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Here's a PSA:
As an artist, you may have noticed a number of fans around you giving you frequent encouragement and praise. Beware: these are not your people, they are your creeps. A creep is a person who is trying to emulate a personal connection to you, through attempts at interaction that are usually not reciprocated, and should not be reciprocated. The three main motivations are related to:
1) Status. The person is attempting to appropriate fame through association, to say they "know" you.
2) Sanity. Obsession and compulsion towards any fetish or special subjects you draw.
3) Money. Low grade sociopathic manipulation to gain free art.
TL;DR: The creep is fundamentally trying to control you for their egoistic purposes.
The most common concern for a creep is that any criticism leveled against you would discourage you from publishing art, or make you change your art in a way that no longer meets their requirements. For this reason, the creep is trying to ass-kiss you into a social bubble, also known as a "hugbox", where you are insulated from outside influence. The creep is trying to buy you with constant positive feedback, and they are always trying to shut everyone else out. Hence why they appear as white knights to defend you whenever any criticism arises, negating any other suggestions than their own. If you engage with them, they will goad you into leaving forums and sites for others where any negative speech may be banned, trash-talking other people so you would ignore them.
In a more detailed analysis, although most creeps are a mixture of all three basic types, people of type 1 and 3 are most commonly found around artists who are less than professional in their conduct. In other words, artists who are just good enough to have an audience, but not good or prolific enough to make any real money. The type 1 creep will then encourage you to charge more money and become exclusive in order to raise your apparent status. The type 3 creep will brown-nose you in attempts to avoid paying, trying to flatter you into giving out personal freebies or to slip in a suggestion for the next piece, get free access to your live streams etc. However, the more type 2 characteristics the person has, the less they ultimately care about quality, fame or money, and this type may just as suddenly turn against you for failing to adhere to their very rigid demands.
From these observations, it emerges that the number of creeps peaks for middling artists. Really good artists get type 1 creeps, really bad artists get type 2 creeps, but mediocre artists get all three types at once, and they are at the greatest danger of getting sucked up into a hugbox. That's how you know you've still got a long way to go: everyone around you is saying "Great job! Keep up the good work!". If you listen to them, you get stuck in a rut.
Do not get trapped: the creeps are trying to hold you down, they don't want you to learn other styles or methods, to become more professional, to improve or experiment, or even to get paid for your work - the creep just wants to own you.
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