Hello my friends.

So, I made an interesting discovery today.  I'd never heard of a Watch Bot before and I was mildly surprised that such a thing exists!  

Over the years that I've been here I've had quite a few watches by people, who, when I visit their page, I notice that they have no art work of their own, yet they seem to have a huge gallery of favorites, and many people saying "thanks" for the faves and watches.

I never really understood it, but now I do.  These people create hack programs that allow them to "watch" random deviants for no reason at all, except the thrill of saying they can do it.  They gain watchers because many people will just automatically watch a watcher in return. (say THAT 10 times really fast!)  Apparently some will use it to gain points, etc which they can then use for other things.  They can "watch" about one deviant per second - gaining several watchers in a short time.

There is a journal about his here:  [link]

Now........ how do I feel about this?  

I'm not really sure - I guess that I'm a bit surprised that someone would even want to do this.

In a way it's just a silly prank and so it really doesn't matter..... or does it?

Call me old fashioned - but I'm here for the art.  If you aren't here for the art.... then why in the hell are you here??  To play games?  There are plenty of sites for that.  It's not effecting me in any real way, but I guess I like to think that my watchers watch me because they are interested in my art.  They might not like everything I do - but they find it somewhat interesting enough to honour me by watching me.  That's why I watch people.  I don't go around giving out false watches "just because".  If I'm watching you, there is a reason.

I won't say my feelings are hurt - but let's say that there's a new person - maybe they are a bit young and insecure about their art and they just want more than anything for people to watch them.They want to feel that their art is good enough for people to watch them.  C'mon - think back to when you first joined - wasn't it thrilling to get those first few watchers?  Even now, don't you get a little jolt of pleasure when you see that someone new wants to see your work?  Of course we do - now imagine you are that new kid who's so excited.  You go to the page to genuinely thank the person and then you find out that they never even saw your work - all it was was a creepy web crawler that randomly picked you out of a million deviants.  Kind of deflating, isn't it?

Anyways, there are other reasons why I think it's wrong - but this journal is getting long enough already so I'll just leave it at that.  I just wonder though.... if DA is not interested in making the site secure against this sort of script usage - what else is not secure?  



So, with the current solar storms happening, I've been itching to get out there and get some photos of the Northern Lights!  My friend and I have been anxiously awaiting night fall every night in hopes of going out and hunting for this elusive magic and wouldn't you know it??  It's been cloudy every damn night!!  grrrrrrrr!!!   I'm not sure how long this elevated occurrence is supposed to last - but maybe we can still get out there yet.  I have never shot them before and I'd like to be able to take a stab at it!!

wish me luck!!

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