[Steem talk] Dark side of curation

For the past 24 hours, I had experienced one of the darkest day in my curator life, in #steem blockchain. I've seen some good, but mostly bad intentions going around spreading the "good" vibes.

I dare not to say I'm a good curator, neither am I claiming I'm a profitable curator, but I do read articles, provide feedback to the author, at my best days I cast up to 300 votes a day manual and auto. Hence I applied for a curator role in #esteem, and gotten in and help benefit the community to reward good authors. Yesterday was no difference, as @cardboard allowing new curator to chip in their contribution in helping @tipu to continue curation project so it can stay afloat.

What surprised me come not long after the curation started, I got a vote! Wohoo! That was the happy moment when a close friend of mine sent a curation to my alt, and I'm happy someone finally found my work valuable. But the happiness didn't last long. Immediately I find more curator is rushing to "utilize" their curation power. Some decided to self curate immediately after a post, some less smart fella went to trending page and blast their curation vote to the already high payout posts.

Came the midnight before sleep sweep when I was doing my daily routine curation for #esteem, to my surprise most if not all of those high payout posts has been awarded with @tipu curation. Best of all, those post being curated with 0.02% vote, which means the author is only getting a very small chunk of @tipu, and it lost an opportunity to obtain a full curation. I did a small research and find these action has been automated.

I totally get the idea, I can't do it doesn't mean it's wrong. If I can't curate before others, that simply because I'm less competitive. It's not about should or should not curate the post. It's about how people reflect themselves when comes to monetary rewards. One willing to setup a huge fan base curation and cast small curation to high payout author, so they can earn higher curation point. And they self curate themselves with 100%. So, what does it mean to you?

Once again I would like to emphasize, it's not about right or wrong kind of curation. I'm merely stating the fact that, people can get really nasty when comes to money(and this is not even money yet). You leave other people with a 0.02 curation, take away their rights to earn an upvote at 4 minutes,and you do a full curation to your own alts with your own account, if that is not selfish, tell me what it is? Sell fish?

I know I know. Things will be changed. And the changes already taking place, thank you @cardboard for looking into this. Initially I thought cardboard will allow this to continue, because despite the way of casting 0.02 curation would mean higher profitability to @tipu, but a new set of limit now taken place by using voting mana. Kudos to that change and believe the current situation should be minimized due to limit of number of votes going out. But still, it just take one opportunity, and we saw the dark side of how people who play by the rules suck big time compare to people who play WITH the rules. Dark side does not necessarily mean bad. Dark side of the moon do see the sun during eclipse, it's called dark side simply because moon always facing earth at the same direction.

Rest my case here. No picture today. Not a rant. No personal attack. No intention to offense anyone. Let's see if anyone curate me with @tipu and how many percentage I'm getting if this really pull any attention from the like minded people.