Yeah, unfortunately this was the best article I could find in English, better than nothing I guess.

I’m not necessarily saying this is the case for these artists, but the sad truth is the current society is perfectly engineered to make the average worker as apathetic as possible.

You work 8 hours a day not counting commute and meals, which means you’re left with very little free time, and you’re really tired on top of that. Plenty of people choose to spend that time doing things that actually make them happy or relaxed, instead of looking at the state of the world and being even more sad because of learned (or sometimes even actual) helplessness.

Of course, it would be better if they didn’t, but can you really blame them when the system is stacked against us?

(Obviously the whole situation applies to the apathetic/apolitical ones, the “actively fighting against other peoples causes because they aren’t your own” bunch can go fuck themselves)

I’m not saying every Japanese person still on there is unaware of that, but the general coverage is MUCH smaller than what you get if you’re in English-speaking spaces.

I also heavily doubt someone of korean origins like Boichi is a Sanseito supporter, but that’s just my guess.

Unfortunately, the two “big names” I know of (Boichi and Kei Urana) are both going to Instagram.

EDIT: it seems at least Kei Urana is on Bluesky too

I know, I just couldn’t find a better term to distinguish the two. I’m sorry if that sounded diminishing to them, it was definitely not my intention.

I think all the uproar is about new Grok functions that allow you to edit with AI and repost (aka distribute) images directly from within Xitter (I’m not sure that this is the case but I’m definitely not going to log in that thing to verify that).

“Actual artists” as opposed to “fanartists”, in the sense of “people who are under contract and are hired to do art as a job”.

Of course I’m not saying people who don’t have a team aren’t “real artists”, it was just a way to differentiate fanartists from people like Boichi, I didn’t mean to sound gatekeeping.

Ehh… it’s one of the biggest platforms in Japan, and if it starts pissing off that fanbase it’s not a good look. Definitely won’t “die” either, but it might be a considerable hit (and hopefully boost for the Fediverse, or at least Bluesky).

Absolute facts. Also it’s one thing when it’s fanartists which just do that as a past time, but actual artists should have a dedicated team and it really shouldn’t be hard to crosspost on multiple platforms, should it…?

It’s just free visibility that they’re ignoring, definitely a huge head scratcher.

Generally in Japan they don’t see much of Elon’s “prowesses”, so I can kinda understand why artists like him might not have caught wind of the Nazi direction the platform has taken until it actually hit them.

And yes, Ignorantia non excusat, but it’s still something, at least.

Yes, unfortunately Boichi is leaving… for Instagram.

But hopefully this is at least a wake-up call for some artists that they should really consider leaving for platforms with “less malicious intentions”. Maybe one day someone as big as him will decide to go fediverse, we can only hope.