It's time for the voting system to end.
This will be my final post on Steem.
I've turned off voting on all of my accounts, redirected the customers of @ottermaker and @herons-unlimited to Discord and my website, simplified my witness votes, and I'm generally shutting down most things. Oddly enough I've been powering up again, and expect to continue, because I have profitable use for resource credits making custom JSONS and ignoring all the bullshit.
This decision has been coming for a while, but the catalyst for it was the fact that the current war managed to drive away one of the nicest people I've ever met. If you can't be nice to Serena, I'm more than ready to be done myself.
There has always been a significant part of Steem that's angry it doesn't have 100% discretion over where the rewards go. Before the EIP that group could at least be isolated, and the rest of us could mostly go on with our lives, trying to build community and make cool things, with the occasional broken window to deal with from the likes of Bernie or Grumpycat or FTG. Now it's everyone, and everywhere.
Two weeks ago I went back to Twitter because it's more fun there than it is here. Which, if you know anything about Twitter.... But even in the deepest pits of the culture war, there are people making jokes and riffing off each other and being kind to each other, and where the hell is that here anymore?
There are people here because they're trying to make money, and there are people here because they're heavily invested and can't quite cope with how they're not millionaires anymore, but everybody who was here because they enjoyed it is gone. And without them, why keep it up?
There comes a time when you have to admit a project has failed, and it's now that time for the content/voting system on Steem. The Steem blockchain itself is amazingly capable, as you can plainly see from all the non-content things people have built on it with essentially no base-level support. Those projects are going strong, providing value to the blockchain and to the world, and the best thing you can do to support the future of this blockchain is take the voting system out behind the barn and put it out of its misery.
It's no longer salvageable, and all it is anymore is a bunch of miserable motherfuckers advertising that no, you really don't want to be anywhere they are. SMTs aren't going to help, they'll just split it up into a bunch of different communities with their own conflicts. We've already seen that in SCOT tribes.
Social media on Steem is no fun. There's no reasonable path for it to ever be any fun again. One way or another, all of this will eventually die. If you'll take my advice, put it out of its misery quickly, and let the projects with hope for the future carry the blockchain forward.
Or you can just keep going until the downvotes eat everyone, and it dies on its own.
On a personal level: Steem Is Bad For You. Some of the people I've thought very highly of seem incapable of getting out of this conflict that just turns everyone into jerks. Anyone who spends a lot of time on Steem anymore could probably use some time off to consider what you're really looking to accomplish here, and how likely it is.
Having taken my look at that question, I'll leave you with this:
That's a shame.
Dapps/SMTs are definitely the future; guess time will tell if blogging for STEEM is still a thing.
Sorry to see you and all the little helpers go-away. I have seen a whole lot less Social on Steemit since the EIP. The vote system has been broken since I joined, and the bi-yearly flag wars that were between only a few people have certainly escalated since the free down votes, and the newsteem drive.
I really do not see much difference between newsteem and old steem, Names have been changed to protect the guilty, that is all. I joined steemit for a few reasons, one of the primary ones I made it through the first 6 months was a very good lack of trollish activity. EIP made sure to fix that oversite on the part of steemit.
Most down votes used to be on plagiarism or abuse. Bid bots were the first target, many other than myself tried to warn about the escalation and "the they did not come for me, so I took no stance" syndrome.
It is a broken system, I am still going to hope for improvement in attitude, but I seriously doubt that will happen. I know many people that have started posting less frequently, (myself included), due to all the bullshit down votes. it started with all the little ankle biter 15 SP accounts powered by @steem, and the lack of any visible action on their part to do anything about it.
Now it is SBI that is being systematically down voted, and a lot of people have bought, and thus gifted others with an SBI or two. The bid-bots that are trying to go to curation voting are also being heavily down voted.
The large account holders can talk all they want about they don't really do any damage to the account, and that kind of thinking is just allowing the normalization, (once again), of bad behavior to continue.They seem to not understand that people do not like seeing meaningless down votes on their content. If their is a reason for the down vote, people accept it, when it is completely out of left field down vote for no reason other than to down vote, people, (myself included), do not like that. So the simple thing is to not post as frequently, to not post meaningful items, to avoid at all cost any semblance of a social post
So the social content is going away, @haejin may want to re-think his powerdown and departure, A lot of good writers/authors were driven away, the social posters are being driven away, next up the photo people will be driven away, and that will leave it at what, TA after TA of this crypto coin or that crypto coin.
I do hope things begin to change by February next year, so that I do not find myself in the same boat as many others when it comes to deciding to stay or go from steem block chain.
Thank you for all the help when the Mesopotamian were running, it did help shape my presence on the Steem Block Chain.
Upvoted for the honesty.
I don't know that I consider the project a failure, but it is clear that the current attitude is stifling fun, creativity and enjoyment.
I read PaintingAngels post and felt bad, but I didn't really know her well as I gravitate to different topics, but I sure did like what I did see of her.
Even Marky said tonight on his show that every post feels so judged and not in a fun a way.
I was never an advocate of the Quality Content group and thought casual posting and networking was a better direction.
Personally, much of the fun and optimism has been sucked out for me as well. I guess I still hope for this phase to pass.
Time will tell. Good luck in your future projects.
In the last few days I've been looking through some of the discussions since the fork, and I consistently see you as the one person who is always participating and never being a total jerk to anyone. And not for lack of provocation. I do appreciate that.
That's because she can flip flop more than pancakes at all the IHOPS across the nation on any given day. She's an expert at soothing burnt pancakes while her's sits aloft with whipped cream and cherries on top.
Steemit could resurrect Jeffrey Epstein and appoint him CEO and she'd be aghast by it only to turn around a few days later and sell it as a prospective turning point for Steemit claiming it is what it is no use arguing about it.
So you preferred turning a blind eye to absolute BS over acting against it?
Interesting position.
So theres no drama on Twitter? No assholes? No conflict? I seriously doubt that.
The post you linked is really nothing unexpected at this time. People get tired of the bear market, their friends can no longer make $$$ so they leave or spend less time on Steem, after some time their communities become smaller and smaller and they are left being more introduced to the wider steem community with all its complexity.
While at one point you could hide in your small part of the community as if on an island the bear market took that away.
So instead of blaming it on your friends leaving and admitting that maybe youre burned out you blame it on something else. You blame it on Steem and make posts like people tend to make when they hit a a certain level of burnout.
Its all basically bullshit. All this boils down is to you or Serena in this case losing her pals that left because the price aint great.
That is the reality of the current situation and trying to blame it on some kind of inherent attribute of the platform is simply dishonest.
Shit was much worse before and all that was blame was human nature, same as now. Nowhere you go will it be different. All you will do is try and convince yourself it is, like youre doing with twitter, which is nonsense ofc.
Anyways... Have fun..
You're right, I should have smacked you down a long time ago. You're an asshole, butterfly. You've always been a colossal asshole. You don't make anything here better, your argumentation consistently makes the positions you advocate look bad, and I can't think of a single time I've ever seen anyone want you around.
You, specifically, would make the whole place better by fucking off.
Haha. Sorry i triggered you.
Its not my job to make you feel better. Its not my job to adhere to your sensibilities.
I share what i think just like i did here. You may not like it, it might make you feel uncomfortable but thats what i think.
If more people said what they think then maybe, just maybe they wouldnt keep it all bottled up, just to be liked and they wouldnt burn out like this.
See, didnt it feel good calling me an asshole? ;)
For the record.. Twitter is more fun than here. 🙂
From my point of view its because everything here went to and for profit, there is only small communities who tryes to ressurect steem while others wants only profit and green upswings.
I have mostly peaced out temporally as well for the exact same reasons. The environment got so toxic. People figthing over dumb shit, its a bit sad because Steem for a while really saved my life, I would have starved and died in Venezuela if it wasn't for Steem but this is unbearable. Thanfully I can sustain myself now thru other means, I just log in once or twice a day to claim my SP and my Steem-engine tokens while I wait for Splinterlands Untamed to come out.
Splinterlands is great. I make as much money as a top trending post every single day and for somebody to make it so I don't get to anymore they'd have to do actual work.
It's sad to see it's reached this point for you. From such optimism with the Mesopotamians, where you made a difference to so many and I will be forever grateful. I wonder how many are still active since then.
Currently, with the communities I'm in I'm not encountering much of what you're talking about. It remains to be seen if that will change. It's quite possible that when the voting circles for the purposes of making money have given up, the communities could end up in the line of fire due to their very nature of supporting certain content and therefore certain producers.
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I think you are still doing my witness voting....will that also change?
I don't really agree with most of your pessimism you wrote but I can appreciate your frustration.
And trying to think about how steempeak can help... I think the answer is in somewhere in not focusing on the reward pool. Focusing on the things steem does better.
It's also sad to see people like @howo and @therealwolf downvoting ... i would assume they aren't downvoting for abuse of rewards or plagarism but just to be petty and to sadly prove your point.
There are plenty of people like that on twitter and much much much worse.... the thing is there are so many people on twitter the chances of you running into them are so slim.
Steem is like a small town with small town drama and that's no fun make the town bigger and the drama won't go away but the chances of you running into the jerks greatly diminishes. Also creating communities makes it so you have lots of small towns and can either be in a town that has rules you like better or you can leave the small town and go to another and still be in steem the whole time.
I agree with allot of what you said but I think its still possible to turn it all around. The main problem with the current vote system is Greed and sadly that's a human trait that just isn't going to go away.
#newsteem tries/claims to fight abuse but it looks like they're attempting to from the bottom up. Abuse needs to be fixed at the top and trickle down. One whale abusing the system is allot worse than 100's of minnows doing so.
All in all I don't let downvotes bother me and as you said the blockchain itself is great as proven by whats been built on it so far. So for that reason alone I plan on to continue earning STEEM via creating content and I will ignore all the other stuff because there's jack a person can do about it anyways unless said person has a massive amount of Steem.