Those of us who have graduated from high school can usually glance back at the things we did to gain (or avoid) popularity, and more often than not, we wonder why it even mattered. High school popularity only lasts those 4 years, then it dies. Maybe a little glimmer of those feelings revives itself when we look through our yearbooks, but it's only temporary. In the grand scheme of life, it just doesn't make a difference to be popular in high school.

DeviantArt is not like high school.

DA is a community and a business to the people that come to this website. We love it for both sides; we can communicate and express ourselves through art, and we can buy or sell artwork to make our lives a bit more beautiful around us. I don't prefer one side over the other. Both sides are equally important components to what makes DA so appealing.

However, unlike high school, popularity does matter.

Many of the skilled and renowned artists on this website sell their artwork as a supplement or even a main income. Professional artists that use DA as their main middleman work hard to maintain the popularity they have gained over the past few years.

Then DA revamped the "Popular" browsing tool into this FairExposure tool. Every time people now click that link on the front page, they no longer see the most popular works first; they just see whatever deviations got at least 1 fav in the past 24 hours. I'm all for letting new artists be seen, but I know everyone's sick of seeing effortless doodles of naked girls with big breasts before they can find a beautiful photograph or a digital painting that took 8 hours to complete.

People get frustrated before too long and stop looking through the Popular browser. I bet if DA looked at their stats for how many pages a person would go before searching or browsing in other ways, they'd have decreased since the change. I know I used to spend at least 30 minutes browsing through there, picking out items for my favs or wishlist. Now I spend less than 5. It's just not worth it to keep looking for a needle in a haystack when the number of deviations posted per day continually increase.

Since the changes DA has made to the popular browser, I've added at least 10 Deviants to my DeviantWatch, an occurance that would usually have intervals of weeks. I can't trust browsing to find good works, so if I find an artist who created Deviations that I like, I have to add them simply so I can see if they post just one more like it. I've begun adding favs and wishlists only through browsing through one gallery at a time so I don't have to fish through incomplete, thoughtless, and effortless "art".

As for the artists, those that have worked hard to create beautiful works now have to just twiddle their thumbs and hope newcomers or browsers are patient enough to wade through the horde to find their work. Those that are currently rising to the top by building popularity, but aren't there yet, now have to rely on patience rather than appreciation if they want their name to be known.

DeviantWatch is supposed to be a tool for browsers to keep track of their favorite artists. Now that the "Popular" browsing tool has been changed, it's become a way of keeping track of people who just toss out something remotely interesting or hoping they're create something like the one Deviation that caught a browser's eye. No longer does it tell an artist that "I am a fan and I plan to follow your work from here on out". It just tells them "You're interesting, I'll keep tabs on you in case you continue to be so".

DA has turned popularity into the mundane. It's turned art appreciation into patience for the commonplace.

The former Popular tool was not perfect; every now and then there would be a Deviation on the front page that was only popular because it was a depiction of a popular pairing in some show, cartoon, or anime. Sometimes a beautifully drawn piece or a time-consuming painting would be on the 50th page when the artist probably deserved to be closer to the front. However, the old Popular tool successfully presented the most prized and admired Deviations to the newcomers and browsers. They were picked because the Deviants in this community chose them, and they were set on display for anyone to see.

Perhaps our choices weren't "fair". Perhaps FairExposure does make everyone and all categories equal. But Popularity is not about fairness. It's about beauty, refinement, and appreciation. Deviants +fav a Deviation because, to them, that Deviation stands out to them, for whatever reason. The old Popular tool allowed browsers and newcomers to see which pieces stood out most among the community here at DA.

This new and "improved" "Popular" tool does none of that. It has nothing to do with popularity, quality, equality, or fairness. The only people that I can see who would benefit (which we can assume means more pageviews for Deviations and Deviants) would be the ones who half-assed a sketch and got a pal or two to +fav it. Budding artists and serious artists alike have to rely on luck to get those views now that all the categories are equally spaced on the pages. They were most likely better off without relying on luck.

I can only hope DA rectifies this mistake and realizes that punishing popular and successful Deviants is no way to create a "fair and equal" experience.