When I first decided to animate I did it for three reasons. First, I liked the medium. It was amazing that your hard work you put in every frame will result in something that resembles movement. Secondly, it was fairly popular at the time. I wanted a chance at the spotlight and get some recognition. Thirdly, I always liked making stories, plots, enviroment and lore, but I didn't know how to materialise them into a visible or readable medium. Animation could be perfect for me.
But then I realised that it needs a whole more effort than drawing. Sometimes when I was in the mood I could create something mediocre. I was a beginner after all. But when you make a project for ''fun'' you want to get some satisfaction not only from the finished product, but the whole process as well. Animation wasn't really fun for me.
Perhaps it didn't suit me. Maybe I prefered more tangible art like drawing in a paper or crafting things with clay and so on. Or maybe I was a lazy sloth who couldn't finish most things if his life depended on it. It could perhaps be a fun casual activity when you have plenty of time. But animation isn't a casual activity. It needs hard work and patience. That's another reason perhaps.
On the whole, you have to animate for fun. Otherwise you might not like it. Also looking back I mostly talked about why I didn't animate instead of the opposite.

Have you ever tried stick hentai? That shit gets you so famous on xHamster.

Animating stick figures won't help you in the way of animating professionally, but people still enjoy it. It's same thing as a couple of kids playing mini golf won't forge professional golfers. For most users on this site, this is a hobby. That's kind of why people here don't really care too much about finishing a project all the way through, because there are no negative repercussions because its all in the name of an enjoyable hobby.

You can get a good story across with just basic shapes and triangles and shit. I don't know about you guys but I don't read books for the pictures. It all boils down to the way you manipulate visual media.

Stickfigures are just a simplified way of expression for beginner animators, that's all. If you aren't having fun with that then there's really no point in it.

Quote from Mantha

You can get a good story across with just basic shapes and triangles and shit. I don't know about you guys but I don't read books for the pictures. It all boils down to the way you manipulate visual media.

Stickfigures are just a simplified way of expression for beginner animators, that's all. If you aren't having fun with that then there's really no point in it.

I agree with this 100%. Stick figures are popular because they can minimally represent anything. That makes them approachable to a much wider audience, both creatively and from an entertainment perspective. A practiced animator could make a career out of animating stick figures if they wanted to (I'm pretty sure that's happened a few times already). They're a great medium for expression no matter what jaded internet narcissists say; they make it easy to get your foot in the door to the art and animation world. That consequently means there's a lot more amateur work is out there for sure, but that doesn't make stick figures inherently bad. They're a great tool to learn artistic and animation concepts with. If you enjoy working or learning with them, don't worry about it. Everyone starts somewhere.

I don't see any shame in putzing around with stickfigures until you get the hang of animating and the like. You have to learn how to walk before you run in any case. Why get all complicated with fullbody animations if stickfigures offer a simple way of learning?

OP was talking about recognition and even getting SOMETHING from animating, which you will of course never get with Practice Knuckle Sammich Exhange Video #15 (nothing bad about that either, practice makes perfect. But it's not interesting to anyone but actual fellow animators here). It's all about gaining a small audience first, if you haven't gotten into an animation school beforehands and made some sort of a connection with people who actually do animating for living.

Quote from Exile

Sure. The problem lies in the 99% of stick figure animators who have no sort of creative vision which they're trying to express through the medium of stick figures.

I agree with you, I guess I just don't see that as a "problem" as you have framed it. The whole point of these communities are to help people learn a skill. Of course it's not always going to be amazing work or even good work. No one just "has" creative vision, let alone the skills necessary to pull it off. This is part of the process. It shouldn't come as a surprise that a community full of teenagers who are learning a skill will have content of various qualities. I'm not sure why one would join a community centered around that process and expect otherwise. If being exposed to that kind of content is a problem for someone, then maybe they're in the wrong kind of community. As long as the people who strive to better themselves are doing that thanks to their involvement in the community, I don't see what the problem is.

I'm just thinking out loud so sorry if I wasn't concise. OP is frustrated and I was explaining why some people go through it, I went through it myself as a stick animator back in the day. It's easy to get into but you basically need to reinvent the wheel to do anything with the medium that's worthwhile to a general audience and that's a huge gap to cross for a beginner. It's absolutely a problem but it has a solution and we all need to figure it out as some point if we'll ever grow as creative individuals. Like you said, part of the process.