Big. Bigger. Biggest.

The more time I spend on Steemit, the more these terms, 'minnows', 'dolphins' and 'whales' get thrown around. As with any platform of social interaction in today's extremely competitive world, it is a surprise to nobody any longer that even Steemit has its big fish, its slightly smaller fish, and then its next-to-irrelevant fish, with everyone in the latter category desperately hammering at upward-mobility's door.

Custom meme, base image still-shot from Shark Tale, Dreamworks Animation Studios

As many who read my debut post will already have gleaned, I am a gamer, and a dedicated one. And I believe I saw this phenomenon first expressed best in blatant analogy in the game Agar.io, a simple 2D MMO action game in which you control a cell in a petridish, consuming agar and other smaller player-controlled cells, while evading larger, slower cells, ensuring that you don't get consumed yourself. When I played it first with my gaming group, I was hooked immediately, and it is likely this addictive function of survival and Darwinism condensed into a colourful two dimensional sandbox hunt that makes Steemit and everything at stake seem so darned attractive to those of us looking to play the survival game on a slightly more realistic field.

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And had first person shooters not been my preference of the season that year, I might still have been hooked to it now. When Steeming, AND steaming behind your screen at the lack of upvotes or follows while you're at it (who could resist making that joke?), I would recommend this game to you and anyone else who's stressed and could use a simple distraction to unwind. You can play it directly from your browser here:

http://agar.io

Or you could just download it on that ever-present smartphone if you're on the move.

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All that established, however...there is one stark difference I thought noteworthy, between Steemit and Agar.io (and the real life example it follows), and that is that the genius who designed this platform and its reward infrastructure ensured that those three groups actually help each other along, as opposed to it turning into an all out scrapfest of survival of the largest. Perhaps Steemit also represents something more than just a social networking platform, or a cryptocurrency blog. Maybe its a representation of what humankind in general really needs to do to help the species grow. To actually support and help each other grow. When I joined, I was informed by several posts that lead out from the Quick Start FAQs page, that there are a token few toxic users on this platform, and that the community is quick to deal with them, through simple persuasion executed in a professional and reasonably lenient manner. And yet even though these still exist here, and while I have noted some mild degrees of negative hyperbole, the community here is supportive to a degree unimaginable to me on any other social network.

Even before writing this, I read a post by a certain user, @teamsteem, who wrote about how cryptocurrencies are a means of deviating from the influence of those who control national, hard currencies, and creating a medium of currency for the people, which is truly controlled by its users, and how it opens up options for us our governments wouldn't necessarily provide us by default. However, in this post, besides alluding to the benefits these cryptocurrencies represent for us, he also speaks of us, humankind in general, and how we needed not just to use this new resource for our own personal gain, but metamorphosize it as an instrument of true humanity, and strive to make the world a better place for each other with it. While I might still appear a relatively fresh operator as compared to him when it comes to running these trains of thought, I believe one feels compelled to agree with him regardless, especially living in this day and age, myself included. And whether he realized it or not when writing this post, Steemit marks a notable breakthrough in this attempt, for all of us, and also sets a far greater example for others to follow upon.

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With a community whose members' inherent goodwill and desire to express it seemingly orders of magnitude higher than that of those on most other social interaction platforms, as evidenced by the collective positivity found on the comments feed on almost every post I've seen here, I only pray that as the young Steemit hits its prime, the members maintain this level of goodwill and pleasant-nature to one another, and keep holding up the ways of the denizens inhabiting this revolutionary social network, and especially so once we're all loaded with crypto-cash, and don't in turn become the domineering, regimental money-lords we've been chaffing under thus far, on the steam of the new 'soft money'.

Let us remember our humanity, the day cryptocurrency becomes the only relevant currency, and wear it with pride, warmth and camaraderie on that day, so we remain 'the people', as we profess to be today.

This has been Callistanix, hope you had a good read, and took away something positive from this post :)

Cheers, Steem...

P.S: The excellently constructed post from @teamsteem can be found here:
https://steemit.com/joy/@teamsteem/the-real-value-of-everything
It is a truly informative read.