The Different Sides of SteemIt - An Opinion
A little insight.
First, where I am coming from.
I joined SteemIt on Saturday morning, June 24th, 2017. I wasn't really intending anything major to happen here. I had been going down a rabbit-hole of cryptocurrency related surfing as I had recently taken up a very small shot at mining coins on my spare GPU cycles while I browsed.
I found this fascinating social network that was blockchain powered. So on the Friday night before it all began, I decided to sign up. They said they would email me when it was ready, and they might have to contact me via phone to verify I wasn't some nefarious spam bot.
I went to bed.
I woke up early Saturday to find that my account had been approved with little fuss.
It's been pretty much downhill from there.
I started reading, and posting, and planning my 'introduceyourself' post. All the while, finding people to discuss things with on steemit.chat. I came into contact with people like @acidyo and @clevercreator and learned how awesome this community was going to be.
At some point, I sat down to learn Markdown while creating my first post, a classic introduceyourself. I got responses. Wow, people were real.
Ok, lets write a couple more. So I created my second and third posts about random things.
Somewhere in there I decided to try out the 'postpromotion' channel of steemit.chat, and found one small negative to an environment like this. One of those 'sides' to SteemIt I am here to discuss in this post.
Upon placing my link in there, a user decided to upvote it. Yay! He even told me that he did.
Then he demanded I upvote his post in return.
Wait? What? Sure, let me read it and see if it is something I can upvote.
I got maybe 20 seconds into reading it before Steemit.chat pinged me again with a mention. He was wondering why I hadn't upvoted yet. I informed him that once I read it I would decide on the upvote.
The next 10 minutes were spent listening to him complain and call me unfair, to tell everyone in chat to NOT upvote anything I posted because I wouldn't upvote back.
I eventually tired of the argument and left the postpromotion channel entirely.
Then I met the other 'side' of SteemIt. Two different users, at the same time, who had been in another chat were discussing my argument with this guy and reached out to inform me that they backed my beliefs about upvoting entirely. @Anritco and @snowwhite were amazing to chat with, and through them, I got invites to several groups. So far, the best of these has been the Minnow Support Project ( @minnowsupport ). Check out a recent post about them.
Seeing both of these 'sides' I started to notice a feeling, or vibe off the various members I came into contact with. It's not always obvious, and there are plenty of middle-ground-types to muddy the waters of my opinion. Still this is what I had found in general.
So, in no particular order, I give you the 'Sides'
Side 1 - In It To Win It
These are your upvote for upvote, post any content that will get resteemed, seen, or upvoted - types. Quality is only a means unto a rewarding end. The type that are bringing down the entire network because they want to make 'money' here without providing value-added content to it. They will not help SteemIt become widely adopted and serve only to dilute the curation of the rest of SteemIt. I wish we could see less of this.
Side 2 - The Rest of Us
These are the 'think hard about what I post' types. The ones who give us something to read, to laugh at, to cry at. They move us, they inform us. Their content is original and worthy. They don't hunt for the upvotes or the followers. They just provide, and trust that the rest of the 'Rest of Us' will see to them. Support these posters when they arrive and come along. They are adding value to the entire venture and will help it remain for many years to come.
Now this isn't to say that the 'Rest of Us' aren't going to enjoy the rewards, but it's not the sole driving force in their content. They aren't doing every little dirty trick to get it, but neither will they turn it down. I admire this kind of member and their type of content. I try and follow those that are of like-mind. I will say that I have found my home in the MSP (Minnow Support Project). It is a beautiful community that is growing very very quickly and is always looking for more people of similar mind. It can help you build a following and boost your exposure, but it is by no means friendly to the spam-friendly, upvote begging, cheap content types.
Since then, I have even been the victim of 'flag war' just for posting some of my own low SP flags on some posts in NSFW that were clearly plagiarized. I wanted to help out the awesome @o0pepper0o, and suffered a lot of hate for it. You can read about this here.
Thanks - @discordiant
In it for the stories. People can be interesting, sometimes. Not so much in it for the whole "steemit circle jerk" that can happen a lot of the time. I do love the website though. Wonderful concept to monetize content.
No doubt that I enjoy it being monetized, but I would come for the community even if the curation worked with a closed currency only on the site.
This was helpful. Thank you for being willing to speak up and jump in to get involved. I'm new here too and I deeply want to share the value that I've spent a lifetime acquiring. Whether I make money or not right away is secondary to providing authentic, helpful content that touches people's lives in a positive way at the same time that it satisfies my own creative need to express. Rock on!
If you aren't already there, I would recommend you come join the PAL Discord (Minnow Support Project)
Discord Link
@discordiant great post, and great community. 😁
Precious @discordiant, here is @pastorlea of alwaysloved. you can follow me too. upvote and resteem as well. much love and appreciation
Hi there @discordiant! I knew that you will do great on Steemit. Don't let anyone bully you, follow your path and upvote according to your interests!
Keep going! :)
Thank you! You seriously have no idea how much you adding me to PALnet Discord has changed my outlook on SteemIt. Come be social in there sometime. It has grown even in the time I have been here.
My pleasure! I'm having rough times at work recently and very limited time, but I will be back, I promise :)
I swear this isn't spam >.> BUT awesome post! You've captured just about every "The Rest of Us" 's point of view. Hopefully, this trend of being too money-driven would dwindle down and we'd get to see contents that are actually well thought of.
I happen to know this ISN'T any sort of spam. I am glad to see you commenting. Thanks for the compliment and I too hope that eventually content becomes the focus, not the means, here.
"Awesome post!" ... Followed you, please follow me ---> it starts from the "Awesome". :P
Very funny. Hah! I am pretty sure I already was...
Troublemaker.
Fluffy bear.
You down voted but don't want down votes in return. You are an idiot. You could have just not voted, or even muted me. If people don't like my posts, they won't vote.
Clearly plagerized?
pla·gia·rism
ˈplājəˌrizəm/
noun
the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.
I was just posting random pictures of random girls, not someone's work, just randomly uploaded to the internet pictures. I also didn't state they were my own pictures, infact, I say they were simply my favorite posta of the day. You are just a lonely dweeb that automatically took sides with an ugly camslut.
Here's another down vote for your false accusations. Oops, there goes your rewards thus far. Eat it, hypocrite.
Agree! I can't stand the whole upvote me, I'll upvote you / follow me ill follow you.
I posted something about a week ago, first reaponse I got was someone saying "nice post here is my post"
Now, I would generally be cool with that if the post was at all related to mine. It was not even of a distant relation to mine. >_<
This person was basically spamming my post with their unrelated content. So I asked them did it Have anything to do with my post.
*no, but it will help you. Please upvote/follow. I refused and gave a brief little bit of info regarding steemit etiquette and how if you don't comment related stuff, it's spammy. Ugh. As if that needs to be explained. Its like me saying
"The blue sky calms me"
Someone else: "look at My new car"
UNRELATED!
Welcome, glad you are getting involved. My advice is simply this. Be Honest, if someone is harassing you for an up vote, tell them no and why. You are fully entitled to your opinion. If you see something you think should be flagged, leave a comment stating why, personally I don't know enough about the NSFW world to know who has paid for rights for what.
You have my entire support man, many times I speak about this kind of situations, I even make posts speaking about it and I can say with all confidence that you are doing well. Because the way of getting further is about contrast: about being different.
So I am glad that you are.
You get the same thanks as @snowwhite. You guys are amazing for introducing me to MSP. It's been what I needed.