SteemFest blues and those who'll never show
Last year, there was a little Whatsapp group made with a few Steemians who attended SteemFest3 in Poland to share some images and stories and just stay randomly in contact once we all went back to our corners of the world. With SteemFest4 in Thailand on the near horizon, it has activated again with the questions of who is going and, I wish I was.
I hope all that are however are going to have a ball and find a decent local bar to become the unofficial after-hours meeting point. The new Alchemia. It was there after the clock struck 12 that the real conversations were had and the real friendships were made.
What I wonder is what would happen if a few different kinds of people went to SteemFest as well, you know, those who are highly negative, who believe it is a failure, the vote traders, the abusive downvoters, the shitposters, the forever powerdowners and of course, those who believe it is some kind of government experiment. You know, the anti-Steemers.
I wonder what happens when a notorious vote trader has to spend time with members of the community who are trying to make it a place for the better. Or, a notorious downvoter is face to face with those same people they have downvoted out of spite. Or the negative Nancies actually spending time with real members and developers of the community, not avatars and pseudonyms.
Of course, it will never happen because while there are a wide range of people who go to SteemFest from the technical to the artistic, the whale to the minnow and from all kinds of backgrounds But, what is conspicuously missing from the group are the abusers, at least those who are known, as they don't tend to show their faces in public. I wonder why? Fear of consequences I presume.
Not that they would get punched in the face, I think that wouldn't happen IRL, it is that they fear being exposed to face to face confrontation to answer for their actions and have to defend their thoughts and in so doing, risk having their limitations in knowledge exposed. I always find it interesting that often, the most outspoken against Steem, don't know much about how it all works - it is all assumption based on their own experience.
Reality doesn't drive behavior, belief does, and on Steem it is no different. People act based their assumptions of things however misguided and poor their understanding of what they are dealing with. But, because they believe they know, they feel correct as otherwise, why would they do it?
But then, when given the opportunity to actually face some kind of reality, they shy away from the possibility because then they might just find out that they are indeed mistaken, or the chances of them being correct have reduced dramatically.
But it isn't just that and especially for those who act as if they know, once they have to face people and speak on the fly, they risk exposing the reality of the situation, that what they have portrayed is incorrect. It reminds me of a guy that I used to play Ghost Recon with back in the day in an online team made up of mostly Europeans - I was in Australia and the lag sucked. 56k modem.
The Gamer
He was a great player, Scottish. He new the maps well, talked about being ex-military, spoke the talk and more often than not, saved the team in ranked team matches, last player standing hero kind of guy. Foxton was his name, if I remember correctly.
One time, the Europeans organized a LAN gaming session where they pulled team players from all over the continent and got together for the weekend. Foxton turned up with his rig too and all went well, until they started gaming. You see, Foxton was drunk - so he didn't play well, he didn't play even close to well.
Questions were raised.
Turned out of course that he was full of shit, just another run of the mill hacker - and, he had never been in the army, he had been rejected for being physically unfit. This is why the majority of the full of shit don't turn up to public appearances - The fear of exposure.
And this is something that is rife online with those who are able to have all of the support of Google to feel like they know what they are talking about, but when push comes to shove - they haven't got much that is new, original, or even a fork in the road from what can be found elsewhere. This is also likely why when it comes to Steem, the criticism doesn't go into the technical aspects, it only looks at the surface level of it because, the technical aspects take far too much research and work for someone who only likes to Google for answers. It is also why the "fixes" they suggest are narrowly focused and don't have a chance of scaling, as this hasn't been done before.
It is actually something that a lot of people who are negative don't consider as while they believe they base their view on reality, it is always past based and assumes that the future is going to be no different. this assumption implies that all outcomes are already known and have been tested without considering what is yet to be known or whether what is known and tested failed because of alignment problems where things weren't possible because of timing, infrastructure, the current culture, the skillset, the education level, the health conditions, the size of community, the available resources... the list goes on.
A surefire way not to be exposed to the risk of being found out is to avoid situations where one has to perform what one portrays and those who can actually do it, have no fear in fronting. Those that can't have 1001 excuses.
I'm so clever, I'm so rich, I'm so talented... online.
If someone has skills online they can't demonstrate offline or can't apply to something that can't be Googled, do they hold the skill? If when called out the excuses roll in avoidance, the answer is pretty clear. Online, every one has a large penis and knows how to use it - ladies - is that your experience in the bedroom? Face to face, people have to be able to be more dynamic, more lateral in topic and more demonstrative of knowledge and skill and there are those who continually avoid the opportunity to demonstrate what they have portrayed.
I would have loved to again go to SteemFest this year and could have, but it would have to be a family trip and @smallsteps is unable to travel, especially that far with no real possibility to ensure the food is allergen free. What I am looking forward to is hearing some of the stories and of course reading the many posts that are hopefully going to flood my feed about the new ideas and especially, the fun that is had between friends met for the first time.
I have a feeling that there won't be too many SteemFests in the future like this and I am glad that I got to one at least. SteemFest will be "InvestorFest", but perhaps the tradition will be kept alive though and instead there will be SMTFest like a Comicon event that gathers a whole lot of distributed communities sharing their experiences and tech while running on Steem and enabling cross-pollination of the communities to strengthen and stabilize the network further.
Have fun everyone and, make sure you post.
But don't drink and blockchain - unless you are talented at one of those two.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
I'm not sure if I wanna read anything from anyone posting about Steemfest, the FOMO is real! Though I am lucky to have been able to attend two Steemfests, and I know it is one hell of a time.
I am "at peace" with it as I can blame Smallsteps and she is too cute to punish :D
Looking forward to seeing what comes of it as many of last years group seem to have powered up significant amounts of buys or earnings.
I've been ordered by my parents to go check up on my brother (who is an adult and can feed himself) for a few days while my parents are abroad. I'll use that as my excuse, though he is nearly not as cute as Smallsteps :D
There have also been those whose activity has significantly reduced after Steemfest, we might have scared them off.
You should have taken him with you :)
Yep, a few have fallen away as well, but I still think there has been more growth among many of them, especially smaller accounts.
The 'wrong kind of people' will never spend their fiat or STEEM to go. I don't think I heard one negative vibe at the last, though it was in a better place than this time.
There are less events than 1 year ago, no trips is the glaring omission. The final dinner seems to be afloat somewhere.
Prepare yourself for a barrage of Fest posts soon, starting with me. I leave this Sunday eve.
I had some negative conversations but not many. One in particular was on the first night before the start and that person is still here and with an app going well. :)
I think that it will be quite different and less "cozy" than the last, but I hope people find each other and stick together a bit because that is where the fun is - at least for me.
Have a fantastic trip and say hi to the familiars.
I was really keen for Thailand. It's so close to Australia, I figured it'd be a no-brainer.
Can't justify the cost, though. I'm not selling 10K STEEM to go demonstrate that I'm excited about STEEM.
I'll go to Steemfest when I can do it for 1000 STEEM.
I think it is for those who can justify the cost without selling perhaps, or those already in the area as there are quite a few. It would have been a pretty large chunk of change for 3 of us to go, plus all the associated costs of making sure Smallsteps would be okay there with a high risk that we would spend the time with her crying with stomach issues and skin rashes.
Next time, it might be possible with 500 steem :)
At the all time high, 500 STEEM would've been enough to go 5 star :)
No reason it can't go there again.
I think I would have loved to have gone because it was in my area in the grand scheme of things, but in reality I think it would have been incredibly stressful XD
fyn is terrible at being social
It can totally still be steemfest because even if the smts end up pretty much stealing the show and the people using them don't necessarily have a clue about steem or even blockchain in general, it's still running on steem :)
It is a blockchain conference, no one is good at being social ;D
Yep, powered by Steem is gonna be a thing.
"I wonder what happens when a notorious vote trader has to spend time with members of the community who are trying to make it a place for the better. Or, a notorious downvoter is face to face with those same people they have downvoted out of spite. Or the negative Nancies actually spending time with real members and developers of the community, not avatars and pseudonyms."
After midnight if CamelSteamer showes up, and if I was there...... Can You guess who I am in this scene from....
Trinity Is Still My Name:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90YLkHyhm1I
Posted using Partiko Android
I will be at STEEMFest, @tarazkp with the main goal of trying to find a way for larger accounts to support projects that minnows and redfish use to grow here. I've been posting about the death of small fish post-fork and have a lot of information I do not think the bigs know. Or maybe they can tell me why small fish really are not wanted here and that might change my path in life. Either way, we have carnage down in the depths.
I do not see myself in bars late at night, but I do plan to talk to every single STEEMer in Bangkok who does not run when they see me. And most definitely there will be a lot of posts coming during and after. I'm not doing this for my health.
So I really came to your page to ask why you and maybe a trail are down-voting jerrybanfield now. Obviously you do not need to tell me. But I do not notice anything like spam or plagiarism on his feed.
You may not know that he is now voting for minnows/redfish for free. He was the first of the bidbots to close and offered to vote for us once a day if we got on his list. He uses the blacklists and so is not voting for any of those people.
In a time of poor votes for the bottom of the pond, I'm hoping we do not drive off someone that really is helping.
I think there are smallfish that are growing at rates that were not possible earlier, but for those who are trying to live off steem, the price is definitely not high enough. Price is the thing that will eventually need to rise, but that takes more than distribution, it takes demand to buy Steem, something many are unwilling to do.
I downvote Jerry as someone who posts here but doesn't engage. He also uses Steem as a funnel for his urethra or whatever it is by offering upvotes to sign up to his list, something that results in him blindly upvoting a lot of plagiarists.
Many of which are plagiarists. Good job Jerry!
He also sold his witness position. Good job Jerry!
He is not in my opinion helping, and never has.
What plagiarists is he voting for,@tarazkp? He uses the blacklists.
And why can't he promote his other work on steem? Do you downvote steempress too?
You did not want him as a witness anyway.
the blacklists only contain those who have made it to the list, not those who make an account and sign up to Jerry's list.
He can do as he pleases, as can you. I can also.
While you might not understand why, I have my reasons and I think that @jerrybanfield is undeserving of rewards from the pool. His content is still there and readable if people care enough to read it. Do you? I haven't seen you comment on any of it yet you comment a great deal. Why is that?
And since you don't know Jerry so well,
Jerry has 2000 SP and is powering down further.
He is upvoting with 55,000 stake that hasn't been removed from delegators, but he stopped paying the delegators a return. This means that he is also earning about 100 SP a week in curation without paying those he owes.
Good Guy Jerry!
I am answering both of your comments here, @tarazkp. I actually do know jerry well. I already knew him and followed him on multiple platforms before I got here. He is a bull in a china shop on all of them.
Jerry is the person convinced me to come and try steem in June 2017. When he invested 60K of his own funds I decided to try. I did not want to mess with crypto at the time even though other content creating friends were already here and bugging me to come.
He is one of the people most responsible for teaching me how to work here and gave me a lot of good votes before bots came in. And now he is voting for me and MANY of my content-creating non-spamming non-plagiarizing, small-fish friends each day.
I talk to him by email when I do as he no longer interacts on STEEM for multiple reasons. I did recently send him prayers for his mom's illness on a recent post, but that was an exception.
I have seen several notifications to delegators telling them he is no longer paying. I see your point about this part of the issue.
Flag away! We'll see if he just stops posting and continues to vote.
STEEM - The place where everyone sucks, lol.
He brought a lot of people in and taught them a great deal about how to maximize selfvoting. Very few of them around today, very few made it past the highs.
You are free to upvote him all you want, but I believe he is not and never has been a great ambassador for Steem and has done a lot of damage. He won't stop posting because it is free for him to do so and it is another way for him to see his face on the internet.
I don't upvote Jerry, he upvotes me, @tarazkp.