Completely agree . You summed it up so well that I couldn't think of what to add . I've two tumblr gif blogs - one for exclusive MCU content , another for posting random hollywood content , and the return is massive whereas it takes about 1/5 th of the time to make a good gif set than what it takes to make a proper icon set.

So yes some times it's awfully thankless. And I quite understand why people move on , but it's also true that making icons some how feel more creatively satisfactory for me and yes it's like keeping a fandom logbook over the years. . <3