Instant gratification,
Impatience & gamification:
Steemit dynamics

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Instant gratification

Instant gratification has to do with the release of dopamine and serotonin in the brain. It is the stimulation of a natural drug-like high by the perception of desirable stimuli. The greater our society becomes with regards to technology and convenience, the more widespread the phenomenon and the more extreme the actions of those afflicted by it to satisfy their cravings.

On Steemit

Instant Gratification is a major aspect of what makes Steemit satisfying to use and even addictive. (It also has to do with the low user retention rate, but we will get into that in the section on Impatience.) After creating your (hopefully) original post, it is only seconds before you see the (potential) rewards rolling in. Of course this leads some to view Steemit as a "free money machine," thinking they can easily profit off of posting recycled, plagiarized, or generally insubstantial content.

For those with a more altruistic orientation, Steemit also provides instant gratification in the avenue of giving/rewarding others. It can be supremely satisfying to find content that one believes is highly valuable and quickly be able to increase its potential payout. It gives a sense of truly helping someone, quite directly, and can be rather fulfilling.

For others, either valiant or villainous (or somewhere between) down-voting also can provide quick satisfaction and a sense of correcting the balance of the rewards distribution. There is a prevalent misconception that flagging is a personal attack or a major problem with the system. Actually, it is no different from an up-vote and functions exactly as it ought to. It just so happens that most are unwilling to take the bad with the good.

Staying with the more controversial, one can also sell one's stake via services such as @minnowbooster, and within 24 hours start receiving passive income. I would suggest, as others have, that this behavior could be depressing the value of STEEM, since it is sort of bypassing the way that stakes were intended to function. Though it seems an extreme solution, some, like @ats-david, have suggested that delegation be removed altogether. Others think there is nothing at all wrong with the current vote-selling and stake-renting, that it is a natural and desirable development of the Steemit ecosystem. What do you think?

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Impatience

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Rather than being a separate issue, impatience has to do with the response of most modern humans when they do not receive their instant gratification. They begin to get desperate and typically make extreme decisions. This leads many people to quit Steemit, since they feel "entitled" to large payouts (often despite investing little into the platform.) However, it is also related to the general impoverishment of the middle class in western society (relatively speaking) due to rising cost of living and wages not rising proportionately. Unemployment is also quite common, leading some to view Steemit as their job and expecting their payouts to be comparable to a salaried position.

Impatience also causes many to be very reactive and imbalanced both logically and emotionally. Instead of taking many factors into consideration and leaving final judgement in suspension (as do any truly wise individuals, who understand that new information will continuously change the perceptual picture) these people are on a constant rollercoaster ride, and when the STEEM price goes down they panic and lament, when it goes up they rejoice. Since STEEM has been on a general downtrend for a few months, they think this will continue forever! It displays a total lack of long-term vision, which is needed to discern on the scale of months, years, and decades instead of seconds, minutes and days.

As already stated, impatience often leads to desperation, as the individual is not getting the quick fix they have become accustomed to. Thus, the vote-selling, self-voting, and delegation-renting services provide investors with easy kickbacks that seem almost too good to be true. In fact, there is always a cost. However, the best solution to the current scenario would be to address the root cause, and that is imbalances in how the blockchain itself functions. For instance, some see the current linear rewards curve is boring, ineffective, and uninspiring. It has seemed to improve the distribution of rewards, but perhaps a hybridized approach would prove more effective (not totally linear and not totally exponential.) Moreover, many believe curation has become unprofitable at only "25%" (more like 12% in practice because of the 30-minute window.) Again, to return to 50/50 is not necessary, perhaps something in between like 70/30, 65/35, or 60/40.

Steemit, Inc. and Team Steemit are always busy and hard at work on implementing new features such as SMTs, communities, new apps, etc. However, we are desperately in need of hard forks that change some of the most basic features of how the blockchain functions. This is actually more important overall than adding new functions to Steemit and should be given priority. There are many extremely brilliant developers and technical minds here on Steemit that will give more specific advice than I can ever offer. Listen to them and implement changes ASAP! We know Steemit is an experiment, so let's alter our hypotheses when the current approach doesn't function as intended! Of course, some may feel that there is nothing wrong with the way Steemit currently works.

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Gamification

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Gamification is the application of game-like elements to areas themselves not technically games. This is also intertwined into the two sections above, because a major quality of games is the quick satisfaction they provide. The simple psychology behind having semi-arbitrary "points" and being able to watch them go up is universally appealing. Even in games where the points don't represent any real monetary value, people get a feeling of fulfillment from accumulating them. How much more so when the points represent actual (though intangible) currencies!

On Steemit

Steemit is already doing pretty well in this area, as many can attest to. I have heard more than one person say they totally quit playing video games when they began blogging on Steemit because it filled the same niche for them! However, there is much room for improvement, especially regarding the Steemit user interface. The lack of front-end displays of current voting power, vote value, appealing animations/sound effects (which should be available, but also able to be quickly toggled on and off) and other graphs/statistics/ "levels" causes the user experience to be more barren than it could be.

It's also inconvenient to have to pull up in separate tabs and learn how to use other services such as Steemd, Steemnow, Steemworld, etc. There are also browser extensions that display this info such as Steem Plus, but not everyone feels comfortable using their private keys in these services. Many probably don't mind Steemit as it currently is, and there should be the option to turn some of these new features off for those that enjoy a more bare-bones/minimalistic experience. However, for the average person, increased gamification will greatly improve their aesthetic experience on Steemit and make many more eager to invest their time, energy, currency.

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Conclusion

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This article was meant to synthesize differing viewpoints together in the areas of instant gratification, impatience, and gamification with regards to how Steemit functions rather than come to a final conclusion. Now, I would like to hear your thoughts and contemplations! Please add your unique viewpoint with a comment, and feel free to give constructive criticism or corrections for anything you feel was inaccurately or inadequately conveyed, and I will make edits accordingly.

If you actually read this entire article I'm very grateful that you thought my musing was worth your time. That is already more than I could ask for! If you found it valuable of course I appreciate upvotes and resteems, but it's not necessary. Adding a comment with your thoughtful response is meaningful enough and costs nothing other than your time and energy (which, however, are quite valuable indeed!)

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Written by
@d-pend
11/21/17

Images are
Free domain use.

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