The urge the join the circle jerk is stronger than on Reddit.
I'm sure many of you are familiar with the Psychology of Motivation RSA talk, but for those who are not, please check it out.
The gist of it is that motivation isn't as straightforward as we assume, especially when it involves extrinsic motivation such as financial rewards. When it comes to creative behaviour, when direct financial rewards are the motivating factor, we narrow our focus. We seek out the most straight forward path to rewards, at the expensive of thinking laterally/creatively.
This relates to my experience on SteemIt, as well as to Reddit. There's probably a large Reddit user overlap here, and I'm sure most are aware of the powerful motivating effect of the imaginary internet points. We have derogatory terms for how it plays out: "karma-whoring", "circle-jerking", "echo chambers" where people are afraid of speaking against the "hive mind", when all that is at stake is imaginary internet points and our reputation with people who are largely strangers to us. I don't think Reddit is as bad as those words make it sound, in fact I love Reddit in comparison to traditional forums, but it's clear that those effects are there and they are related to the karma system.
The sense of potential reward on Steem is so much higher than Reddit, because it's not just Karma that's to be gained, but real cash, the extrinsic motivation mentioned before. There is a sense that if you post about the most popular topic, that is the path to not just social recognition, but financial reward as well. And even without doing that, my own attempts to get a trending topic have been uncreative, narrow-minded. Particularly I've been reposting popular stuff from elsewhere with attribution.
Perhaps the motivating factors of SteemIt are something to think about when trying to contribute here. Thoughts? And yes I'm a completely transparent hypocrite, but at least so far there has not been a feedback loop since my uncreative approach has not yielded more than a few pennies.
you at over 100 bucks now
Interesting post.
I think you are touching upon some of the very core challenges Steemit faces in regards to the generation of content. The incentive to post meaningful and quality content is far greater than say on Reddit due to the financial rewards, something which undeniably makes it very tempting to seek out popular content from other channels, reformat it and post here.
I am however cautiously going to assume the majority of the current Steemit community are well-seasoned internet users with activity on numerous boards already. I have a feeling - or a hope, rather - that people will simply ignore things they've already seen elsewhere and reward original content creators instead.
I would think that seeing similar stuff to Reddit would be a good sign rather than a poor one, even if the repost-from-Reddit strategy isn't a good one for posters here. For example, I upvoted someone's post when the Nice terror attack broke out here, and on Reddit as well as news sites and Twitter it's widely being discussed. But I saw it here only on the "new" page, this morning when I woke up it was not trending or popular here, to my surprise. Most of the trending or popular topics were about Steem itself, or a set of niches that also seem to do well here.
That said, Reddit is itself a highly skewed demographic, the ideal for SteemIt would be to have a front page that truly represents interesting topics for the wider public (and perhaps a subreddit equivalent for those who wish to see only their own interests).
Oh, I'm sorry, perhaps I should have clarified. I was referring to taking previously posted content on other channels and reposting it here - not events currently unfolding or recent news. I'm all in for that being discussed and spread on all available channels.
I'm very interested in seeing how the front page and subreddit-equivalents will unfold, though.
I've always found it amazing how much people value internet points but it's the same thing as getting likes on so many platforms. People crave the attention and approval. Add money to the equation and some people will do just about anything to make money. Actions such as writing bots, stealing content, and scams in general.
As someone posting my own creative fiction here, among other things that I find interesting, I wholeheartedly agree. There probably needs to be some more checks and balances in the system. I can see already that there must be a lot of people just scanning and up voting without really reading posts in order to try to be first. It's a temptation for me too, then I think about what that means and stop myself.
But I think over time the kinks will be worked out. Or another platform will come along with better ideas.