It’s been exactly 5 years since I joined Newgrounds. I joined way back when I was in high school, and now I’m in my early 20’s fresh age 21 and shit. I’ve written a bit about my early days of Newgrounds, but this post I’ll write some shit that’s been on my mind lately. Having been on Newgrounds for a good solid chunk of time, it’s interesting to see certain people come and go. I’ve also noticed a sorta new age of people poppin in. People who made their accounts only a year or so ago starting to gain organic prominence from the site. New kids on the block and shit.
One thing I like about Newgrounds is that aspect that still holds up today, that people can still be homegrown here. I think with the current social media culture shit, we’re going to start seeing more and more prominent artists come to Newgrounds with already established fan bases. But as time goes on I think people definitely need to pay attention to new kids poppin up on the scene. Even if they’re annoying, obnoxious, rude, bad at animating, whatever. I specifically remember early in my days on the site, I was making shitty ass animations, and to this day I’m very thankful that people like @Saminat not only gave me the time of day, but was super cool to me and did voice work for a shitty ass animation I worked on way back. Saminat could have easily been rude or mean or whatever to me, and maybe if that happened I coulda been turned off the site entirely and not got to where I am today.
Another person I’ll rep for the same reason is my man @PhantomArcade. Way back me and him were working on a game, and I really didn’t prove myself game design or programming wise all that much. But me and him still got to working on some projects here and there and he was real cool about doin shit. Same situation as earlier he could have easily just told me to leave him alone or whatever and it coulda been a turnoff for me for NG shit.
There’s easily many many other instances of people bein cool to me to name them all, those 2 been on my mind lately as I been working my way through writing this post. Shoutouts u boys lov u
It's very easy when you already have some friend group or whatever to simply interact with them only, and that's fine to do so, but I think it's almost always worthwhile to keep your eyes open for new kids and shit. Not only younger 14/15 year olds or whatever, but just people new to Newgrounds in general. I think one of the special things about Newgrounds is the community, everyone lookin out for each other and interacting and talking and collaborating and whatever. I feel like I've fallen into it a bit where I slip on some of the new shit because I already have a friend group and people I know and people who know me or whatever.
It’s definitely been a ride so far, especially though this year. I don’t wanna jack myself off but I do hope I’m somewhat a good influence on the community, even if I’m a little rascal here and there. Love NG. It’s very interesting to be at the point where I can look back on a few years of NG, see how the site and culture has changed. I do think it’s on the rise, and it’s been very inspiring to see fresh blood. People still discovering Newgrounds shit, not only through nostalgia. I guess I’m somewhat in that category, but I think it’s still interesting.
Anyways some cool swag updates of what I been doing, I been hustling on a COOL ass animation. Won’t say too much about it but it will definitely be awesome and one of the best submissions of the month when it comes out yeah probably.
Lately I’ve very much been stressing about a lot of things. It’s very nice and pleasant to be writing things out like this. Everyone knows this year has been a bit of a doozy. I been having horrible sleep schedules and shit, bad work ethic, and just going stir crazy in general. Slowly workin my way through it, comes and goes yall know how it is. I been trying to ease up on balancing a billion different projects. Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it all just crashes and nothin goes thru. Showbiz baby. Lately just have been focusing on this one single animation and have been able to make some good progress on it, so it’s been nice to have more or less 1 main project cooking, even if just THAT can become overwhelming at some points. Everyone is probably all burnt out through this year, so I’m probably not alone in feeling all that.
To roll back to the first topic, shoutouts to all the fresh blood on Newgrounds, whether ur some 14 year old kid or some late 20s guy who stumbled across Newgrounds trying to find a community. I’m glad the Newgrounds community ain’t gettin stale, makes me very hopeful for the site. And I’ll say something that I’ve said about last year or so, I’m hopeful that Newgrounds isn’t just ‘some springboard’ into other more lucrative ventures like Youtube or Steam or whatever. I do think that one day Newgrounds can be the beginning, middle, and end. Something that you can ride with for life, because I ain’t ever wanna bounce outta here. I don’t know exactly what that’s gonna look like, so we’re gonna have some more interesting years ahead of us. Lov everyone who uses this site.
if there's any dumbass typos remind me in the morning lolololol
TomFulp
wow
ninjamuffin99
classic tom