RE: Going Legit: The gap between blog and reality
In a strange slightly "backwards" sort of way, I think @surpassinggoogle is onto some of that with the "ulog" initiative.
At first, I thought that was going to be an invitation to oceans of shitposts, but there are some pretty sincere more personal blogs emerging from that.
No, it is certainly not the same as going to SteemFest and having a beer with someone, but it's a bit of a stepping stone towards the kind of authenticity we had in blogging 15 years ago. Were people more sincere and authentic, 15 years ago? Nope, I don't believe so... but I don't think the idea of developing an "online persona" had been as developed/exploited yet... so most people were "just themselves."
Asher has an interesting role in this, too. His "leagues" tend to encourage a level of engagement that transcends "just leaving a comment;" people end up having lengthy comment dialogues, as a result of which there is more of an authentic revealing of self.
Much as I would love to go to SteemFest, it's going to have to wait a couple of years... but I would enjoy meeting some of the "real" people behind the posts.
I agree with you on the whole #ulogs thing that Terry has created.
It has opened up a world that people can be real, that they can show who they are and what they do in their offchain life.
Sure there have been people who try to abuse it and we even had people that were plagiarizing and because the community is more involved in curating, engaging and commentinh authentically then people are quick to see this and act on correcting the wrong behavior.
I agree with every word of this. I, too, thought ulogs were going to be awful. (I wade through enough junk every day that I sure don't need more!) And my husband remarked, "It's going to be the I'm-sitting-on-the-patio of Steemit." (A reference to a sarcastic skit about Twitter.)
But I have seen some amazing things published under this initiative. I look forward to seeing the tag -- especially from the good writers I follow. It shows what sincere and creative people can do -- and it all surprises me ... start to finish ... in a wonderful way. That, too, is all too uncommon.
I had a strange wake-up call with Ulogs, in realizing that they were basically what we were doing almost 20 years ago, pre-Farcebook.
Blogs were social. And they were about personal stories. And some of those were very deep and authentic. And people would have substantial "conversations" back and forth in their comment sections... because "comment sections" (aka "interaction") was a totally new gig, in 1999... before that, we only had message boards for that.
So the wake-up call was "This is actually how I learned to blog!"
Except, I realized I had come really far off track, and was stuck in the whole "writing about a topic" in what was almost a "third-person" article style. It actually has taken me almost 18 months on Steemit (and 12000+ posts) to UN-learn that... wow!
I also had to UN-learn being worried about whether a Ulog I might write was (to my mind) "rewards worthy."
And I had to ask myself "Why does that matter?" I mean, I'm mostly writing for my own enjoyment... and if people don't think something is "rewards worthy," then they should just not reward it... but I shouldn't have to censor my own content on that account.
And yes, there's some really good stuff out there!
I don't think they were more sincere either, just worse at personal branding. These days though, I feel that I see through a lot of the branding now and am more sensitive to potential engineering of circumstance. I am much more on guard when I expose myself to mass consumption type content too.
Yep, it does tend to create better engagers and even if they start off looking for reward, many have shifted to actually being part of the community. He has done well with it.
I think it has also brought some people out of anonymity and given them a chance to reveal themselves. I haven't investigated it much but from what I have seen, @dlive has grown in popularity because of it too. Good to see.