Nuki News #94 - Senpai Noticed Me!

If you haven’t heard of the term before, Google says it means the following:

“One-sided relationships, where one person extends emotional energy, interest and time, and the other party, the persona, is completely unaware of the other's existence. “

Which is actually a bit harsher than what I’m thinking of. As an artist in the furry community, I do become aware of folks! We might not be officially friends, but we exchange messages, words, and feelings through twitter, FA comments, or my art streams now and then. I spose what I’m actually aiming to talk about is the somewhat one-sided nature of social media and how spread thin we are. If you wanna make a name for yourself in an online community(or I suppose offline too) you will end up with more people following what you do than you can reasonably perceive. After a few hundred following, I definitely couldn’t keep track of who is watching me anymore.

At the same time, you may find yourself looking up to quite a number of folks; for their work and renown in the community you want to be part of. To get their attention, praise or acknowledgement for your efforts…it feels very good. A recent example for me had been a webcomic artist whose comics I read over 10 years ago; having them compliment my work and follow me back last year was very elating and validating, yet surreal. The ‘Senpai Noticed Me!’ meme/phrase has been going for almost as long as I’ve been on the internet, and for good reason. So while what I wanna talk about here isn’t strictly ‘parasocial’ in the sense of “This person will never perceive my existence” it’s just moreover the dynamic of the relationship is favoring one side over the other.

As I’ve been growing an audience for my work, I’ve felt myself gradually become in some ways, more distant overall. It makes sense, I’m sure you’ve heard that the human mind can only reasonably store around 150 relationships in it. But it gets interesting to find more and more people giving to me when I’m unable to give back directly to them. One of the most amazing things I’m fortunate to experience is having people pay ment compliments on my work, when I may not have seen theirs or commented on theirs before. I at least try to reply to comments if I can think of something, but over time it’s taken more out of me.

I remember years back, when I had less than 1000 followers on twitter I’d think to myself “why don’t these big artists reply to their comments, or at least comment on or retweet gift art made for them?” And as I grew I certainly began to feel the strain, juggling other things in life and trying to keep up with messages and responses. I could see why some popular artists or creators tend to seem unresponsive to people outwardly.

I hope to not come across as distant if I can help it. You all have given me a lot here; and I hope I have made your time online that bit better in my own way. I’ve had plenty of kind folks give me assurances the way I carry myself online feels very wholesome and such, and even such assurance I see as a gift, not something I deserve or earned. Something I can't really repay but hope me doing what I do continues to be worthwhile for you all.

When it comes to my efforts into art-making, I know I am worth something. But when it comes to this patreon page, I’ve found it impossible to ‘sell’ to people. I’ve kinda made it a personal journal, which has been good in some ways, and may have helped some people, as they told me! As I’ve gotten to have more people’s eyes on my work, it feels there is less of me to give individually. So I want to say this is what seems to be a natural part of the process. Is it good? Bad? Neither?

It can be either way of course, it depends on how I as an individual handles it. I’m sure you’ve seen some people handle renown or ‘fame’ poorly, and found people who handle it great. I’d like to know, too, who do you look up to who seems to handle their popularity well and don’t let it get to their head?

This is probably one of the last ‘broad’ subject nuki News posts I’ll be posting, just something I wanted to talk about. Thank you for reading and indulging me if you choose to! x)