Steemit isn't gunna last long at this rate...
So when I first came here I wasn't really sure what to think.
It was kind of weird, kind of exciting, kind of addictive. Make money from blogging/talking shit? easy I can do that. Been doing it for years anyway for free.
I've now been here since September and my perspective has changed entirely. Steemit isn't just a blogging platform where anyone can get paid. Steemit is actually a big ol popularity contest, like when we were back in school. Except here its more like who can suck the most ass of the whales and can you get into the all necessary circle jerk that incorporate the top members of Steemit.
Steemit for some people is their livelihood, it is their income and it is their way of providing for themselves and their family. Some of them do very well, others not so much. I know the current price of Steem is having an impact on their real world earnings though and causing a lot of stress.
Obviously crypto is in a bit of a downtrend or bear-market at the moment, we're seeing a lot of red and plenty of selling. However the bear-market of crypto will change, things will go back up eventually and we will see some relief in the price( I fuckin hope)
But will Steemit survive? honestly, not at this rate. You've got some proclaimed crypto profit on one side raping the reward pool, and a self righteous douchebag doing the same on the other, and if you somehow manage to wade through the popular shitposts that are theirs you'll likely find the same 20-50 peoples posts sitting near the top. But who are these mystery Steemit wiz's? Who's content is worth hundreds and hundred of dollars? Wait, you mean it isn't worth hundred and hundreds of dollars?
Its actually just the same people with the same autovotes doing the same shit posting the same unnecessary bs and making fat stacks The witnesses who haven't managed to keep their systems up to date and are likely the reason behind the recent issues we've been having. The Whales who do nothing to actually keep this platform running, they talk a lot but otherwise do nothing. With very few people actually looking at what anyone but the top 50 people are writing how the fuck do you expect to keep any active users? if no one else gets seen, if all your other contributors are fighting for scraps why would anyone stay?
Eh I don't know why I care, I am but a lowly minnow and I don't rely on Steem in any way. Though I do like the concept and a whole lot of the people I've met here, Pretty sure if someone doesn't do something Steemit is just gunna go to shit.
Then again, just milk the fuck out of whatever profits you can make before it shits itself.
Steem on Steemians
HAHAHAHAHA I love this post so much! You made me laugh so hard. This is my favorite part
"Except here its more like who can suck the most ass of the whales and can you get into the all necessary circle jerk that incorporate the top members of Steemit"
You have hit the nail on the head. As a lowly minnow, you have to kiss a lot of asses and hope you don't offend a whale who can downvote you into oblivion.
Even if Steemit does not survive, the concept will live on. I believe a lot of smart people are out there thinking of how to improve upon the flaws of Steemit as it is today and offer something better. Or better still, implement those improvements on Steemit itself.
I believe there is something called Akasha that is striving to be something similar so maybe worth checking out?
haha it just seems like they all have their autovotes set and otherwise dont really do any curating. like some of them do but majority are just here for themselves. some of them run witness nodes and act like they're "helping Steemit" but half the time their systems aren't even up to date while they continue to rake in profits ya know :P
This isn't the first site to try something like this. Tsu was quite the upstart about 3, 4 years ago. Had some big names one there, too! And you could donate to charities like Charity Water, Make a Wish Foundation, and otherwise.
Tsu failed because too many users spammed the shit out of it, hoping to make a quick buck. That and they couldn't get good, sustainable advertising to support the network. Steemit has one of those issues, and (hopefully) people can fix it. Building up a community goes a very long way here.
You hit the nail on the head man. I've been here for only about a month or so and honestly I see more glaring flaws than good developments. I've said this elsewhere many times, Steemit needs TWO big things in order to stay alive, even in the face of developed competition like Reddit and Facebook and countless other forums on the internet:
A good reason for people to want to be on the platform itself, to engage with it as a user
A good reason for people to want to buy Steem
They are connected, because clearly what Steemit has on Reddit is that the karma translates to actual money paid out. But if no one buys the money, then you are effectively not getting paid. And right now, no offense but playing games with the bandwidth of the platform really doesn't cut it as the sole reason to buy Steem. If all there is to do with this currency is to power it up and delegate around and make money upvoting or selling your vote and so forth, then it will dry up as soon as that becomes unprofitable. This is not a problem that is unique to Steemit, that is a problem all cryptocurrencies share and frankly Steemit is actually one step ahead in that regard because it actually has a function, as opposed to that of most cryptos which is exactly jack shit.
But just look at upvote calculator right now: you need 70 steem power for your vote to be worth 1 cent, and even then people get paid out half a cent in sbd and like 0.1 cent or something in SP. Aside from the fact that that even is below the threshold where you will get paid, or someone else gets paid when you upvote them, it means that someone needs to fork out about 70 x 3 to 5 dollars however much steem costs at the moment, let's say 2 USD. So 140 USD for your vote to count a cent. When you can right now go to Reddit and have the same experience and never pay anything, ever. Like for real, there HAS to be something on the platform that you can use Steem on, because people won't keep on just buying the currency. The current downtrend may well be the start of the end in that regard. If there is no market volume anymore, if there is no one on Poloniex or Bittrex or whatever forking out bitcoin for Steem you my friend who "earns" a hundred bucks on every post are boned.
I mean can you see average joe wanting to get on social media and get greeted with a white paper and convoluted modeling and technicals about what Steem and Steem Power and SBD are, AND also have to buy some of that on some crypto exchange? It sounds ludicrous really. And on the flipside the visibility is SO bad on this platform that you really need to actively filter by tags to get away from the endless crytpo circlejerk and even then you're more than likely still awash in a sea of shit posts. So even if you are somewhat popular, you need 500 new accounts to vote on a post so that you can make one dollar. That is absolutely abysmal, and it will not happen. The only way you can hope to get any traction is to play the upvote bot game, which adds to the pressure to buy steem and keeps the economy going, yes, but in of itself doesn't offer another reason to buy the currency other than platform internal stuff that you may or may not care about.
Plus there's no moderation and any whale can appoint themselves as a resident party pooper and flag your posts and there's nothing you can do about it. Think about it, when and if the platform gets any kind of traction, Facebook can set up a dark fund where they dedicate like a million bucks to stopping this platform. All they need to do is buy a bunch of steem and make a few SP heavy accounts, and then go on a spree flagging everything on the site. With 20-100 accounts like that and a bot network they can stop this site from working, as everything is being downvoted into oblivion. No one gets paid, people get the shits with the platform.
Like for real, being on this platform to me now is like an exercise in sadomasochism. Every other day something else happens that turns my stomach here.
Shit that's a well thought out comment, you should just write that as a post haha. But you're right I've introduced a bunch of real life people here and they just don't see the point, its too much work for too little in exchange, to understand the system here and be able to profit from it is becoming a losing battle.
The no moderation I kind of like, it helps serve the whole decentralised idea but the problem is it kind of has moderators, or rather the whales moderate you know. If they don't like something or they disagree then pow there goes your post. It's how we end up with flag wars like between bernie and haejin but thats detrimental to the platform too. I guess the concept works but in reality it doesn't. The people that were here first, premined all the steem etc are the ones who have control now and probably for as long as the platform lasts.
Yeah absolutely, there just are no checks and balances. Like realistically the admins on Reddit and Facebook can remove and edit posts however they like, but people watch that like a hawk. Plus there's always ways to appeal things. Ultimately that impacts on how people see the platform, like look at Digg for instance, it went down in flames exactly BECAUSE of admins and power users abusing the platform to the point where others felt they had no impact on it at all. Frankly I would like to see a mass migration from Facebook in particular, it's by far the most abusive platform in that respect. On a whim they declare that your page is no longer desirable to them and delete it.
But still it doesn't help that Steemit is basically based on vigilante justice. Like a mod here is basically just a whale who takes matters in their own hands. The only way to somehow then alleviate the abuse is to reach out to other whales, who may or may not care to do something. And why should they, they too don't want to run afoul of some bully. This is everything bad about the legal system in real life, brought to a discussion platform.
Like for real shit like this never works. We see this kind of thing play out in a big way in the crypto sphere too. "Hurr durr banks and governments are criminals, all taxation is theft and regulation is oppression", next minute the whole economy is run by gangsters. It's slowly getting better but the crypto economy is still 99% scam. The currencies themselves are not needed, and there is zero recourse for when someone fucks you over. Anyone can claim they've been "hacked" and oops we lost the money in your wallet tee hee. Naturally then the crypto cunts instead of taking a valuable lesson of course sound off smugly like hurr you should have taken all these steps to make things secure, really it's your fault for not single handedly learning how fucking cryptography works and how to oversee every step in your crypto trades with programs that are shit to use. And then we throw around the figure that it's still only like 3% of people using it all, just wait until more people buy bitcoin and whatever. Yeah those might be connected buddy, the reason why so few people use it is because of how shit it all is. Compare that to even Visa or Paypal where it's easy as fuck to buy things you want and just get on with life. No one fucking cares that transactions are faster. Only people in fintech think that people are kept up at night because their transactions take a second more to process or some shit. When you already have paywave or something, and supposedly third world countries are where you should introduce cryptos because of how corrupt the banks and governments there are. Well guess what, those corrupt banks and governments can just as well outlaw that and you're on your ass again. The problem has always been the people, not the technology.
Well that’s a dark post. I completely understand your view though. Many whales do cling very tightly to their voting power and only share it with a limited few.
The whole haejin saga is a giant pile of crap. It’s disappointing to see however I can only see it lasting for a limited time before something gives. What it when that will be I have no idea.
For now though, I will continue to grow my account and interact with the great people I have met here. If it all goes to shit I will be very sad. I do love this place.
Yea it just sucks seeing people who post decent stuff giving up on the platform because they don't get exposure, meanwhile people post the same crypto bs everyday and make a fortune, or they post about their travels and make $600 like, yea it was a good post but not that good you know. I really don't care about making money here like this has no real bearing on my future so I don't mind posting and making fuck all money, but for some people I know it's how they pay their rent and buy food you know, sucks to see it going downhill. hopefully you're right about haejin and whatnot but there are still a lot of issues that need working out.
A lot of people join sites like this for all the wrong reasons. Making money off of your posts should be a secondary thing. The biggest winners are the ones who build a community that helps each other out, rather than tries to take, take, take. I realized this (albeit too late) on another little social network called Tsu. The people who stand to profit the most are the people who build up the people around them. Everyone helps each other out, kinda circle jerk fashion, but in the end, everyone profits from it. It's when you try and go out and do your own thing that you fail miserably.
A circle jerk that incorporates everyone in a community is good, It just seems here the only cirlce jerking that means anything comes from the whales between each other
And they got there by building up their network. Seek to build up the people around you, and you'll eventually have the same rewards.