I've never written in my journal before, and it sucks that my first entry is a rant, but I need to get this off my chest. Yesterday while browsing, I found a "photomanipulation" that used stock from an excellent stock resource here at DA. The new author had resized the original photo, softened it up a bit with some blur and layering effects, and colorized the lighting differently. That's it. Oh wait, he also inserted some song lyrics into the description. Meanwhile, the deviation is racking up the favorites, every mindless lamb that wanders by has to stop and say "OH, SOOO POWERFUL!!1!"
So I check out the guy's gallery and he's got some really good, really original stuff, but also several more that are just stocks with overlays.

The dude's got 30,000+ page views.

Obviously this pisses me off. Not just this guy, because I've seen much worse, but the idea of some of the most popular submitters here throwing together sub-par submissions with awful blending or little to no creative use of stock. Meanwhile, guys like me (yes, this is about my own selfishness) and hundreds of other unknowns are out there working to get every aspect of each deviation as perfect as we can, with little more than a nod from a handful of thoughtful members. I hate to leave the impression that I submit solely for praise of other members, but feedback is important, and yeah, it feels good to have an image commented on and favorited.

This issue can not be fixed by talking to the artists. I called my guy on his submission and all he did was throw some sarcasm at me and then block me from commenting further. We need to be more aware when we're commenting. Don't just say "Oh that's pretty!" Don't you dare let the artist off that easy. Look at it critically. Look at the blending work. Look at the perspectives. Look at the lighting, the brushwork, and for goodness sake people, look at the original stocks.