_{Hello everyone. All of you. Yes, everyone! Don't skip over this one.}

It's important.

The Apology

First of All

^{Allow me to introduce myself.}

My name is Damien.

I am the mastermind behind all things @NoNamesLeftToUse. From the art to the writing, the responses to your comments and even those strings of strange words some call sentences I might place under your posts from time to time. It's all, me.

Some of my accomplishments include:

• blah blah blah
• Who cares.
• I'm good at what I do.

I screw up sometimes, too.

^{Allow me to explain.}

On Steemit, we all come across instances of what we might consider to be abuse. That can be pretty much anything anyone feels like affixing that label to. It doesn't matter, that's not the point of this, I'm not going to get into those details; but I think we can all agree this concept of abuse is heavily ingrained into the culture here. It happens.

I've been a contributing member here for nearly one and a half years. I've seen it all.

On a few occasions, I've stepped up to the plate, on my own, to use my flags/downvotes to remedy what I've considered to be abusive behavior. I'm not afraid to stand up for myself, nor am I afraid to stand up for the community I reside in. If there is a fire, I will attempt to put it out. If the fire is too big, sometimes you have to call in reinforcements. That's how I see it, and I don't care if you think that's right or wrong.

Shoplifter in the Art Department

^{Please call security...}

If there's one thing I can't stand; it's an art fraudster. People posing as artists, ripping images off of the internet and presenting them here as if they did the work. Physical art, digital art, photography, it doesn't matter; if it's not theirs, they have no business sharing it here while attempting to earn rewards.

In today's day and age, we also have posers who apply filters to photographs and attempt to call themselves digital artists for simply pressing a button or two and making a photo appear as if it was painted. I've seen this countless times and I can do nothing but laugh at these jokers who try to pass this stuff off as digital art. Sure it's digital, sure it's artsy, but it's not a painting; it's an altered photograph and they all look similar. Those people would actually earn far more if they were simply honest about their process, but it seems they're not smart enough to realize that.

Moving On

^{I found a post on the trending page that made me feel misled.}

Right up near the top, earning hundreds of dollars worth of rewards, most of which were bought and paid for.

The image inside the post, to me, looked like another one of these push button altered photographs being passed off as a digital painting. I wasn't sure, so before I said anything, I pressed the right mouse button while hovering over the image. From there, I'm given a menu. It looks like this:

^{*I used my own image from one of my blog posts for this demonstration.}I selected Search Google for image.

Within a few seconds, I was able to find the original photograph that the art I was looking at was based upon. That's when I started to feel misled. I dug a little deeper and used the same search to locate the source of another image within the blog post that I felt was misleading. I then offered a few words in the comment section, included the two images I found elsewhere on the internet, and asked for an explanation. I then flagged the post(flags are not necessarily permanent) and notified two other services who specialize in looking into cases of abuse.

With so many cases surfacing of people abusing those paid vote services, I truly felt like I had no other option than to handle it the way I did.

Eventually

^{I was given a response.}

Of course, he was not happy with me, I don't blame him, and that's fine. I simply wanted to get to the bottom of it and was fully prepared to explain myself. Attempting to talk it out in the comment section didn't lead to any progress, so I contacted this gentleman in private on Steemit chat. From there, and considering all things said previously in the comment section, we were able to sort things out. He realized his mistakes and decided to make a few minor but important changes to the post to help make things a little more clear to anyone else who may have had the same concerns I did. I offered some more advice, he took it, and that was that, I removed my flag; done deal.

This is Where it Gets Good

^{He has no idea I'm doing this.}

It breaks my heart when I see new members come along and some of the only advice they're given to help them succeed here is this bullshit about buying votes so they can hopefully gain a following and get attention. They spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars to buy a slot on the trending page that nobody looks at except for a school of confused minnows who have nothing better to say than, "I like this post, you are wonderful, this is magnificent, please come and vote for my post now, friend."

After talking to this guy and doing a little bit of digging of my own, I feel he deserves more than that endless cycle of vote buying hell.

Our voices, especially my voice when I get loud, will do a much better job at getting the right kind of attention someone deserves.

Enter AJ Brockman

^{When you're done here, click that link to find out a little bit more about him.}

Do you folks remember when I said this:

Rather than making people pay for attention, let's go back to paying attention to them.

I bloody well meant it!

^{And this is how we do that.}

Now, I'm calling on the art community here, all of you, plus everyone else who's reading to simply pay attention to this guy. Where I stand right now I think he'd be a great asset to this community and an inspiration to many more.

So spread the word. Tell your friends, tell your mom, tell your dog, tell your neighbor, tell your neighbor's neighbor, walk across the street and tell them too(but if they tell you to get off their lawn, make sure you do).

Have a nice day.

Credits: _{All art and images seen here were produced digitally, by me. "It was the least I could do." [email protected]}

^{© 2018 Two Insanity Productions.}Follow @NoNamesLeftToUse^{(Click the link for previous posts!)}