Forked Hard by The Hardfork?

If you've been paying attention, you may have noticed there's been another hardfork.

If not, here's your notice:

Hard Fork 22 has happened!!

Every time there is a hardfork you get people running around saying the sky is falling and other people saying how this hardfork is gonna make everyone so much richer. I usually side with the skeptics, though with most hardforks there isn't much change at all.

Not with this one.

This one has actually shifted the way I personally use Steemit.

Gone are the days when posts could safely be promoted with tools from @smartsteem or @minnowbooster. Now if you use them you'll get a downvote trail that includes @ocd, @ocdb, @theycallmedan, and none other than Smartsteem.com's creator himself @therealwolf.

Eep

This pissed me off the first few times. But as they say "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. Fool me three times and I must be a complete glutton for punishment." or something like that...

I get why they are doing it. There is a big push towards using the long-neglected "promote" feature. This feature "burns" Steem by sending it to @null. By doing this, the amount of Steem in circulation is reduced and in theory the value of remaining Steem will increase. So far this doesn't appear to be working. But like all markets, it may take a little while to start adjusting in our favor.

You can see those downvotes as loving spankings, intended to discipline obstinate Steemit users who just can't get in line with #newsteem.

From now on, I guess I will be sticking to the "promotion" feature and hoping that my posts actually get noticed.

Honestly though, I doubt that will happen. The majority of the highly voted posts are just posts about Steem itself. Or other cryptocurrencies. Steemit is not the platform where creativity is rewarded anymore. It hasn't been that way for quite some time. Instead it's a platform which glorifies and rewards itself.

If you invest in Steem and then write about Steem, you get rewarded with Steem.

If you invest time and energy into making interesting blog posts or beautiful artwork (ie not my artwork) you really don't get much of anything.

Of course this isn't the investor's fault. The people writing about Steem frequently have good advice for Minnows like me. They do provide value to the ecosystem. I appreciate the ones who have helped me get where I am.

Nope, it's the shitposters who are to blame. The people who take pictures of food and post it without explanation. The people who reblog porn videos. The people who post random snapshots of the value of certain cryptocurrencies. The people who post memes without context.

These are the people who bury good content. They use Steemit like they use Facebook.

We need to stop selling Steemit as a "social network which pays you money" until we can get the price of Steem back to a decent level. This only attracts the shitposters.

Steemit is not a social network. It's not a Facebook replacement. It's a stand-alone blog and creativity promotion network. If you don't blog or you don't create, you have no business being on here.

That may be harsh, but that's the only way we are going to save this ship.