I'm actually really liking the news feature because it's a great way to share opinions, philosophies and perspectives. Perfect for someone who has really complex, and strong ones like me. On that note, I have yet another big rant to make this time about Newgrounds itself!

To start, I haven't even been here a year yet and I can tell this is one of the best content sharing platforms out there, even though it's not really a mainstream one. (Friday Night Funkin' did change that a little. It's the reason I ever considered coming to this place as an alternative to Scratch.) I love how Newgrounds has very relaxed rules that allow people to just be themselves, it has a wonderful community and all the people I've met here are really kind, and any issues are handled and resolved professionally, and it has great forums for sharing opinions better than the scratch ones which can be closed by the scratch team at any moment, XD this place has given rise to MANY internet legends some of which are sadly no longer with us. The way it is now, it's perfect for giving rise to many more skilled and successful creators. If you have talent that can get you a following it's a perfcet place to go to second only to YouTube! (Which has bad moderation these days.) Out of all content sharing sites in the world, Newgrounds has to be my home sweet home that YouTube, Scratch, Twitter, and pretty much every other place could never be. But there is one big problem with this site that I'm really displeased with yet almost sort of happy with? Let me explain.

Newgrounds has a big focus on high quality content and getting extremely talented people recognized. I have nothing against this, if you're great at what you do, you deserve recognition and if you aren't getting that, well that just fucking sucks. But this is exactly where some major issues that leave a sour taste in my mouth begin. When extremely talented people get frontpaged and get lots of clout from it. The community expectation gains a high standard. The community believes something has to be as amazing and impressive as something that would show up on the frontpage in order for it to be considered quality. This is why my good friend @Dynomike03's movies have less than ok reviews despite passing the judgement phase even though the movies are actually pretty good in terms of quality and animation. I have nitpicks but overall am ok with the concept of a judgement phase. It actually gives you recognition before your submission is even part of the website if you think about it. And only the amazing stuff that has months of work put into it will make the cut. Not small silly things that only took a few hours or one day. You should be working harder than that, if it comes easy, it ain't worth having. But don't worry, I can totally get why people would think this is batshit as well. Maybe you did work hard on your submission and maybe you get as tired spending a day on work as I do spending a months on it. People are impacted differently by stuff. And when you get that email telling your hard work got blammed. That can definitely seem like a blatant insult. But my advice would be to spend more time perfecting and improving upon what you work on. It may not get the best reviews because of how many people are gonna be voting on it, but hey, you'll still know that lot's of people like what you made! And most people here are probably idiots who think they're cool when they blam stuff so try not to pay attention to that part of it. But the judgement phase isn't my big problem with Newgrounds. My big problem with Newgrounds is scouting. Jesus christ, I HATE the concept of scouting so damn much!

To be scouted, someone who was scouted themselves needs to scout you and once that happens your art or audio can show up in the portal. (Eligible to be seen upon clicking the art or audio section at the top of the website.) But if the scouting system is deemed to be abused, you and everyone you scouted can be descouted. I love Newgrounds, but that scouting thing is absolute bullshit and is the only thing keeping me from tattooing my dick with the Newgrounds logo! (That's a joke okay! It's a just a joke! ÓwÒ) Sure, it makes the audio and art portal show amazing high quality work, but people who don't meet a certain standard will never be recognized until they are scouted which can take a very long time as people are trying to avoid abusing it and also will only target the highest of high quality. This almost feels like gatekeeping or a type of top dog vs under dog community. For these reasons, my artwork doesn't get as much recognition as I want it to and doesn't get enough votes to give it a score. I spent months trying to perfect it and getting it to the level it is now. You may have noticed my profile used to say "Currently working hard on bettering my art" that's what that was, and to give you a visual of what the definition of "working hard" was for me, here's a comparison of my art now vs 2 months ago.

My art 2 months ago:

My art now:

If you ask me, that's a BIG difference. And usually improvement of that level takes longer. (A year or more.) Well, that's what "hard work" amounts to and let me tell ya, I didn't work my ass off just to have nobody see or care about my shit. Hell no! I didn't come to Newgrounds for that! Even though I think this scouting system is really shitty and upright trash and countless others must agree with me. I have to admit, personally, it works well motivationally.

I have a natural habit of working even harder to create something of better quality if the previous version doesn't work out. This is what happened when I lost the progress to an RHG animation on scratch. I worked even harder and made it better than it used to be and it ended up on the trending page! But then my account was deleted so my path to fame ended there. But I was still willing to work yet even harder to get back to where I was and me being here on Newgrounds is part of that. Whenever, I'm not satisfied with the results of my work, I can just put even more work and effort into the next one. Though, art isn't my main focus anymore. For now it's animation, which we can all tell will take a bit. :(

Working harder is generally the main piece of advice given to those who complain about similar things by community members but that doesn't always tend to work. And when your community is giving the best possible advice they can and it still doesn't help someone who is struggling with your site, who's fault is that? It's not their fault, it's not the community members fault, no, it's the website developers fault that someone is struggling with the way the site is and no one can do anything to help them. You will always have haters who have nothing better to do than be angry for no reason. But if you see large amounts of dissatisfaction with great reasoning behind it. That's supposed to be an indication that change has to be made. You can't tell someone to just tolerate something that goes on and on and on. No, sometimes, you have to do what needs to be done to improve the experience of people who use what you make.

Now, I was mostly here to talk about scouting but I do want to bring up another similar point that applies to other sites and applications as well. You can't always build upon something to make it better, sometimes, utter complete change is what you need. Imagine you have a hotdog and you like it with ketchup, but at some point you're tired of using ketchup. What do you do?

A: Add more ketchup

B: Use something else (Ex: Mustard)

I can deduce that most people would pick B now let me explain why that analogy is important for the point I'm trying to make. Newgrounds was created by Tom Fulp and was founded in 1995. It is an ancient website, YouTube was not a thing back then! :O Now most features I see now in 2022 are very different from the way things work on other sites. For example, reply chains on YouTube look like this:

It specifies who you reply to and the newer it is, the lower it is. All replies are smaller and located below the original comment. Typical right? But here on Newgrounds, they look like this:

"What is going on here?" Is probably your first thought, and so was mine. All comments, even replies are the same size and the newer ones are higher instead of lower, but if the owner of the news post responds it's highlighted and THEN it's lower. Personally, I can't immediately tell who's replying to who, I have put thought into it, and over a reply section? That really shouldn't be the case. Here's another one that's even worse. On Discord, DMs (Which are similar to Newgrounds PMs) look like this:

You just type in you message and the newer ones are lower similar to replies. Again, more typical and modern. Now take a look at what Newgrounds PMs look like:

Seriously, wtf? The reply set up ain't bad but what's with the whole, "At 3 days ago this guy wrote:" thing? That is very old looking and it makes me feel like I'm on a 4chan forum in 2011. (4chan forums don't do that and probably never did but it gives me that vibe.) Now, why does Newgrounds work this way? My hypothesis is that these are visually updated but not structurally updated chatting systems that date back to when those methods were more typical maybe around the 2000s. And this is where my point comes in. Newgrounds likely updated old systems but never created the newer more modern systems like other sites did or were built with. So we're like the guy with the hotdog who's tired of ketchup but by visually updating and not structurally updating the chatting systems, Newgrounds is adding more and more of the ketchup, instead of making them both visually and structurally more modern and giving us the mustard that we really want. So yeah, that's problematic. But it's something I can get used to, unlike the scouting shit. >:( However, I make this point because it might be the reason scouting and even the judgement phase concepts are still around.

When Newgrounds was first realesed and during the golden age of flash, internet culture was a lot less regulated and was edgier back then. Nobody felt like following morals or anything. So the whole thing about Newgrounds is that it was amazing yet badass. And these were nifty ways to keep Newground's whole thing about quality. relevant and also was apparently used to regulate the storage as Tom Fulp said to me in an old PM reply. Long story short, it may have been nifty according to internet culture then but now people are nicer than that and more open minded and accepting so by modern internet culture standards, those concepts may seem a little off. And let's face it, they are. People are only okay with them because they've taken the time to get used to em. But circling back to my point, change is required for improvement, it can't be the same forever or else you could end up like the hotdog guy tired of using ketchup. If a new feature that was less strict and more fair than scouting replaced it in the future that'd be the best day of my life. Until then, fuck scouting! But everything else about Newgrounds is perfect! :D

If you want to share your thoughts on any of that please do so in the comments. Remember to be respectful, I'll never hesitate for even a second to flag a disrespectful comment. Please and thank you. :)