Hello to any and all that read this post!

My name is Sam, from Australia. A pleasure to meet you! You might be wondering as to why I'm making an introduction of myself on Newgrounds.

With the constant enshittifiction of other social media sites and the evaporation of old school forum websites, I thought it appropriate to start posting on Newgrounds. The site's staunch opposition to genAi is something that I really admire, and I feel that meeting new people would be really fun on here! In the spirit of my first post on the site, I would like to give a little background on who I am and what my intentions are on the site.

I created an account on Newgrounds in 2012, but I'm certain that I used the site even before then. Like most children with unrestricted internet access in the early to mid 2000s and 2010s, I spent a large majority of my time playing Flash games on here and many other sites. While these other sites had games that I would play, none we're quite as impactful on my psyche as NG (a notable memory involves a certain Plumber clad in Black....), simply because of the vast amount of community and fan-made works on the site. Growing up, I watched more animations on here than I did on Youtube, Super Mario Bros. Z was my favourite, and I'm sure there are many more that I loved that have been lost in the annals on my mind. While my ambition to become an animator started with older TF2 themed Garry's Mod machinimas (I am credit card......charge me!!), I think the catalyst of seeking out other animations started here. Now 12 years on from the creation of my account, I have gone through primary school, high school, and college. I have diplomas for both Visual Arts and Screen and Media (and an advanced diploma for VA!). However, my output has been lacking since I finished up my tertiary studies last year. While I could blame plenty of personal issues for this, but I hope to catch up on time lost with this (relatively) untouched part of my internet history (I hadn't ever changed my profile image here until today).

"What do you plan on using this account for, Sam?", I hear the imaginary person reading this shout from the void. I am happy to oblige.

First and foremost, I want to post any new 3D (and maybe 2D) artwork that I create on this platform. With Newgrounds' focus on community-made things (made by everyone), I feel that I could entertain and find more of an audience here than other websites. While I do intend to eventually become a professional animator, posting here would be a good start. With the amount of people on places like Deviantart, Bluesky and Twitter (currently X), I suspect that reaching people on those sites would be near impossible unless you're incredibly lucky. Comparatively, I assume that Newgrounds has a much smaller userbase, and I could find more people on here than other sites.

Secondly, I also hope to use this site as a personal blog, posting on here from time to time. I've loved the idea of making a blog, but there are simply not many sites that actually allow or facilitate someone to do so, and I think this is a real shame. Somewhat related to this is my distaste of forums and personal sites being relegated to Discord servers. I don't think that Discord servers don't have a purpose, but attempting to find information or solutions to obscure problems has become more difficult because of them. Being able to type a vague outline of a problem and having a thread of people also having the same problem can be comforting, and having a public place to access the solution is much more convenient than having to join a server that's cut off from online searches.

Finally, I would just like to use this account for interacting with people in an environment that helps to do so in a welcoming manner. I feel social media has devolved to a shit-flinging contest on who can be the most mean to each other. While I'm sure that isn't the case with all sites, it seems to be the default state that many turn towards.

If you have read through this entire post through your own volition and weren't strapped to a chair, I thank you! I hope we can interact with one another once I start uploading on here. I hopeful that I will be using this site more now that I have a bit more motivation to start doing 3D stuff again, since I recently got a replacement charger for my old laptop. I should be able to get more stuff done now that I can get away from my desktop PC and all the distractions that it holds (Deadlock has me in a bit of a choke-hold at the moment).

Thank you and good-bye for today!