Steemit and the Replacement of Substance for Currency

This is the first thing I've written for Steemit and I feel bad that 1. It's going to be critical of the platform and 2. It's going to be mildly hypocritical. I was attracted to Steemit after a friend of mine sent me a link to the site after we had a small discussion of the nature and problems with other social media sites. I was excited to find a community that would be built out of other crypto-enthusiasts and hopefully decentralize social networks by sharing the monetary health of the organism with all of it's constituents.

What worries me about the health of this enterprise is that most of the content is about the platform itself which is an issue because frankly... it's boring. Now granted it's not boring for people like you and me and I realize I'm making a lot of assumptions by even saying "you and me" but it will do little to create wider appeal unless we begin to create content that people want to read and can have fun with and isn't entirely some post about the novelty of the post on Steemit.

"Check out the first song written on Steemit"

Who gives a shit? Is it a good song? Does it make me feel good? Is it connecting me to thoughts and ideas bigger than myself?

The problem that this platform will have is attracting legitimate artists and people who are honestly creative to actually start building their communities here versus other places on the webs where they already exist. Right now this site is occupied by a bunch of largely uninspired and talentless bloggers that are trying to game a currency rather than being legitimately inspired to share some part of themselves.

The problem in my opinion lies in incentive and the idea that content generation, a disgusting word created by even less talented people, is motivated by currency. The idea that by introducing incentive beyond what a human being already was born with will some how fix a community or society is ludicrous and is leading to the echo chamber that this site is currently. What is the solution to this? Mindfulness and perhaps some anonymity.

I think people need to be more honest with themselves about their intentions for contributing to this site and any site for that matter. Hell maybe they need to be honest with themselves when just choose to open their mouths. Regardless, IT IS NOT A VIRTUE TO COLLECT COINS. We exist in a time where our concept of value is more abstract than it has ever been before largely because the actions we participate have become symbolic performances that are disconnected from the items that keep us alive. Staying alive itself is so taken for granted by most people living in western society that we have chosen to adopt a religion of currency to manifest meaning in our life. Artists understand this whether they conceptualize this idea concretely in their heads or not. This is because despite some of them finding ways to make money from performing art the challenge within it is a motivation to bring something that is inside of you to the outside of you for no other validation than you can do it. Of course like so many things this too can be bastardized and I am of course speaking about an idealized form of "Artist". Regardless it's something to aim for.

Like most aspects of human nature though there are items within the devices and mechanisms we choose to interface with that enhance or diminish certain modes of our being. Marshal Macluhan made this comment many times throughout his career describing the technological revolutions of agriculture as extensions of the body and then media revolutions of the 60's and forwards as extensions of the nervous system. The radio creating emphasis within our auditory pathways, the tv giving weight to visual information and so on. In Steemit and other crypto based social media platforms the emphasis is of course placed on a concretized sense of value that is currency. It's concretized in that it is a number that is meant to empirically determine it's worth, which is something that in the modern age we will probably never get away from but it's worth being reminded that the "map is not the territory". In my opinion though what this incentives is not the exchange of information and ideas but the accumulation of points and that we need to come up with a way to change that incentive without subtracting it's reward. I think that this involves introducing some amount of anonymity.

We need to quit sharing how much each post is making because it's that information that incentivizes people to collect coins rather than express themselves. The problem of course is that by removing that information for the sake of creation we remove a certain amount of public transparency which seems like it might undermine the spirit of the cause but what's the point if the eventual future of this place is a garbage heap of advice articles on maximizing vitality and increasing your collection of extinct internet coins.