Hello Steemit! There is a nasty bug going around here I thought I would address and provide a possible inoculation. The thing is, Steemit has a certain etiquette, like the game of Golf. You don't scream at people in the Tee Box and you let faster crews or people 'play through'. If you think a ball may be heading toward someone, you yell the famous "FORE". If you hit a sand trap (bunker), you rake out your swing(s) and footprints. You replace your divots on the fairway. You never bring your golf bag onto the green. You fix your ball marks on the greens. And, you never ever walk in someone's line on the green. Basically, they are all common courtesies to keep the game play enjoyable and smooth for everyone.

I'm sure many of you know what I'm talking about and are seeing more and more as people migrate over here hoping to just make a quick buck. The "Nice post, upvote me i upvote you follow me now" garbage. Even when I first started, I never implied that level of frigid desperation. I would go to a person's original post that had recently followed me, comment something about their post, thank them for following, and EXPLAIN why I was upvoting and resteeming the chosen post. I looked at as more of a thank you, but even that was getting frowned upon. YOU DON'T TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB. And many of them don't even speak proper English or close to American. I would rather they write a thoughtful comment in their own language that I had to translate than see, "I upvote you, you do same me". Guarantee they didn't read a single word of your post. And that's the epidemic. People not understanding what Steemit is all about. Original Quality Content. OQC. Should make that like a secret tag or something, #originalqualitycontent.

I love upvotes, don't get me wrong. I'm sure all of you do. But if you're just coming over to my blog to try and score a more valuable vote and follower when all you put out is some copied and pasted bullshit you didn't give credit to the author for...you have another thing coming. I've recently been down voting the ones I see. That's right, I am not afraid to smash people in the face with a flagpole anymore. You would think after people get down voted so many times and their reputation starts dropping, they would start to question themselves why it's happening. Well, I'm tired of the beggars on my docks and barnacles on my ship so I'm sweeping out all the ones I see. It may be rude, but you know what? I don't care. I don't want to see the infection spread anymore so I'm vaccinating the posts I see.