The following post is a rant. It is not my usual post nor is it the normal me to complain as I usually see myself as a grin and move on kind of person. Yet today was a perfect storm of pure shittiness and so let me go on my rant.

From Unsplash - Marko Blažević

Today is Friday the 13th and I don't hold too much belief in superstition but today proved to be one hell of a day. I have been feeling sick since this morning with an upset stomach and so I wasn't in the best mood. I couldn't drink coffee which really bummed me out and made me cranky all morning like a crack addict in rehab.

Earlier while hosting the Curation show in the Promo-Mentors I experienced getting disconnected by Discord. Although it was reported to be a major outage from Discord itself but we hilariously blamed it on Klynic's poem on SEX TRANSMUTATION He got a good ribbing on that one haha. Show some love if you will.

One thing that I do on my idle time is looking at the comments in Steemit. I try to answer each comment that I get as engagement is really a big thing to me and today was no different. and after replying to some comments I went to read some memes.

I know might feel strange that I enjoy memes but I always need a quick chuckle and memes if done right can do that to you. I also have another account that has these shorter posts like Zappl, 5-minute freewrites and of course memes. Surprisingly one of my meme with biting humor was a hit and gotten that dmania vote.

It was a bittersweet feeling as I have never expected to get one because I didn't think that more than 40 dollars for a meme that I would create in less than 3 minutes could garner such a reward. Makes me question right away what is truly valuable in this platform.

I take pride in each post that I do, well not the memes which are just for fun, which is why it is in another account. I have taken Steemit seriously that whatever I write, I write with the highest quality in mind. I spend time formulating my posts with an outline, then I draft the different talking points, then I would edit and proofread. A single post of mine takes about an hour or so depending on complexity.

The longest and most time-consuming post I did was my post about the witnesses This Redfish understanding of Witnesses and why they are important it took me two weeks to consolidate, filter and go through all 127 active witnesses and what they do so that I can justify why I chose the 30 witnesses that I have.

It is no secret I use bid bots. I used to not to and this was fairly evident in my early months but have been using them now to boost content from time to time. This was brought to a discussion with a person that I deeply respect and it was a long talk about the pros and cons. We talked about what the real use of bid bots are and how it moves the market. He said that quality posts + bidding at the right time increases your exposure and helps you grow.

Sure nowadays a lot of people are clamoring for the bid bots to be shut down because they are raping the reward pool and making people dependent on them to even get people to notice their work. I will not get into that argument on whether bid bots are good or bad for Steemit as there are so many posts that discuss both sides.

So the icing on this shit stained day was being flagged by Grumpy Cat or his alt account Mad Puppy.

So its official I have received my first flag. Was it because I wrote a shitty post or was on the trending page and it felt that my post was raping the reward pool?

If you ask me of course no again as I said I take pride in all my posts and I feel that this one conveyed my emotions and was beautiful to read. A lot of people commented that they teared up reading it. Judge for yourself if it is a crap post.

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Some may argue that a dollar I got from bid bots is a dollar removed from someone else in the reward pool. I am not here to argue about that because this is a rant and I am not in the right frame of mind to debate.

It didn't even reach 10 dollars and the main reason why it flagged was it wasn't near pay out already as it was done on the 3rd day of the post. It was because I used @sneaky-ninja who he accuses of not complying with his 3.5 days Max age standard.

He alleges that such bots are used by people who post low-value content and is only an attempt to be for profit. Let me tell you something if you bot as means of a crutch to profit then you are stupid. If you don't get additional upvotes after you bot you are running at a loss.

The main reason I use @sneaky-ninja is to boost my content as well as support his services which donates a portion of his profits to both @sircork's You Are Hope charity and @rhondak's TARC which are projects that are dear to me. It was a win-win situation for me. Well until Grumpy Cat showed up.

What a Friday the 13th for me and it made me realize how pointless it is. You do your best and make good posts and no one cares. You engage and make connections and unless your SP is that of a whale or a dolphin it won't matter. You build communities and have an optimistic spirit even if everyone is giving up saying we can do it all together. You do your best to spread your vote and comment to other people but it's not enough.

Then a whale shows up and shuts you up. Your voice does not matter. I have a bigger wallet.

This experience left me cynical if I really want to remain on this platform. Is this the tipping point? Maybe because bullies like Grumpy Cat is free to run amok and do whatever he pleases because he has a large enough wallet to push his way around.

To me, this flag represents all the wrong things in Steemit. It demotivated me to the point I took a nap and considered if I was going to publish it. Even after cooling down it still sucked. This may be a turning point for me but to Grumpy Cat it is just a Friday and he doesn't care about the platform.

I'll be out having a beer.