GetWatchers.com

I have gone viral, but not in a way I would have liked. I seem to have some kind of nasty throat virus, I have a fever and I'm more sodding grumpy than normal, but I make no appologies, firstly because if I wasn't a grumpys sod I probably wouldn't have much interesting to say, and secondly because I'm going to have a go at cat lovers, who deserve everything they get.

So anyways, I signed up to GetWatchers.com. I'm loving it, it adds a whole new dimention to deviantArt. Yeah, it works, I'm getting lots of page views, comments, favourites, and a few watchers at a time when I'm not submitting new work and expect to be very quiet. But I'm not a pageview whore, and I wouldn't be doing it just for that... although I admit I am enjoying testing strategies and tick-tacks which I will keep to myself for the time being.

What I'm really enjoying is being exposed to a BETTER selection of works. You only see stuff by other people signed up for it, and obviously if they are taking the time to put their best 10 works forward, you are filtering out a lot of the blah. So as a general rule the quality is much higher than you'd get. And there is so much stuff on dA that normally I just browse the catagories I'm particuarly interested in, and there ain't enough hours in the day for that. But with GetWatchers, you get a nice selection of stuff although you can filter out a few topics so you can avoid all of the awful fan-art, Manga and vampire shite.

So yeah, I have seen some great stuff. The skyscapes are amazing, what's not to like -- I bet they are popular. And I love flowers and blossoms as you can tell by my blog (I am hetrosexual by the way). And some of the macro shots are simply mind blowing.

But what is with the fucking cats?
Okay, so we shouldn't be totally surprised, I remember as far back as about 1994 saying that half the pictures on the interwebs were of porn, and the other half were of sad weirdos and their cats. And you can expect 'sensitive' people to be both into cats and have delusions of being arty, so a disproportianate number of cats isn't a mind blowing revelation. But some of these pictures are by talented people!

As an example, a couple of times I have found myself looking at people's galleries and they have some really great work, often a wonderful variety of portaits, landscapes, skyscapes, night shots, macros, character studies... all of which I'd give and eight or nine (on a day I'm feeling less grumpy), and then there are a load of cat pictures! Don't get me wrong, they are well taken pictures, in focus and all that, but nothing special... it's as if having a cat in them is enough! It's like they love their cat, we should fall in love on sight also, and that is the point of the picture. Well, I frigging hate cats, as did my father and his father before him, evil bloody things that creep up on you and leave mice in your bed.

Frankly, you see one cat and you've seen them all. It's not even like you are showing us any funny LOL cats.

And then it struck me, isn't this what the APEs say about nudes? "Seen one, seen them all", "It's a pair of boobs, get over it" and "I don't want to see your body, how is it artistic?". I may be onto something, but I'd rather be highly sexed and into nude women than be a fridged cat lover, so I'm not going to waste any energy analysing it.

Anyway, GetWatchers.com is highly recommended, don't be put off by the cats.