How Steemit is helping me to avoid tarbabies and focus on content

Over the last several weeks, I've noticed a curious inhibition to post much of anything on Facebook or Google Plus. No longer am I drawn to the debates of old style politics. No longer do I care to debate Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives.

I just use Facebook to promote my posts on Steemit and to keep up with family news. I still use Google Plus and Twitter, but most days, all I ever do is post links to my articles on Steemit. I have a quiet smirk on my face when I do that because I know that every post on those three platforms is a tiny paper cut for them. Multiply that times thousands or millions of Steemian posts and it starts to count. They don't want us to know that we could get paid for doing social media. Not yet anyway, or maybe not ever.

I came to Steemit out of curiosity. I saw a very interesting ecosystem and decided that I wanted to learn more. Now, a bit more than a year later, I'm still here. I'm earning phone booth money. I split 50/50 now for rewards, and whenever I build up $10SBD, I send it to an exchange and buy some cryptocurrency.

I was once afraid to invest in cryptocurrency. I thought I needed a wallet on my computer to get started. Then I started thinking about computer security, how to use the wallet and when. I went on like that for awhile. I'm really small potatoes, folks.

Then I found out that exchanges will build a virtual wallet for you. I also learned about the perils of the hot wallet and how exchanges are working to prevent their hot wallets from being stolen. I finally figured out how to use OpenLedger, to backup my wallet and that OpenLedger doesn't have a hot wallet. It's a decentralized exchange so there is no need for a hot wallet. It is just an interface to the blockchain.

I'm building a portfolio. I'm doing research. I'm finding currencies that align with my interests. All of them share one thing in common: the potential to disintermediate fiat currency and centralized banking. I believe in the decentralization of power. Currency is ground zero for that battle. Cryptocurrency is our best shot at making that happen.

I'm learning that there are some issues in this Steemit community. People are worried about how the reward pool is being distributed. Once or twice I got involved in the debate, and now I see the distraction it is.

Some here on Steemit have expressed jealousy and rage surrounding the reward pool distribution. Some people have figured out bots and how to program them for upvotes at the right time for the maximum reward. Personally, I don’t care much for the bots. I don’t use them. I don’t want to use them. This platform should be based on manual curation, nothing more. But if that’s how you want to do it, go for it.

As for me, I’ve decided to let it all go. You want to go for maximum extraction? Good for you. I’m just here to write. I won't say that I’m sorry I even got involved at all in the fracas. But I do think that bitching about “reward pool rape” is just as negative as the people who do it. I know this because I've done it. They are two sides of the same coin.

The more we focus on the problems of Steemit, the less time we have to focus on the quality of the articles and the meaning of them. There are teams of people working on those problems and they can afford to do it. All of that, I've found, is a huge distraction away from what really matters about Steemit. At least to me, anyway.

This experiment, Steemit, is really a test of our ability to adapt. Do you want to become a good writer? Focus on writing, not just the form and presentation. Focus on how you feel when you write it. Are you passionate about the subject matter? If not, change the subject.

Do you want to become an expert on timing your votes for yourself, your family and friends as a business venture? You will do that at the expense of your ability to create quality content.

We have only so many hours in a day. Every decision we make during the day requires a discrete amount of energy. It is not easy to be good at both writing and programming rewards from the pool. In a sense, it is a matter of adaptation. Do you want your mind, body and soul to be good at one thing or the other?

So I’m going to leave that question to you, brothers and sisters. I’m done with the debate on the bots and reward pool. I’m just going to focus on writing about what is important to me when the time and energy avail me. If you show up, I’ll show up. If you stop showing up, then I stop. It’s really that simple. I will let my audience grow organically from comments to posts. I don’t need a robot.

There may be some advantages to robots that I don't know about yet, but humans are the best curators. I don't think it will ever be possible for a robot to do what a human does. Robots don't have a beating heart, a grumbling stomach, or a burning sensation in their chest when they hurt someone else by mistake. Robots do what they're programmed to do.

In a sense humans do what they're programmed to do, too. But humans have the capacity to make choices that robots cannot make. Humans have love, compassion and an instinct for survival. Robots do not have all of those. Yes, you can program those things into robot, at least you can try, but it's still an algorithm, limited to what can be expressed by code. A robot will never know the beauty of a sunset, the sound of falling rain or the smile of a child. It's just not something that you can program into a thing.

I like Steemit because what I read here has expanded the scope of debate for me. No longer do I care for the old politics. No longer am I concerned with what is at the surface. Down here, far below everything else in mainstream media and popular culture is the question of how we choose to get along. Steemit is about that to me.