Tit for tat and things like that

Setting the stage

In the last few weeks, I've been witness to some major brawls here on Steemit. I won't go into the details, but I can say that for some people, there's been some very rough sledding. I see personal and passionate vendettas, grudges, retaliation and payback.

On the flipside, I've seen some very positive community activism. I've seen pleas for help and members of the community would come to their aid. I've seen the debates about flagging and upvoting. I've seen the leaders whom we trust to maintain the health of Steemit at work, and I must say I was surprised to see their intervention and how they intervened.

I will say at the outset that I strive to remain neutral in all of my affairs. I do this so that I have no personal adversaries. Life is already difficult. I don't have to add to it for anyone. I am paying homage to that old saying, "If you can't take it, don't dish it out."

There is a reason why I try to remain neutral. I'm actually a very political person, and I write about politics. But I write about it in such a way that I can make an objective assessment of the root cause of conflict between people. If you read my articles here and on my blog, The Digital Firehose going back the last two years, you will see a sort of transition.

No longer am I that concerned with the details of this crime or that. I am concerned with why people do really awful things to other people, on any scale, in any context. If we're going to survive as a species, we need to get a grip, find out why people can commit horrible violence against another, and give them something else to do. It's either that, or extinction. And as Carl Sagan was famous for saying, "extinction is the rule, survival is the exception."

This applies on a personal and global level. Fighting is irreversible. Fighting forces us to justify what we believe to be right with force rather than logic. Fighting is what people do when they lack the capacity to engage in logic. Fighting is entirely cathartic, emotional and completely free of empathy or even intimacy. As Bob Earll was so fond of saying, "intimacy is me being me, and letting you see me." If we're at war, you won't see me. So I avoid war. I err on the side of peace.

Why I love Steemit and don't

Now that the stage is set, let me bring this down to Steemit. I love Steemit. I see Steemit as a naturally profitable outlet for something I would do anyway. Like a billion other people, I like to engage in social media. What I don't like about social media in general is that I am the product for advertisers. My writing is not the product and it doesn't make money for me unless I'm writing on a platform specifically designed to pay me back. Steemit is, in my estimation, the best site designed for that purpose - to reward people for quality content.

But something disturbing has happened here. People are fighting over the rewards pool. They are forming alliances, factions even, that vote for each other. They are trading votes. They follow for a follow. They may even upvote their friends regardless of the content because of an unwritten agreement that they will trade votes for each other.

It's kind of like this. Imagine that you're an employer. Your best friend has fallen on hard times and he needs to make some money. So you help him out and hire him. You find a place for him in your company. As much as you'd like to keep him, you find that he really doesn't have the skills you're looking for. He's not keeping up and he keeps coming to your office asking for help, even after six months when he should have mastered the tasks he's assigned to do.

Sometimes he needs help, and sometimes, he's there to shoot the breeze with you. The lines become blurred between work and friendship. You find it hard to provide an honest assessment of his performance. Then something happens that makes you think twice about hiring him. He says something offhand to one of your biggest clients and you lose business with that client. Now you have to step up and do something. But if you do, you risk losing your best friend and you already lost a big client. A client that pays the bills that allows you to cut a check for your friend every week.

I draw this analogy because I see that happening here. I mean, I could be wrong, but it seems to me that these alliances and factions are becoming fights over money, real money. I won't name names because I want to remain neutral here, but they're pretty easy to find because they're some of the top earners here, and it looks like they've been slapped pretty hard with flags from really big whales.

I've also seen articles clearly documenting flagging wars. The discourse has been really ugly and I wince when I see it. Why such vulgarity? Why such animosity? The "violator" runs to the whales for protection. The victim makes an appeal to the community and people come to her aid. Soap opera.

Coming back to the point of Steemit

All of that, is a distraction from what Steemit is here to do. Steemit is a blogging platform to encourage the production of high quality content and to provide the most direct way for people to be paid for it. But when we're presented with a way to generate value by writing and curating, it's hard to be objective when the people we're voting for are our friends.

If we're here to trade horses, then let's be honest about it and make it explicit. But don't be surprised if Joe writes a vapid travel blog filled with very high quality prose and makes $800 on his post. We know that Joe's alliance of several hundred followers are voting for him. The danger is, if you insult Joe with an unflattering opinion of his work, his followers may decide to flag everything you write for the next year into eternity.

I'm reminded of the story of Edward Lampert and his libertarian experiment with Sears and K-Mart. Mr. Lampert set everyone in competition with each other. Every department was in competition with another for shares of a limited reward pool. It started out as friendly competition until people became more concerned with the latest feud than getting the work done. Both Sears and K-Mart were decimated as a result of the experiment. Both closed numerous stores, and people lost jobs and fortunes. I don't want that to happen to us.

Neutrality is the rule for me

This is why I try to stay neutral here. I don't trade follow for follow. I don't trade votes for votes. I don't beg for votes. I just focus on one thing: writing damn good content. What I write is not everybody's cup of tea and I get that. So I just post it and see what come my way.

I'm a serious writer. That doesn't mean I think a vacation blogger will never be serious. I've seen some good vacation blogging to be sure, but I'm interested in seeing a better world for my kids (and yours). That is the objective of my writing.

I want everyone to prosper. I don't want to have to kiss ass for a whalevote. I just want to write great articles to earn that whalevote or a bunch of minnow votes. I write articles to "be me and let you see me". When I write about skills, punishment and reward, I mean it for the sake of humanity. This isn't to say that my posts are more important than anyone else's. This is to say that what I write is what I'm passionate about and I want to show it to you.

But if I have to worry that someone might feel insulted about what I wrote, and that her and her army of voters will descend upon me, what is the point of Steemit then? When I see people descend into the hell of factional conflict as I'm seeing some are doing here, I see people who lack the skills to respond adaptively to the demands of the environment here. I see challenging behavior from adults.

The bickering, the name calling, the infighting, the flagging wars...that's all challenging behavior and does little to encourage quality content. If I write something that I know will get upvotes from my cabal of followers, do I need to focus on content or my relations with my cabal?

I honestly don't know what the answer is to the fighting. So I focus on keeping my side of the street clean. I keep it free of profanity, free of insults, free of threats. I write my articles and send them up to see what comes in. I want my articles to be judged on the quality of my work, not whether or not I've traded votes with enough people to pay my rent.

This is why I never let money come between me and my friends.

Write on.