It’s not every day that one of Twitter’s seemingly arbitrary hashtag trends is relevant to the art world (or to anyone other than teenage Twitter trolls). But on Saturday, #ThingsPeopleSayToArtists was born, and it continues to gain speed as artists around the world share some of the hilariously misanthropic comments.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of comments on #ThingsPeopleSayToArtists seem to be somewhere in between “get a real job!” and “wow, you’re so good at drawing, all I can draw are stick figures.”

Luckily, there have been some slightly more outside-of-the-box responses to the hashtag query as well.

Both art dealer Edward Winkleman and artist William Powhida have joined in on the #ThingsPeopleSayToArtists trend:

Photo via Twitter/@Powhida/@edwardwinkleman

Mitch Goldstein, a professor in the school of design at Rochester Institute of Technology, is one voice legitimizing the conversation.

Photo via Twitter/@mgoldst

Twitter users Steph Rattanachane and Kat Warren share two things we wish people would never say to artists:

Photo via Twitter/@SRattanachane

Photo via Twitter/@KatWarrenArt

These are all good and illuminating responses, but we have a feeling there’s a lot more to be said about #ThingsPeopleSayToArtists. This is the kind of convo that artists (and art historians) tend to dread.

Is there any chance we can get some of our favorite social media-savvy artists to weigh in (see The 15 Best Artists To Follow on Instagram)? Or perhaps a certain outspoken art critic (see Jerry Saltz on Why Street Art Throwdown is Complete Crap)? After all, who knows how long we’ll have to wait to get another hashtag so perfectly suited to airing artists’ grievances.


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