My award speech to the @berniesanders Responsible Flag Foundation Benefit Awards Dinner

Friends, Steemers, Followers, I have been Flagged!

This is no ordinary flag mind you. This is a right of passage! And to the Flagger in Chief I say "Thank you!" Before this day I was but a lowly poster too small to even acknowledge on the Steemit platform, but today marks a turning point. I've reached a new evolution. Honestly, I'm upset there isn't a badge for this yet. Today something amazing happened.

Today, I have been flagged by @berniesanders!

While many lament these flags I have come to admire and respect them. For too long some accounts of high repute have managed to game the system! They upvote their posts when they know they aren't worth the reward they earned for so little work at such low quality, but the rewards are too enticing to resist. These minnow traitors launch their posts with little more than an easily googleable public image or too closely riffing off of a common post on their own wall. They do this in hopes of capturing bots and followers seeking greater return on their upvote comment campaign. Rather than upvoting a well-written post from an author with few followers knowing it's doomed to low rewards we the audience picked the post with higher personal gain and brought this upon ourselves.

In a sense it's not just the authors but the community to blame. In an effort to not lose out on potential curation rewards we ourselves have forsaken high quality posts as the metric and instead settled for high rewards posts. For this we all deserve a community flag!

To do my part to end this oppression I've started altering my own behavior via steemvoter.com even though I suspect I'll miss out on financial rewards by doing so.

Still though, these Steemit vagrants use foul game theory against their own sacred followers and allow their weak posts to drain money from the rewards pool to the detriment of the community. These posts have been financially rewarding for some rapscallions, but no longer! Rewardpoolrape is unacceptable! There's a sheriff in town, his name is @berniesanders, and he flags people.

I know this fact personally now. For truth be told...

I too have been flagged by @berniesanders!

At first I thought this man was just kind of a raging bastard, but frankly I've come to respect his work. Through a combination of thick skin and righteousness he's been able to continue a one man flagging campaign on Steemit. Despite a lot of criticism for his work he soldiers on; undaunted in his mission. He uses his steem power to ensure that abuse by others in power does not negatively impact those with little power. He's a self-appointed Robinsteemhood; blocking stolen post rewards to the rich so that the poor have a economic voice on this platform.

So, @berniesanders... I salute you!

The path you're walking is a thankless one. You catch shit from the very people you want to help. You at times lose your cool as you try to help those that don't clearly understand your intention and reasoning. I do believe you are helping this platform with this approach. Maybe not every flag or every outburst, but many'a'flag has improved the rewards pool so that even dolphins like me have a chance to impact and be rewarded by this platform. So, thank you @berniesanders for your thankless pursuit of giving a voice to the soft-spoken.

You can find the flagged comment calling for peace and truce here- https://steemit.com/funny/@aggroed/re-trafalgar-re-gavvet-took-a-turn-at-berniesanders-parent-s-place-since-i-was-in-the-area-20170522t103805179z

Ultimately, despite some of my snippiness in this post he's right! The alternative is whales just start upvoting themselves with no consequence.

is better than

Because the rest of us on this platform will get quickly drowned out.