" somtetimes, but in fact they are only there to be broken. ^^

Andrew

[Fozzybar]

err...lasupaman...i mean, come on, you're on the internet!!???

What are you awaiting?

[lasupaman]

heh fozzy, which is the probably the most ridiculous part of the whole thing. yes they are on the internet! i really don't care. its my opinion, and i'll stand by it, screw anonymous person 1 and 2

but then again, there is this part inside of me that gets (got) really frustrated that someone wouldn't have the tolerance for another persons opinion, just like gekitsu wrote. and its not just that, but it came from a few of our fellow kin: artists (in general terms)

you'd like to think that artists would know that...

then again, its them, and at least its not me.... and they're on the anonyweb, so in the end, who cares. it was just an interesting occurance...

[lasupaman]

by the way, thanks for all everyone's take on this. I appreciate it guys. at least it makes me feel that there are decent opinion-respecting people out there! =)

[AnarchyAo2]

Hey man, don't get all worked up about this. See, thats why we have AOL, to segregate all the ignorant, and immature people from the norms. Yeah yeah, its a huge sterotype but have you EVER gone into a AOL chat without having about 5 people IM you saying "9/f/MA you wanna go cyber?" or "Hey big-sexy, you wanna go see me get wild on my webcam?", well, I haven't! And after going into AOL chats, within days I'll have hundreds of spam email! I mean, I feel like just deleting the email box! Oh--I'm getting off topic, eh? Anyway, I'm just saying that you shouldn't get worked up with what the 2 oafs said on AOL. From what I can tell, they just mean't to get you worked up about it. Thats what people on AOL do, they have tons of spare time because they have no lives and they go harrass people in chatrooms. Well, hope I helped.

**P.S. If I was you, I'd go download mIRC (or any other IRC client) and use that to find a chatroom to talk in. IRC chats usually have less assholes and less people that will spam you then AOL chats.

[Smeagol71]

I agree with the previous posts regarding people's behavior and treatment of those with an opposing viewpoint or taste. Anytime an individual decides to discredit or malign someone else because of an alternate view is dead wrong...but this topic does beg an important question:

Is there an absolute standard for beauty? Or is beauty completely subjective?

I already know what I think, I'm curious to hear other people's answers. It might be hornet's nest I'm stirring up, but it's an interesting topic to think about.

[otis]

To be a devil's advocate for sec, and bring up one point:

"Wow... What is this world coming to when you're not even allowed to have an opinion and be respected for it, whether right or wrong."

In my opinion you have to earn respect and not expect or demand it. This rule goes for everything in life, EVEN ART.
Your opinion would hold more value to others if your work is respected. I don't know you or your work so I'm not making any judgments, but one thing is for sure,....just becuase you might look at some abstract (or whatever type of work you do not like) does not mean it is a bad piece. There are good and bad art in every type of movment and style. So to blatantly say .." " type of art sucks IS being ignorant. Maybe that artist wanted you to get a sick feeling in your stomach when you looked at his piece. In this case it would have been successful!
And don't expect to have your opinion "respected" just becuase it's an opinion. The day we just "respect" everyone's opinion for the sake of being an opinion the world will become a politicaly correct, ignorant society. Fuck, does this mean we have to respect bigot's and facists opinion's as well? That's off the point but the same point none the less.

I don't know you or those so called proffessional in that chat room, but assuming they are not lying, and you are just a student or amature, I would not run around demanding people respect your opinion when you still have alot more to learn about art and design.
Like I said, not all abstract, impressionist,..etc artists are good. I believe what I think Picasso once said....

"You have to learn the rules of art before you can start breaking them--"

By this he meant you must learn to illustrate, paint, design,know color theory..etc ..before you can go out and explore the vast depths of abstract art successfully. Everyone likes to make fun of abstract art, but to really pull off a great piece is very hard.

[Kortez]

Originally posted by otis
By this he meant you must learn to illustrate, paint, design,know color theory..etc ..before you can go out and explore the vast depths of abstract art successfully. Everyone likes to make fun of abstract art, but to really pull off a great piece is very hard.

I make abstract art all the time... not on purpose though ;)

No, but on a more serious note, you should rarely pay attention to trolls on the internet. I used to visit this site http://www.hugi.is which is like a troll taco fiesta about everything. You post a topic called "Return of the king" and what you thought about it and within 10 minutes you have 20 replies telling you that you are an idiot and the LOTR movies are overrated and the ROTK was 3 hours too long. It's just people looking for trouble online because they don't have any people to argue with in real life. AOL chatrooms are not much different. And I'm not buying for a minute that the guy you chatted with was an illustrator. Some guys like to go online and pretend to be young schoolgirls, others apparantly like to pretend to be big shot illustrators.

So, my point being, don't let the internet get to you :chug:

[gekitsu]

otis:
there is a difference between acepting and respecting, as you put it, everything - talking everything beautiful and tolerating it.

as the whole art thing is so highly subjective, this is more important than when discussing maths, when in the end, there are enough facts to prove or crush a point. in art, this is rarely the case, as there is more subjectivity.

there is absolutely no need for political correctness but if exchanging points of view about art, you should tolerate the point of other people, no matter what you think about it.
see, i absolutely hate hiphop as an abstract. but a) i don't judge individuals by that (i would be forced to hate coro for example, but he's one hell of a nice guy) and b) i tolerate people liking hiphop, although my opinion about tha abstract called hiphop is about the largest assemblage of negative words you can imagine.

[otis]

Tolerating is the polite thing to do I agree. My only point was that poeple should not expect respect with out having to earn it first. We are all ignorant in our own ways, it's a constant struggle to keep an open mind, ...so somtimes we have to listen not just hear; see not just look.

Otis's ancient Chinese secret.;)

[gekitsu]

your point about listening and seeing is superb. basically, there wouldn't be any need for anger and negative outcome in discussion if everyone tried to understand the other guys point. which means listen to it and think about it. then, give contra with what you think about it and let the other guy think about that.
understanding points of view does only expand your horizon :) even if you don't share them.

[shyst]

-no comment-

[arcane]

It's an AOL chatroom, you're lucky to have even found someone able to type in complete coherent sentences. you really can't expect the majority of AOLers to actually possess intelligence or be able to hold a polite conversation.