Description from original post (created 2012-06-15 21:16):
HEY! You with the pretty face... c'mere. *hugz*This is my current skin, I've been waiting for the right moment to upload it, and well, this fits that bracket. So, this is my submission for the "A skin, a person, an opinion, an idea." event started by DinowCookie.
This is my face. Hai thar.
My name's Mole (Hence the skin), though I guess this post is going to be super friendly anyway, y'all can call me Connor (It's actually spelt "Connaire" but I didn't want to confuse everyone).
I'm British, 16, am a musician, artist and Steampunk fanatic. I'm also really damn accurate with a bow, and nearly got scouted for Britain's 2012 Olympic team.
I first started skinning by accident. Seriously, by accident. My friend Matty forwarded me a link to a "Free Trial" of Minecraft, which later turned out to be a torrent of a hacked version, which didn't let me change my skin from the Default. Now, not knowing anything about Minecraft, it's success, it's community OR skinning at this point in late 2010, I decided to take matters into my own hands, I opened Photoshop, drew up a skin of a nerdy guy with a purple creeper shirt and I changed the game's files.
Feeling like a boss, I opened up Google to tell people how to overcome the skin issue... it was at that moment I found the Minecraft community... and bought the game.
So, story time over, it's Opinion Time.
When I first joined PMC, I had just quit using the Troll infested Minecraft Forums, and thought this place was a peaceful recluse of pixelated serenity... and for a time it was. I posted some low-quality skins, people liked them, we all laughed and clinked glasses to how happy we all were.
But, six months has changed this website. Now, Skinners have to be edgy, popular and have a stupid number of subscribers to even have their skins acknowledged, let alone liked. This isn't just present with the skins either, it goes for all manor of PMC works, like projects, artwork and blogs. And why? Mass Mimetic Influence.
What is Mass Mimetic Influence? It's what happens when a large group of people gets a hold of an idea, repeats it and does so without acknowledging that it's a bad idea. It's where "memes" come from. Repeated ideas.
PMC is drowning under an ocean of Teenager skins, Steve re-textures, blocks of plain colour with faces, Server spawn saves, Hunger Games servers, Trolls, Rants and rants about rants. Damn it.
Wat'cha gon' do 'bout it?
Well, I'mma let you finish, but I think that the PMC Admins need to loosen up a little. Yeah. Doesn't make sense does it? Well, it actually does. The more the Admins and mods try and crack down on this stuff, the less trolls are going to post it.
That's not all we can do about it, We can actually stop making bad submissions. It may sound harsh, but that's just how the change will have to take place. If you look at your skin, project and blog and think "Hmm... It could probably be better" or "It isn't as good as I want it to be" then have a friend look over it, look for tutorials, do something but just don't post it thinking, "Oh well, nobody will care," we really do.
Then there's another group of people. The ones who post repetitive skins, ideas seen a thousand times before, bad quality and think "I'M A F*CKING GOD! NOBODY CAN WITHSTAND MY AWESOMENESS!" Don't be mean about it, but send them a PM about it and tell them something like;
"Hey buddy, I couldn't help but notice that Herobrine skin you just posted. I'm not saying quit on skinning or get off my website or anything like that, but maybe consider taking it down? It's an old idea, lots of people have done it before and there's probably a brilliant idea you have hidden away in your head, something unique, that you could use to make PMC a better place, content wise."
One final thing, the rest of us. We need to look back through our submissions, because it's likely we've posted a lot of crap in the past and not realised it. I know I'm about to delete 50 or so of my old skins. In a way, we're all to blame for neglecting to address the problem with civility before it got out of hand, now we just have to read through all the rant blogs and such saying how PMC sucks these days. We need to be a lot more sensitive about it. If you see these submissions, just take a minute to be kind, but let the user know how you feel about it, after all, this is a site pretty much designed for feedback.
Also, sorry if this came across a little violently or unclear as to my message, it's past 3am, I'm a little tired.
Goodnight PMC, love you all. <3