Steemit: The Inevitable Path Towards More and More Powdery Dust...

This morning, I came across yet another "bot-that-claims-it's-not-a-bot" type community service upvote bot thingy... and continued thinking about the path to where this is all leading. Yes, I'm still pondering the implications of my post from a couple of days back, concerning "zero votes."

Yeah, Maybe I Think too Much...

I am, in many ways, an "analyst." Not in the poring over terabytes of data for statistical purposes sort of way, but in terms of trying to tune in to the "microtrends" that tend to be the precursor signals of changes to come.

Where does this path lead us...?

Looking at this new "service" (which I will NOT name) with it's slick looking comment filled with typos and bad grammar, but otherwise lovely presentation and a nice graphic, along with it's encouragement to get people to "delegate," I tried to project out there this is all likely to end.

I already see 100's of posts every week that get something like 600 upvotes that add up to $1.23 or something like that. For that matter, I get upvotes on my own posts that I have no idea where come from, but on examining them, I see that they are something like "0.5% of a 5-cent upvote." Which basically is such a minuscule speck of dust that it is basically akin to nothing.

This "nothing" is then repeated millions and millions of times, pretty much resulting in — as far as I can tell — a great big nothing that has no effective impact other than to burn a great deal of CPU time somewhere, for zero gain. For anyone.

Now, I appreciate that there are those who worship technology and automation... simply because it can be done, but pardon my bluntness here... but "what the fuck are you doing???"

Looking forward to spring...

Hope Springs Eternal?

I am open to the possibility — as often is the case — that many of these things are created based on false assumptions that have their root in essentially "wishful thinking."

"No, but this will really do well when Steem is $10.00!"

That's a nice idea, but Steem is NOT $10.00. Steem is not even ONE dollar. Steem is not even worth a Quarter. Under the current environment, you're effectively accomplishing absolutely nothing.

Granted, I have my own biases. I tend to have a HUMAN based orientation, not a MACHINE or AUTOMATION based orientation. Technology is great, but because technology has no "intangible needs" of its own — like humans — it can't ultimately create a human-friendly environment, it can only assist and approximate one. Technology doesn't get headaches or itchy feet, so it doesn't respond to those, AI notwithstanding.

I don't "worship" the blockchain, only what it can do for people. Functionally do.

Which brings me back to some of these services, which seem to be all about delegating ever more $50 delegations so the resulting $0.002 can be divided among 300 votes. Until we end up with this giant whirling machine that distributes minuscule grains of sand with no net effect.

Come on, people!

Let's not forget that communities are built by people, not by machines!

Sorry, just having a late night rant moment, here...

Thanks for reading!

As always, comments and interaction invited and welcomed! What do you think? Are we going to end up with a "dust filled" system run by "services" and bots, where the people have become obsolete? Do any of these voting/curation "services" strike you as pretty absurd? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!

(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 181212 02:08 PDT