Agreed with @TomFulp! I was a dumbass and deleted a lot of my flash back in the day because they were "rated too low" thanks to 0 bombers. Thankfully I found out they weren't actually removed from the server itself, and managed to retrieve them all (with some help)! I might consider putting them back up, if not on the Portal, then probably on the dump as a retrospective for newer users to see.
This is especially important these days as I'm sure there's a lot of new users out there who see the glitz and the glamour and don't see everyone's rather humble beginnings, and that can be rather intimidating - especially to impressionable kids/teens who are probably the bigger demographic on NG!
TomFulp
Thanks for sharing this! And I'm in total agreement about not removing old work - it is huge that newcomers can see where their favorite artists started out.
I've been contemplating making a post about a big problem on the Internet - people taking themselves too seriously. It's the reason why some people remove their old work or don't share anything at all, or the reason they feel compelled to only share their work in a stuffy / pretentious environment, treating Newgrounds as too "low-brow" for their work and by extension themselves to be taken seriously.
I think it reveals a huge insecurity in people and we're all insecure but this is the sort of thing I think people can and should overcome.
Intrapath
Thanks so much for the response! And I think that would make for a fantastic post. It saddens me when I've seen some of the biggest artists NG used to have go and clear everything out. A post on overcoming insecurity would be awesome, considering how many artists deal with that.