Since I don't have the luxury of having the time today to analyze and deconstruct your post in detail, just let me start by saying, thanks for another interesting and thought provoking post, and then I'll make a few points in response to some of what you wrote.
The speed with which technology is emerging and transforming is indeed incredible. The tools at our disposal to reach large masses of people was simply unfathomable a generation ago.
Like many tools, the technology can be used for good or evil, or any number of other purposes.
You began with a cliche, art imitates life, so here is another one, this time from Marshall McLuhan, "the medium is the message". This medium, the internet, has vast potential to either empower us or entrap/imprison us. If we don't learn how to make it do the former, the latter will take us over before we know what has happened. The battle lines are still being drawn.
Moving on, not everything visual is meant as art. Much of that is due to the motivations of people who are behind the various web creations that inundate us. The plain and simple truth is that for many people, the web is only a means to accumulate wealth quickly and easily.
If they feel a need to hire a designer to add a window-dressing to increase profits, they add it, but creating an aesthetic looking site is not the main motivation. I think that this is why so much of the creative output we see in the adult business is cookie cutter in style.
I think the fact that the technology is new, and more easily embraced by young people who are unencumbered by the same necessities of life that already established older people have to cope with (kids, mortgages, etc), is also behind some of this. The lack of maturity among many in the adult industry is apparent in so many ways.
To a generation over-stimulated by video games and a plethora of media that assaults their senses with blatant appeals to greed and putting personal satisfaction ahead of community, the place of art in culture has been severely, although not altogether, diminished.
True artists always form a small percentage of most societies. As technology throws more visual information at us at an ever frenzied pace, the ability of the true artist, particularly those that work with their hands in an intimate way, to be noticed becomes increasingly more difficult.
Erotica? What's that? Sure there are some of us that try to blend in erotica with the imagery we create. But for many it appears to be all about getting attention (traffic) by whatever means works - since there is so much content on the market, the current method seems to be by being using ever more extreme or shocking content.
The people that create this extreme content can hide behind a video monitor in anonymity, although they will frequent places such as GFY in search of recruits or validation for creating content that they probably know is less than acceptable to most people in society.
There are people creating some very artistic and erotic web sites that are also making good money, and there are others that don't. Basically, there are some artists that don't mind being starving artists if they can remain pure and true to their art.
Personally, I fall somewhere in between. I put a lot of work into what I do, and so I like to have some financial reward for that, since that is what enables me to grow and expand my infrastructure, increase my tools, and add more colors to my palate. Ultimately it allows me to refine my technology driven art and reach more people with the meanings embedded in my creative output (be it web, DVDs or whatever).
Although I am untrained as an artist, I strive to bring a certain aesthetic to everything I do, and I constantly try to expand my creative boundaries. It's painfully slow at times, but as I achieve each new plateau I feel a great sense of accomplishment and more freedom than I ever knew before in my previous endeavors.
Like you I appreciate the sense of the community that GFY offers, although I think it has the potential to be even better and be more than it is today if the moderators want to do that. Sure, lots of what is posted gets under my skin (mostly mindless flaming, misogynist/racist bigoted posts and gross/violent pictures), but that is more than made up for by the laughter, and especially the sharing and caring that many demonstrate in here.
Well, I am certain I have rambled on long enough for one post. Just wanted to share a few thoughts which your post inspired.
Congrats on the 3,000k and keep up the great posts.
ADG Webmaster