My @Curie (and Steemit) Story

Two months in and I find myself at the same point on my Steemit journey like other contributors where I am tempted to write a post about my general experience on this platform so far and my encounter with @curie specifically.



Curie

First the hard reality of numbers.

As of this day I am the proud owner of 50 reputation points and an almighty 63.735 SPs.
Significantly my 100% upvote has now increased from $0.00 to an almighty $0.01 and I feel like I'm bringing life changing contribution to other Steemians through my curation.

OK I'll admit, I've had two glasses of Presecco and I'm in the mood to bittersweet cheer the whole Steemit community with my unequaled sense of humor. ;-)

But seriously, what have I learned so far?

Well, I've learned that Steemit is made of a large community of contributors, many discrete with their opinion of the platform, some very vocal.

In this later group one can distinguish two school of thoughts.

On the one hand some argue that many whales at the top are milking the system without contributing proper content.

On the other hand many such whales dismiss this and attempt to reassure zooplankton out there that with hard work will come success and recognition.

I've been thinking about all this lately and these two glasses of bubbly liquid are now helping me to come to a conclusion.

Both ends of the opinion spectrum are right but each group has decided to leave out some uncomfortable facts.

First about the view that many Whales are milking the system, posting crap and getting massive upvotes from their blind followers. Is this true?

From what I have seen so far - Absolutely.

Please no more post about bitcoins, cryptocurrencies and how Steems are going to make multimillionaires out of all of us! Seriously, who cares anymore?!? Is this all you have to talk about?

Every now and then I venture into loading the latest new posts (untagged) and I would swear that 80% of these are related to cryptocurrencies or photographs accompanied by a one-liner.

Is this what Steemit is all about?

Of course some whales are also proficient at producing some Bitcoin illustration (with the unavoidable one-liner), all the while gathering hundred of upvotes and bucks in the process.

Sure, why wouldn't they? Free money.

So usually I retreat promptly to my trusted feed of quality authors and surprisingly quality-producing tags such as #steemstem.

source: Steemstem

Truth is that #steemstem has been a bit like a welcoming haven on Steemit. Sometimes it's hard not to feel out of place on the platform as new posts keep pouring in out of the ether and that particular post you spent hours working on falls incessantly down the "New" page.

So far many of my posts have revolved around the subject of mobile networks and the protocols involved. A very niche subject, so I shouldn't be surprised if it generated limited interest at times.

My naive thinking, I guess, is that I would follow the advice left by some in the past that posting about a niche subject would pay off in the future.
Who knows, maybe one day the #mobilenetworks tag will be a point of reference in the future for those few interested in the subject. LOL!

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Now for my @curie experience.

A couple of weeks ago I posted an introduction to voice calls in mobile networks.
Not completely unexpectedly the post didn't seem to get much attention and I was kind of resolved that I would have to live with the fact that the working hours spent on it wouldn't count for much in the end.

To my surprise the following morning I realised that the article had received hundreds of upvotes and was worth about $65.

I wasn't sure what happened at first because the post had seemed to be completely ignored the previous day.
Looking at the history details I found out that the post had been upvoted by @curie, followed immediately by many.

source

All of a sudden it felt like all these hours spent at the computer had a meaning. More than the monetary value of the post it is this feeling of meaningfulness that matters.

I feel a lot of gratitude towards the @curie project and I hope that it helps others to beat that sinking feeling that all the hard work is for nothing.

I have read a lot on this site about the negative feelings that many have after working for many hours on a post, only to find out that it attracts neither interest nor reward.

The harsh reality is that hard work on its own doesn't necessarily equates to quality.

source

Hours spent on a post is not enough for captivating an audience and therefore one has to try to understand why his/her post hasn't done better.

Maybe the writing itself wasn't engaging enough? Maybe the subject wasn't explained clearly enough? Maybe the target audience is too small (that's me)?

While I completely agree with the opinion shared by many that the platform is abused constantly, it is not enough to explain the lack of interest into our posts.

Getting recognition is a challenge. A tough challenge.

But finding excuses in the flaws of the platform is pushing the blame somewhere else and refusing to face the challenge head on.

Bitterness will not get those posts higher scores.

So if you fall from that bike do what the old adage says.
Don't think, get back on the saddle and push on those pedals once again.

With hard work we'll all get to our desired destination in the end.