An empire of mostly average art, though there are quite a few that are good. Sadly, this empire is overruled by fanart rather than creative,
original art. Anything else other than fanart hardly ever gets noticed.
Your drawing/photo/movie/poem may get viewed by some, but usually no more than 30 times. If you get a comment on it by someone, that's usually the last comment you'll ever
get on it, unless you have some friends (AKA DeviantWatchers) that like your artwork. If you're lucky, it might even get a favorite.
On the other hand, if you submit a drawing of a character from, say,
Full Metal Alchemist, or
Inu Yasha, You may get as much as 100 views or more within the same hour that you submitted it. These usually get more comments and favorites, especially if you draw the male characters looking all bishie-like (The deviantart community is mostly girls, so it's natural that they'd like this kind of stuff).
Then there are the
Deviants that are extremely popular and worshipped by thousands. I have no idea how they got this popular, but the case with these people is that, no matter WHAT they submit, no matter how stupid it looks, or how simple it is, it appears on the
front page in the "Today's Favorites" section. Their artwork gets about 500 favorites per picture, as well as about 8 pages of comments by people saying how cute it is, how much they love
Edward Elric, or how much they love the artist, despite the simplicity of the work. There ARE some photos/drawings/movies though which I agree deserve to be there, but most of them are just random new pictures submitted by "a popular artist"
There are some less-popular artists out there who submit more
interesting things than what appears on the front page, but sadly, since their name is not "
Rimfrost", or "bleed-man", nobody notices their work.
So, to sum it up, deviantart is a nice place. I just wish that others' original artwork would get noticed as well. I go there too, and submit drawings of my own characters, but the only ones who see it are my friends. It would be good if all art was appreciated, and I'm not simply talking about the original art of ONLY the popular artists, but EVERYONE's art.