I’ve played games centered around an optimization process my entire life: starcraft, poker, and fantasy sports. After my initial foray into steemit, realized there were curation rewards for upvoting content which later becomes popular. Just as I had done in all my past and current interests and jobs, I attempted to optimize the money I could make on the site, this time through curating.

It’s hard to convince people to not make simple and economically smart decisions. If I’m the second person to upvote a post that receives no other votes, I will receive no curation rewards. However, if I’m an early upvote to an article that explodes, I will receive some compensation.

So I started following all of the names at the top of the daily trending list. These were the people who posted popular content, and if I refreshed my feed sporadically throughout the day upvoting new content that came in, I would receive large curation rewards. I started liking posts because of who authored them and probably only read 70% of the material I upvoted and disagreed with or didn't enjoy some of that material after reading it but never removed an upvote.

Except I didn’t receive large steem rewards:

While I’ve received more in curation rewards than I would have had I been liking unpopular posts, 1.135 SP in a week of curating is not enough to warrant my past greed.

I am not a whale; my account is valued at ~$1650, so my upvote doesn’t significantly move the needle, either for the account making the post or for my curation rewards. If I had a larger account value, both would be higher. But as of now, and the same will go for many of you as I am probably in the top 3% of account values, curating does not provide me with substantial rewards.

A Move to Altruism

monkeys doing what is best for everyone

I’m not saying unfollow every popular person currently in your feed, I don’t plan to; I greatly enjoy reading and interacting with @falkvinge @sterlinluxan @kevinwong and other popular content providers posts.

But I’m going to follow three simple rules:

1. Don’t follow people for the sake of curation rewards
2. Don’t upvote a post before reading it
3. Follow anyone whose content you really enjoy

The benefits of curation are too low to be worth most people’s time on here. Let’s build steemit’s content from the ground up: comment on unpopular blogs, trawl for hidden gems and selflessly share those instead of your own posts, have lively discussions in threads with little monetary benefit to yourself, try and learn new things. Let’s move steemit from a money hungry popularity contest into a smart discussion forum first that occasionally has reward benefits after.

Some People to Follow

@melek

Melek came to my attention when she (I think?) posted a scavenger hunt with a $30 reward for winning: https://steemit.com/steemit/@melek/introducing-the-melek-steemit-scavenger-hunt-and-math-challenge-1-win-30-steem-dollars

I won the contest, immediately received the $30 and was a little frustrated to see her post, which pledged to give back 25% of rewards to a future scavenger hunt, only get $5.05 in rewards after providing such a fun and selfless game for the community.

Another unappreciated awesome work:
https://steemit.com/philosophy/@melek/the-rise-of-pluralism-and-the-supremacy-of-truth

Check out more here: https://steemit.com/@melek

@biophil

https://steemit.com/@biophil
Phil is a PhD student at UCSB studying electrical engineering but his research “bridges various aspects of economics, computer science, and control theory”. A few of his Game Theory of Steem posts blew up to high payouts, but some of his most interesting work received less than $10 in rewards.

I found these 2 articles on disagreements with anarchy/voluntaryism extremely interesting and found the in thread discussions as engaging and intellectual as I've seen on the site:
https://steemit.com/anarchism/@biophil/an-original-parable-about-voluntaryism

https://steemit.com/anarchy/@biophil/should-anarchists-abolish-the-commons

@sethlinson

Seth is an animator and anarchist from Toronto. What caught my eye was this blog post on how effort is worthless compared to demand: https://steemit.com/steemit/@sethlinson/i-made-usd700-with-my-1st-post-and-usd0-06-with-my-third-steemit-a-lesson-in-free-market-economics

He is absolutely right. If you want your posts to make money, give the people what they want to hear. But in my effort to not focus on money, but instead to focus on product, I want to draw attention to some of his other posts that I found better and have gone unnoticed:
https://steemit.com/anarchy/@sethlinson/this-art-used-to-hang-in-a-government-building-now-i-m-using-it-to-promote-anarchy

https://steemit.com/feminism/@sethlinson/why-i-became-a-feminist-and-why-you-don-t-have-to

https://steemit.com/art/@sethlinson/animation-takes-time-effort-and-alcohol-to-dull-the-pain-in-my-hand

@bendjmiller222

https://steemit.com/@bendjmiller222
I believe the comment section should be the lifeblood of steemit, and I originally followed Ben based on what I saw him post in other threads, not his own original content.

He is a cryptocurrency enthusiast with many articles about steem, but his non crypto posts like this deserve more love: https://steemit.com/steemit/@bendjmiller222/how-my-best-friend-saved-me-from-suicide

@domavila

He’s been providing trading news and insight on steem’s price for a month with only one post exceeding a $10 reward (full disclosure: it got to $550)

Some unloved examples:
https://steemit.com/steem/@domavila/steembtc-a-butterfly-dies-but-a-deep-crab-emerges-reversal-time-for-steem

https://steemit.com/steem/@domavila/steem-price-analysis-steem-btc-bullish-signs-for-steem

I'm going to spend some time today cleaning up my follow list: deleting people I don't enjoy reading and adding people who I do. Leave suggestions below for anyone you think is worth following, including yourselves, I promise to respond to everyone, read articles, and follow who I enjoy.

---

My name is Ryan Daut and I would love to have you as a follower. Click here to go to my profile page, then click FOLLOW in the upper right corner if you would like to see my blogs and articles regularly. My interests are poker, fantasy sports, mathematics, astrophysics, cryptocurrency, and computer gaming.

You can also follow me on twitter: https://twitter.com/rcdaut