Why content quality has regressed so much?

[Park CollegeO]

I have an opinion, but want to hear form you?

What are the top 3 primary causes of why content quality has taken such a nose dive

 

[GhostOS]

By content, I assume fetish content, right? Do you mean content such as art, or videos? (I 'm not well informed as to how the latter has evolved over the past decade).

I think the answer lies in the word: content. It's a term that has become standard through the Youtube and Patreon circles, and it just feels like a term to describe stuff churned out on a regular basis just to keep subscribers around. That's in and of itself not a great motivator to create quality material, but I think the answer lies in simple economics.

The internet as it is today and the availability of modern software and equipment has made possible a never before seen amount of people can create, share and sell works now, and as competition goes up, the product price comes down. The reaction by a creator can go two ways: take the risk and really up the quality to set one's works apart from the rest, or just crank out more stuff faster and cheaper to offset the losses. I feel the latter solution is what most folks go for, regrettably. As a tickling fetish artist, I do feel that most commercial tickling art (such as comics) this day and age feels bland and unexciting, as opposed to say ten years ago. So that's what I base my theory on.

 

[MacD]

"We" could stop praising (and probably also buying) everything equally, regardless of whether it's good or not.
Of course I see the point in respecting those who are posting at all, but sometimes it appears quite automated if whatever comes, it immediately gets "nice, great..." added as a response and hardly anyone suggests improvements.

No wonder creators go the easy way. I'm sure someone badly pretending to be ticklish is easier to find and to pay than someone really ticklish and willing to endure a session.
It seems to be enough to write "can't escape" in the description, although there is nothing someone could escape from. Ridiculous, but obviously it sells.
As a producer, why would I make effort if people buy anyway?

I also see the dilemma saying hey that one wasn't so great, worrying the creator perhaps will not post anymore. But this is like economy, supply and demand make the market. If we become less demanding, we will be offered less quality.

 

[SoleMates]

I mostly agree with you, and that's as a content producer. That said...

"We" could stop praising (and probably also buying) everything equally, regardless of whether it's good or not.

I honestly agree with this. It's not even a matter of "different strokes", there are producers who literally film themselves tapping some girl's feet while she's awkwardly grinning at the camera... or worse, surfing on her phone for the entire shoot. This is not tickling content by any stretch of the imagination, but for some reason there are people out there who jizz themselves silly over it, apparently, because these guys keep making more of it. Apparently because they're making some kind of profit? For the life of me I can't understand why people are still passing around Mr. Wharton Wheel's crap like it's gold, because it's so damn cringe.

but sometimes it appears quite automated if whatever comes, it immediately gets "nice, great..."

Hello, Milagros. It used to be the case that there were a couple of people who dogged all of my posts in the Videos section, but make no mistake; the only person copy-pasta-ing thank-you posts around here is Milagros. He's been doing it for like a decade. And while honestly, I can see the sentiment (he claims he wants people to feel included because posts don't get a lot of engagement), to quote the greatest supervillain ever, "when everyone is super, no one will be." It really dilutes the attention you do get if you're going to get attention regardless of the quality of your content.

No wonder creators go the easy way. I'm sure someone badly pretending to be ticklish is easier to find and to pay than someone really ticklish and willing to endure a session.

It kinda depends, but honestly, it's not. "Ticklish people don't do shoots" is an urban myth that just will not die no matter how many times quality producers refute it. But that just goes back to your point - we praise people so often for doing the bare minimum that the good stuff rarely rises out of the crap. It does kind of boggle the mind sometimes. If "fakers" were so prominent then we should reward the people not doing, but here we are.

 

[Pghtkltorture]

I’m just going to separate videos from this. That’s forever going to be a story of cost, piracy, Onlyfans, etc and guys who scream “fake fake fake” every time I person doesn’t react to tickling the exact way that they think they should.

But as far as Stories/pics/artwork I think it comes down to two things. The first is the need to monetize every aspect of our time and hobbies. Which for better or worse is the mindset.

The second thing is on us. We are all probably guilty of being cheap in terms of a very different kind of currency on here and that’s praise/interaction with content. If you’re sharing photos/artwork/stories you really are hoping to hear some positive feedback to boost your ego and make you want to write, draw, take more pics. To see a story has been read 1000x but no comments doesn’t really inspire a writer to keep going.

 

[Comfort Eagle]

Because a lot of it was always shit, and "The Golden Days" were like 3 or 4 studios you guys just have fond memories of. There's as much great shit now as there ever was, but there's a less centralized platform to put it on so you have to actively look for it. And yes, dig through shit that's not as good.

 

[GhostOS]

I’m just going to separate videos from this. That’s forever going to be a story of cost, piracy, Onlyfans, etc and guys who scream “fake fake fake” every time I person doesn’t react to tickling the exact way that they think they should.

But as far as Stories/pics/artwork I think it comes down to two things. The first is the need to monetize every aspect of our time and hobbies. Which for better or worse is the mindset.

The second thing is on us. We are all probably guilty of being cheap in terms of a very different kind of currency on here and that’s praise/interaction with content. If you’re sharing photos/artwork/stories you really are hoping to hear some positive feedback to boost your ego and make you want to write, draw, take more pics. To see a story has been read 1000x but no comments doesn’t really inspire a writer to keep going.

This. The only thing that has truly changed from 10-20 years ago is how easy it is now to (at least in theory) monetize anything. If one wanted to do tickling art or stories or comics and make money of it, you'd have to find someone like MTJ or set up your own website/online store. Being a video producer was a lot harder I'd assume. A decent video camera was like a month's wage, and computer equipment for editing was even more. And that was just the absolute bare minimum to get started. And I can't even begin to imagine the logistics involved in mailing out video tapes, dealing with credit card providers, etc. It was setting up an entire business. These days, one can do all of that simply with a phone. Film it, edit it, upload to whatever platform. So naturally the market get filled with absolute dross.

With art and stories, the creators left for Patreon and the artwork forum turned into a ghost town, less art, especially less decent art, and you got less people coming back to leave comments. I mean, we all get lazy and not bother to comment from time to time -myself included- but sometimes there's really not that much to say about a piece. So it's a bit of a difficult one; does one leave a comment just to boost the artist's/writer's motivation, or stay silent, knowing that's not helping to revive that side of the community?

 

[Pghtkltorture]

I wonder if the addition of the “like” button will help? 500 likes is better than 500 views and silence

 

[GhostOS]

I wonder if the addition of the “like” button will help? 500 likes is better than 500 views and silence

"Likes" is a social media mechanic though, if you click "like" on Facebook the post gets spammed to all of your friends newsfeeds, so there's incentive to get your posts liked by others. On YouTube I believe it feeds into the algorithm, so that again your video is more likely to appear in peoples "recommended videos". So not sure if this would have any real effect within a forum... Unless there was a way to toggle displaying threads between replies and likes, but I don't even know if that's possible at all. In the end feedback is always best, both for the creator as well as the viewer, as it gives the creator an indication what elements in their work were successful, and which gives them direction for future creations. For the commenter, speaking about what they liked about the work thus creates a greater possibility for them to see more of the thing they like.

 

[FoolHunter]

In the art/illustration side of things, AI.

It’s frankly maddening going on DA and seeing users, even ones who actually draw/film their own work, go and favorite the stuff in bulk. Just walls of uncannily big, gaping mouths and deformed feet or legs. Or iconic superhero character with incorrect design details.

And every time I think it’s someone who might genuinely not have an eye for the tells, I notice they’re even favoriting shit that says “AI” in the title.

It’s one thing for the site to encourage it, it’s another thing for its wider community to be so aggressively complacent.

 

[Morning Scifi]

AI is an interesting topic for content. I understand why people are upset about the current and potential consequences of AI for art, but eventually, it will become advanced enough that telling the difference between AI and human made art will be extremely difficult. This even extends to audio and video. The implications for audio and video are most disturbing for reasons outside of art or fetish material, but even just looking at this from the perspective of content creators paints a dismal picture except for individuals with the best tech or with the relevant intellectual property rights.

 

[Cosmo_ac]

What are the top 3 primary causes of why content quality has taken such a nose dive

I guess my first question is, what content are you talking about, and if you mean specifically here, or in general?

 

[GhostOS]

AI is an interesting topic for content. I understand why people are upset about the current and potential consequences of AI for art, but eventually, it will become advanced enough that telling the difference between AI and human made art will be extremely difficult. This even extends to audio and video. The implications for audio and video are most disturbing for reasons outside of art or fetish material, but even just looking at this from the perspective of content creators paints a dismal picture except for individuals with the best tech or with the relevant intellectual property rights.

Definitely an interesting topic, as an artist myself (just a hobbyist now, my non-art day job is a lot more stable, and I like it that way), I'm fairly optimistic about AI and its potential uses in the art medium (not the art "industry" - think about that word, its pretty closely linked to automation). I also hold the opinion that its not AI that is the culprit in the decline of quality in art.

As far as I can see, the decline first started as early as 2017-18, years and years before the advent of AI. The only thing that is truly if value in anyone's life is time; because you can never get more of it. Time is limited, and when a hobby becomes a side hustle, a job, artists find themselves pressed for time (got to meet the weekly/monthly Patreon deadlines/goals, got to crank out some content, otherwise the subscribers will leave). So corners are cut, and there's also no time left for collaborative projects either.

Anyone remember S4? (Summer Sleepover Shenanigans?) It was a massive collaborative effort conducted in secret by an artist called Cheshire Cat, involving most of the prominent tickling fetish artists of the day (around 2008 or so), featuring character crossovers and everything. Everybody contributed their work to it absolutely for free. It was released for free for all of the tickling art fans to enjoy. You think we'll likely see something like that again in this day and age?

My hope is that AI can take care of the dog's work that goes into creating drawings, the tedium of colouration, lighting checking, corrections, so that artists have once again time to focus on the detail, the storytelling.

 

[Morning Scifi]

Definitely an interesting topic, as an artist myself (just a hobbyist now, my non-art day job is a lot more stable, and I like it that way), I'm fairly optimistic about AI and its potential uses in the art medium (not the art "industry" - think about that word, its pretty closely linked to automation). I also hold the opinion that its not AI that is the culprit in the decline of quality in art.

As far as I can see, the decline first started as early as 2017-18, years and years before the advent of AI. The only thing that is truly if value in anyone's life is time; because you can never get more of it. Time is limited, and when a hobby becomes a side hustle, a job, artists find themselves pressed for time (got to meet the weekly/monthly Patreon deadlines/goals, got to crank out some content, otherwise the subscribers will leave). So corners are cut, and there's also no time left for collaborative projects either.

Anyone remember S4? (Summer Sleepover Shenanigans?) It was a massive collaborative effort conducted in secret by an artist called Cheshire Cat, involving most of the prominent tickling fetish artists of the day (around 2008 or so), featuring character crossovers and everything. Everybody contributed their work to it absolutely for free. It was released for free for all of the tickling art fans to enjoy. You think we'll likely see something like that again in this day and age?

My hope is that AI can take care of the dog's work that goes into creating drawings, the tedium of colouration, lighting checking, corrections, so that artists have once again time to focus on the detail, the storytelling.

That's a very good point. AI, like other forms of automation, does provide the benefit of saving time by performing the parts of labor that are less attached to creativity and more focused on what most would consider tedious. Used in that way, AI can be a net positive.

 

[kingmaker]

Because a lot of it was always shit, and "The Golden Days" were like 3 or 4 studios you guys just have fond memories of. There's as much great shit now as there ever was, but there's a less centralized platform to put it on so you have to actively look for it. And yes, dig through shit that's not as good.

When I find in my hard drive the old shit I was watching back in the 2007s

When you are 15 years old and discovering the tickling - Web, with hormones going on, you can pretty much get on anything.

The only things that I don't like in current Era are:

• Too much masked girl
• Too much very amateur content
• Too much Studios that dont even try to do previews
• Too little girl next doors
• Too little stories

But there is enough good content still

 

[kingmaker]

A decent video camera was like a month's wage, and computer equipment for editing was even more. And that was just the absolute bare minimum to get started. And I can't even begin to imagine the logistics involved in mailing out video tapes, dealing with credit card providers, etc. It was setting up an entire business. These days, one can do all of that simply with a phone. Film it, edit it, upload to whatever platform. So naturally the market get filled with absolute dross.

Let's not exagerate, even 20 years ago you already had digital cameras. Anything before tho, is like pre-history for me

 

[GhostOS]

A

Let's not exagerate, even 20 years ago you already had digital cameras. Anything before tho, is like pre-history for me

Aye, sure enough, you could get digital  photo cameras in 2003 that gave you 1 megapixel outputs if you were lucky. I'm talking video cameras. Got my first video camcorder back then, a Sony Hi8, top of the line, analog tape. Would be another two or three years for digital tape format to take over. Yeah, it really was pre-history back then, LOL

 

[Jezebel Lee]

• Too much masked girl
• Too little girl next doors

Let me just address these two points really quick. Of course you’re all allowed to have preferences, but for anyone who actually cares, perhaps I can provide some insight as to why these two things are so common now.

These “girl next door” types you all ask for, all have vanilla lives. They’re most likely working traditional AKA “real” jobs, and perhaps they also have super conservative friends and family (like mine).

Do you guys know what happens when people show their face in fetish porn? They get outed. The videos end up on some tube site, their friends see it, their family sees it, their employers see it. This isn’t a case of “if”; it’s a case of when.

It’s probably humiliating at best, but it’s also very common for people to lose their jobs because of it. We’ve all seen producers talk about how so-and-so won’t shoot with them anymore because people they know saw the videos.

On the flip side… We always see men in ski masks, even in gay male content, where the viewers wont be so triggered if they see another guy’s face. Yes, maybe one or two people get the ick from it, but for the most part everyone is accepting of men in masks.

Laws of attraction aside, if male creators are allowed to wear masks (because we all know they’re doing it to protect their vanilla lives), why shouldn’t female creators be allowed to do the same? Just because most people are attracted to women, doesn’t mean we should be forced to destroy our vanilla lives.

If you guys want to see female faces, I’m afraid that mostly just leaves you with models whose lives won’t be destroyed if they appear in wank material. Porn stars, camgirls, and yes professional fetish models.

“We live in a society” blah blah blah… everyone and their mother is trying to earn some extra cash on the side, but there’s still a lot of stigma regarding sex work. I’m afraid this isn’t something that can be fixed so easily.

 

[kingmaker]

All you say is true, it's nonetheless a downside.

By the way the outing part of all this is exaggerated, I have shot a ton of girl next doors, not one of them has been recognized and unless they do something sex related (meaning outside the scope of tickling or foot fetish), they will be fine, unless very unlucky (like your boss or colleague happens to be a fan of the studio)

And I think same for the few male producers that don't show up, but it is not as bad because they are not the center of focus for the bulk of the audience

What you say apply way more to the mainstream porn industry, the visibility there is another order of magnitude.

 

[Jezebel Lee]

All you say is true, it's nonetheless a downside.

By the way the outing part of all this is exaggerated, I have shot a ton of girl next doors, not one of them has been recognized and unless they do something sex related (meaning outside the scope of tickling or foot fetish), they will be fine, unless very unlucky (like your boss or colleague happens to be a fan of the studio)

And I think same for the few male producers that don't show up, but it is not as bad because they are not the center of focus for the bulk of the audience

What you say apply way more to the mainstream porn industry, the visibility there is another order of magnitude.

Maybe the culture in Paris is different than in the U.K. Over here, most people have a very kink-shaming attitude and especially look down on fetish creators. I’d say your models were quite lucky they haven’t been outed. It’s a case by case basis of course, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.

 

[GhostOS]

Maybe the culture in Paris is different than in the U.K. Over here, most people have a very kink-shaming attitude and especially look down on fetish creators. I’d say your models were quite lucky they haven’t been outed. It’s a case by case basis of course, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.

That's some good points you made, Jezebel, in fact they're so obvious I hadn't even thought about it. I lived in Flanders, Belgium, a long time ago, and over there the culture definitely was more accepting... Belgium is a weird place, I don't think they really understood all of these kink things. So I used to be quite open about the fetish illustration work I did. Now that I live in the UK, not so much.

Probably that's why there was much more girl-next-door content in the old VHS days, with no youtube, pornhub and others, it was extremely unlikely anyone would figure out that an ordinary woman was secretly featuring in kink videos.

I actually don't mind the idea of masks, but then again, I'm also a fan of heavy bondage, and I think a 'lee wearing something like a bondage hood which obscures most of her face is actually quite hot

 

[MacD]

And while honestly, I can see the sentiment

Me too. I see both the sentiment and the differences in content.
I also see different viewers' and creators' preferences.
That's why opinions can only show a trend, not a rule.

"Ticklish people don't do shoots" is an urban myth

I didn't want to say that. There are ticklish people doing shoots of course. But there are others also.
I am aware that every producer has their own style and way of creating content. I also am aware that every tickle model has their own way to react.
Nevertheless I clearly see some producers are less credible about their content than others. To me that in fact is a model-thing to some degree, but primarily a producer-thing.

I wonder if the addition of the “like” button will help?

That would give a simple way for watchers/readers to say they like that without needing to write a comment. Often there's not more to say than "that was cool" or "well not my cup of tea". One click instead of writing, just a number somewhere instead of lots of contributions. For those who chose to do so, it's not forbidden to write text.
Then it's only fair to have a "not my cup of tea" button too. Because "dislike" is not a nice term.

No need to process all that in social media style, no suggestions or whatever they use to annoy users.

All that shouldn't be considered more than a trend!
Don't give up everything that doesn't get most likes.
Don't over-interprete that.
Well... sounds complicated?!

Just walls of uncannily big, gaping mouths and deformed feet or legs.

That's somehow disturbing to mee too. AI images looke more or less realistic, that makes it more odd if certain aspects are overly unreal.
Besides that always seeing the same gets boring over time. No matter if AI or hand-drawn or plot or situation...

 

[GorillaTickler]

Due to piracy and the abundance of free content, there's little profit motive for people to produce good content anymore. Enjoy the old stuff and take what you can get because the old days are never coming back.

 

[GhostOS]

Due to piracy and the abundance of free content, there's little profit motive for people to produce good content anymore. Enjoy the old stuff and take what you can get because the old days are never coming back.

I can't really speak for video content, but as an artist and a writer, wait and see... wait and see.

 

[sophilos]

I love the huge volume of good stuff in the Drew70 archive, but so much of it is in black-and-white. There's a website for that, several in fact. I've put ten images through Hotpot, an on-line colorizer.

In the last twenty-four hours, the thread (Drew70 colorized) has racked up one hundred sixty-five views, a decent pace when you consider that that's about as many members as were on-site on average from posting. As for comments, however ... Even Milagros has ignored me, but he seems to be a resolved and exclusive foot guy. And, more than ever (been here thirteen years and some), this is increasingly a foot-lover's site.

The posters who say that a pat on the back goes a long way are speaking for me. Has it been worth doing so far? Yes.

Further? We'll see.