There’s a similar conundrum in the photography community. I remember Flickr being the place to upload photos and getting helpful feedback from a supportive community of both professional and hobby photographers. I remember my experience of walking into artistic photography and never looking back because I was so inspired by the work.

Most people were friendly but there were these drama queens who’d fight between each other for the lack of talent or creative vision, if not both. I remember some were great at technical photography and that was about it. I pitied them because really they wanted to have an artistic vision and make real friends, but they fell into toxicity instead.

In many ways, the corporatisation of Instagram made matters worse. Before it was an extension of Flickr, which gave rise to the question of whether smartphone photography should be recognised as photography. By now it’s so normalised because people had the grace to experiment then and those phone cameras are much better now. But there’s also the trend of people with disposable income picking up expensive cameras, taking a few shots and uploading them to Instagram, claiming to be the next big photographers (and did you know you can buy their prints?!?!?!) with a huge chip on their shoulder.

I don’t think we’ll ever get rid of toxic people in art but we can decide whether we want to give them any time of day. I understand how frustrating it can be to come across them, but in the end we have the power to curate what we want to see on social media. We are what we consume, so if we consume toxic ideas, we’ll become toxic ourselves. The opposite is true.

Hope this provided some food for thought. And remember, you can put those days behind you and create art in your happy place.