RE: Dtube Confessions: Why is Morale So Low on Steemit?
I think many come here with unrealistic expectations and when their ambitions don't come into fruition within a few weeks they lose confidence. Not everyone can make it, but I've seen a lot of things in the past half + century. I think you have what it takes to make it on this platform.
My perspective is quite different. It took me over 10 years of work in the software business to finally make enough to quit my corporate job of over 21 years. Steemit is really the same way. There aren't enough whales to sift through all the material that gets posted every day.
For that reason, I don't really have a problem with using upvote bots. The idea of shit posts is relative to ones values. You never know when that idle picture that was posted on the internet with nothing more than a sentence and a $100 upvote from a bot could be the one picture that cracked a missing persons case or led to a reunion. If that person had it to invest, then are they not entitled to a return on that investment?
I think that I would have handled the visibility algorithm differently though and not allowed self upvotes or bots to affect visibility in the hot and trending that seem so important to many on here (but not to me because I almost never look there to see what is happening).
There is a big difference between Steemit and Facebook. Facebook uses your posts against you and feeds all this into a pre-crime report for law enforcement. Facebook also deliberately creates an echo chamber where it adjusts what you see according to your keyboard inputs.
Steemit isn't perfect, but people can make it either way through a self fulfilling prophesy. If you think you can make it, you probably can, but if you think you're wasting time, then you definitely are.
When I first got onto Steemit, I paid no attention whatsoever to the trending and hot pages. I always went to new pages. I get my hot and trending not from those pages but from my news feed of follows. It's the reason why I don't follow everyone. I just went to Steemwhales.com to find out who was important, then made adjustments to my follow list based upon later behavior and mentions.
The main problem I see with the platform is the pressure to post multiple times a day. I don't blog about every insignificant thing that comes up. I'm one of those people who would be content with posting once a week or so, but I went against my own grain at the suggestion of @papa-pepper who suggested posting 2 - 4 times a day to gain a following. I have a software business to run and farm chores like splitting wood, but other than that I'm almost ready to retire (I started investing in crypto early 2017 as social security insurance).
It's OK not to post multiple times a day. Just make the few you do good and meaningful ones, then if Steem become the next Reddit, your $0.10 post will be worth about $100.
This is all very true. I guess what I am most disturbed about as of late, are those friends of mine who have nearly been here since the beginning and are no further than they were a year and a half ago. They are packing up and getting out of dodge. They have worked and invested and one of them even has a 4 dollar upvote, but that isn't worth much, even if you do post 4 times a day.
I also dislike having to post so much, but when you are trying to build yourself up, save Steem and use a little bit for your daily expenses too, daily posting is absolutely necessary, but that's where the burnout starts if you are putting in countless hours without much of a reward for it. Sure I can make a few bucks on a video I worked 4 hours on, but I could also make a few bucks working at the home depot down the street, and there isn't the stress of whether or not I am going to get paid. This definitely is not a line of work for the faint of heart, but as you said, it is possible to make something eventually, I just think the levels of success here are very...different.
See, you just got an upvote from @dtube... You're one of the lucky ones. I've only had one legitimate upvote from a whale in the first week of posting from @curie and have been ignored ever since. Nevertheless, I was responsible for causing massive disruption to an important internet protocol that relies on time zone accuracy that would not allow encryption to work on smart phones that used the Olson time zone database. This happened because the company that tried to hire me three times then decided to try a lawsuit to try to put me out of business by suing a database I relied on that was used throughout the world.
Well as I said, I don't think that Steemit is an inherently bad place, just that I was down that so many people were leaving. I am also not afraid to call them out for the things that need changing, if they want to get better/grow, they are going to have to start listening to their users. If there is one thing that I HATE about this place is that it feels like an echo chamber for rah rah cheerleaders, and I can't stand it. In that aspect, it's no better than YouTube censorship, it's just...different. I think people on here would act/post much differently if money weren't at stake (or they wouldn't likely be here at all even). It bothers me though that people won't post how they feel because they are afraid of how it will affect their outcome on here. It is suffocating at times being around so much "niceness" because it isn't real.
Anyway, I will do my best to keep up and tow the rah rah line as much as I can stand, but I have never been too good at playing games and following rules.
That's one of the sad thing here, I try to be a genuine as possible... I think steemit is flawed, but I can see how it's better than many other social media (and most of these flaws are necessary if we don't want an authority to tell us what to do.)
One thing I feel could make steemit WAY BETTER is a better filtering system, a way to search posts containing two or more tags at the same time and a way to filter out a (one or more) tags you don't want to see.
I mean, I can already find good posts when looking at the new (not trending) section of #gaming tag, if I could narrow tags more it will be the best.
You, sir, got yourself a new follower! This comment is so full of great insight! I'm a newbie, and I thought a daily post would suffice, now I'm learning that if you do multiple post a day you'll do better!
A daily post more than suffices. The problem is too many posts and not enough quality. There's no built in game theoretical incentive algorithm that limits post proliferation. People would have better aim if they knew they had fewer arrows to hit the target.
Posting 2-4 times everyday?! what?!!... A good post of mine can take 1-4 hours to write, I can rarely put 2 or 3 posts in one day and not all will be my usual quality, but I can never write 2 posts everyday.
But I don't mind the time
lostinvested, I was doing the same on facebook for free.Yeah when I post multiple times a day, I find I am basically spending my entire day doing work toward Steemit. I was also posting on Facebook daily before now, but honestly not more than a few minutes at a time. I definitely never spent 1-4 hours on a post. I do understand what you mean though!
I occasionally wrote posts that cost me 2 hours on facebook, like analysis posts for a FB group. But I think I'm a strange case.