Jesus Christ thank you. The anti-dribbble stalins-in-training are so annoying. The mindset that a thing is bad because of the way people choose to use it is ridiculous. You personally can use Dribbble to your advantage if you're going in with the right mindset.

tl;dr: dribbble is a gallery, not a community.

Dribbble is a very powerful tool, especially the Pro account. That's how both of my employers found me. Use it to your advantage.

All I ever see on Dribbble are illustrations and/or animation that would make pro illustrators/animators cringe. I guess that's what "design" has come to.

Dribbble the site is great! Dribbble the community is a bit problematic.

It's tough because it really hits the sweet spot of being engaging and fun to browse; if it was truly an uber design-salon where everyone is tearing up mockups with hyper-critical feedback, no one would share, remix, or recreate the work they see. Would I love it if everyone was 100% honest and critical 100% of the time? Probably. Will that happen? Oh hell no. And that's totally fine.

So while I understand the criticism (and have somewhat perpetuated it myself), I also know that you have to separate the platform from the creators. There are many times where showing a peek of your creative work and getting an impulse of feedback is highly rewarding and really useful, and there are times where you need to put up giant flow diagrams and walk through/rationalize a redesign with product owners and stakeholders.

Just because Dribbble doesn't afford the second as well as the first doesn't mean it's inherently valueless.

I haven't visited Dribbble for a few months now. I guess we know in what category I'm in. =))))

My opinion on this is that Dribbble was great while the invitations system kept mediocre professionals out of its ranks. Now Dribbble is a stream of constant visual spam. It may be great for some people, but unless you're really desperate, searching through it for inspiration can be really a time consuming job. Dribbble was great. Once.

Bah... but who cares about what I think anyway... =))

The analogy of a playground is a good one — especially because with Swift developers have a playground of their own for tinkering with code. It only makes sense that designers would benefit from a playground of their own, too.

You are absolutely correct. What I find ridiculous is that people have such strong opinions on. I personally see the value it provides as a way to keep current on the newest trends and to find visual inspiration, whether it is a real project or not. If you don't see the value in it, then don't use it. It is as simple as that.