ToastedTruffles
Early Adopter
There's some weirdness here that's hard for me to nail down.
Sometimes I'll downvote something only because it's offensively bad in terms of quality. Other times I'll upvote it because of the concept behind it, or the story the picture tells, even if it's otherwise just mediocre quality. There's this thing where there's more to art quality than just the smoothness of the lines or whether colours are perfectly blended together. I guess you could call it a "creative" aspect to art.
Suppose someone would be able to draw a nearly photorealistic horse. It was a technically superb drawing, but the image itself was boring. Just the horse standing still. Now, you have a second image of a horse. This second image is not quite photorealistic, and the stylization is a little bit unsteady. You can tell that the artist doesn't quite have all their ducks in a row as far as practicing all the fundamentals, but it's not offensively bad. But, in this second image, they also drew a lot of busy, crazy stuff happening around the horse in the background. This adds a level of attention to detail, overall visual complexity, and a sense of purpose to the image. The purpose of this second image would be in the contrast between the frenetic action and hijinx happening around the horse, and the horse's "gives zero fucks" attitude. The second image tells a story. It's expressive. It has personality. Even though the drawing is not as technically high quality as the first image of just a well-drawn horse, I would say that the second image is better.
I might have wandered around a bit, but I do think that the criteria of concept and technical expertise are both indicators of legitimate quality in some way.
Related to what I just said, downvotes for offensively bad art are one thing. When that art style somehow gets forced into it's own meme and it's own signature, then things get a bit complicated. I don't know how to connect this idea to the main thread, but there are some cases of technical art quality and expression of subjects I don't like that can be good enough that I'm tempted to toss a like or in rare cases, favourite it, despite generally disliking the subject matter or theme of the image. Linked to this are cases of subject matter I don't like that are especially offensive. Where, normally, I'd just scroll past and barely notice it because it has zero appeal to me, this actually makes my experience with browsing worse. In those cases, whether it's prompted by offensively bad art style or egregiously disgusting expressions of subject matter that I actively dislike, I (rarely) find myself hitting the dislike button.
It's a bit complicated. The exact lines probably vary depending on a number of factors from what my mood is that day, how much I feel like interacting with the voting system, how much of the possibly-disliked concept fits in with whatever I'm searching for at the time, how much the disliked thing stands out, or other things I forgot to list.
Edit: I don't really have a clear and concrete answer for you, but I do have a bit of musing on the subject to toss in to the thread.
Sometimes I'll downvote something only because it's offensively bad in terms of quality. Other times I'll upvote it because of the concept behind it, or the story the picture tells, even if it's otherwise just mediocre quality. There's this thing where there's more to art quality than just the smoothness of the lines or whether colours are perfectly blended together. I guess you could call it a "creative" aspect to art.
Suppose someone would be able to draw a nearly photorealistic horse. It was a technically superb drawing, but the image itself was boring. Just the horse standing still. Now, you have a second image of a horse. This second image is not quite photorealistic, and the stylization is a little bit unsteady. You can tell that the artist doesn't quite have all their ducks in a row as far as practicing all the fundamentals, but it's not offensively bad. But, in this second image, they also drew a lot of busy, crazy stuff happening around the horse in the background. This adds a level of attention to detail, overall visual complexity, and a sense of purpose to the image. The purpose of this second image would be in the contrast between the frenetic action and hijinx happening around the horse, and the horse's "gives zero fucks" attitude. The second image tells a story. It's expressive. It has personality. Even though the drawing is not as technically high quality as the first image of just a well-drawn horse, I would say that the second image is better.
I might have wandered around a bit, but I do think that the criteria of concept and technical expertise are both indicators of legitimate quality in some way.
Related to what I just said, downvotes for offensively bad art are one thing. When that art style somehow gets forced into it's own meme and it's own signature, then things get a bit complicated. I don't know how to connect this idea to the main thread, but there are some cases of technical art quality and expression of subjects I don't like that can be good enough that I'm tempted to toss a like or in rare cases, favourite it, despite generally disliking the subject matter or theme of the image. Linked to this are cases of subject matter I don't like that are especially offensive. Where, normally, I'd just scroll past and barely notice it because it has zero appeal to me, this actually makes my experience with browsing worse. In those cases, whether it's prompted by offensively bad art style or egregiously disgusting expressions of subject matter that I actively dislike, I (rarely) find myself hitting the dislike button.
It's a bit complicated. The exact lines probably vary depending on a number of factors from what my mood is that day, how much I feel like interacting with the voting system, how much of the possibly-disliked concept fits in with whatever I'm searching for at the time, how much the disliked thing stands out, or other things I forgot to list.
Edit: I don't really have a clear and concrete answer for you, but I do have a bit of musing on the subject to toss in to the thread.