I love Steemit, and I really don't like what I am seeing these days.
I don't have the time or patience to write a "stylized, pretty" post. I have some things I want to get out and get off my chest. If I get flagged for it, so be it.
I love Steemit, I love most of the people here, and enjoy spreading rewards around to other people. We all know the platform has some problems. That is one of the reasons the platform is still in "beta". But this behavior that I have seen lately can be described as nothing but selfish. With the broken price of SBD, seems like everyone went out and rented a bunch of delegation just to upvote themselves. As soon as the price of SBD rocketed, the nice, "friendly atmosphere" of Steemit turned into a free for all money grab. No one cares about any one else anymore, just how they can benefit themselves from the platform. No one cares about rewarding good content any more, just about how much rewards their own shit posts can earn them.
Do you guys know that there is an account called @rewardpoolrape posting bullshit posts and dozens of comments on his own bullshit post, then rewarding himself 20+ dollars per comment? No joke. you can see the post HERE. I flagged the crap out of everyone of his comments and his post, and if he flags me for it, so be it. I am tired of the selfish and greedy behavior. It makes me not want to be on steemit anymore. I never did any of the other social media sites, just a couple of games on facebook, and I was only on that platform for the games. Now the friendly people here don't feel so friendly anymore and I don't want to reward people anymore. People are just going to continue to take advantage of me, and continue to take advantage of each other. Now I did everything I could, and I flagged that account with all my voting power, but it isn't enough. And I really don't know what else to do. I would love to go back to just, spreading rewards and upvoting other people just for the good feeling of doing something nice for someone else, but what is the point? No one cares about anything past their own selfish wants and it makes me sad. I don't want to be part of whale wars, but damnit, this behavior can't be allowed to continue. This greed and selfishness of people (I'm not naming names, they know who they are) makes me sick. No one can get a post valued over 10 dollars without being the close personal friend of a whale or by paying for upvotes. That's another thing that gets me. all these groups saying "we'll help you, but only if you pay". It's too much. There are some serious flaws in this system, and aside from pointing them out, and using my measly steempower to flag the behavior at the risk of being flagged in retaliation, I don't know what else to do to try to make this place my favorite place on the internet to spend time. Because it was at one point, my favorite place on the net. But the behavior I am seeing makes me feel like I should power down and walk away from the platform while the coins are still worth something, before all the greed and selfishness ruin it, and steem goes back to seven cents each, only this time they won't come back up.
I do hope that you will stay. There are still a lot of good people here.
Don't you dare quit. You have a job to do here, and you know you love it. The bullshit will die down, and we can all relax again, I'm sure.
Meanwhile, I have an introduction post you might be interested in.
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@thesteemengine/introducing-the-steem-engine-initiative
Trust me, I'm a doctor.
You better not quit!! (My friends aren't quitters and you are definitely my friend.) If you try, I will find you and drag you back. This is my promise. Count on it. Your hair will make a fine handle.
You had also better get yourself over and join our new group on Discord. We have a channel especially dedicated to curators like you and @shadowspub and @catweasel and me. I've been keeping a seat warm for you. Please don't disappoint me.
Here's a link to make it easy. I've now done everything I can short of blackmail and bribery. They could be next. Your choice.
I'm not leaving. I just needed a couple days off. So much going on, what with holidays and all. Just a quick break. New projects and such rolling out tomorrow. New years, new projects!
After the last time my brother @justinashby tried to quit the platform and I had to get @neoxian and a couple others to help me convince him to stay (@neoxian held him at nice-point) I would be a bad, bad person to quit myself.
Also, I cannot seem to get that link to work, would you mind PMing it to me in discord, Please?
Well said good sir. I'm sorry about that as well. It is difficult to ignore the injustice of it all, but your voting power and your effort would probably be better spent helping newcomers and other minnows as you have been. I can assure you that you and your efforts are appreciated, no matter how dim and dreary the current climate here may seem.
Remember, the majority of people are still here to develop community, to post and read content, and to make a few bucks on the side. Fortunately these people (let's be honest, really just one person with a bunch of bots) are few and far between. If everyone stands up to them and downvotes, it will probably make a difference, but in the end, it would result in mutual destruction and the lack of growth on this site.
In the end, while it irritates and frustrates me as well, and it horribly wrong on many levels, it is better to focus on staying positive and working toward what you have been working toward. We should try to make this known to the powers that be and get something fixed, but at the same time, instead of getting drawn into this downward spiral and pitiful game, keep plugging on and helping others as you have been. I will try to do the same.
Take care and stay strong. Thank you again for all you do and for all you have done.
While I agree with much of what you say, I also think you need to just chill out and let the situation play itself out. For the following reasons:
Hang around, do what works for you, keep your integrity, keep earning Steem (power), and see what happens - why would you not?
Cheers
absolutely right @holbein
In the real world there are criminals, in the real world politicians decide their own wages, CEOs can fail in their role and still get a golden hand shake and a couple of million dollars, and sports stars paid stupid money to kick a ball around.
Every one of those is fucking bullshit but none of it stops me from doing my own thing keeping my head down and earning my own money.
The fact that this platform pays anything is amazing but maybe you can change how you interact get rid of the comp so you avoid getting scammed, change your format check out how @mikepm74 does it no comp but puts his own upvote on his post only right at the end it encourages us minnows to up vote and still helps new comers get out there.
Sure you can cash out no-one is going to hold it against you, but you could delegate to someone you think interacts well with fresh fish and could continue what you started with rules just like @fulltimegeek has done with his #stewardsofgondor or hell just lease your sp for profit take a really good break and come back refreshed with your sp still here for your return.
Just some thoughts
I appreciate you, and what you do. I feel totally embarrassed that I didn't even know I had won a contest, thanks to your tireless efforts for minnows. I only realised on boxing day that I had won a part of your 'get to know you challenge.' You made my Christmas, even though it was some time ago I won.... that lead me to working out that i need to be part of steemit mentions. I am on this platform, not for money....but for content, I truly hope that you realise there are still some lovely people here on steemit, you are one, and I hope that you know I am too. Thank you for all you do. I appreciate it, and felt especially rude to have not acknowleged you on time.... and at the time. @steemsausage
I have to be honest @gogogadgetupvote. As a minnow, this has been going through my head a lot. To the point I almost wanted to upvote myself to see what it does, since it seems more and more like a 'common practice'. I actually want to thank you for this post, because I want to keep doing on Steemit what I can here to do, create good content. The money aspect is nice, and did influence my decision to come to Steemit, but I still believe that's not the main motivator.
I do believe in karma and don't believe in wasting energy on the negative. They can ruin the platform but they can't ruin you. Say worst case scenario, the abuse the system so much that everybody moves away, they themselves will be stuck with nothing and move on to other places where they can abuse the system. Meanwhile, we continue to built the platform until the rewardpool improves (maybe I'm naive, but I rather built relationships and write content).
As for the issues, I'm dropping this link as input to the 2018 roadmap:
https://steemit.com/roadmap2018/@steemitblog/steemit-roadmap-2018-community-input-requested. They do need to fix this.
@gogogadgetupvote i can see your point but i will say something here, in a world where there is so much evil, it wouldn't be so strange to be different, pls do not let those selfish people influence your decision. You are special, you are kind you are everything to a lot of people, i remember when my content was not getting the deserved attention and i wanted to quit, you were the one that gave a lift with one of your contest, i was well reward just commenting than my whole entire blog payout. Pls do not let their negativity change you because that is not who you are, you are far better than them thanks.
My friend don't quit, I mean, it's your call after all I can only advise you, but as I read through the comments here, steemit is still in beta, sbd prices are supposed to be around 1 dollar each, what happend happend, maybe someones plan to destroy the platform with greed or just plain ignorance of investing in sbd rather than steem itself... I suggest you do not go in whale wars because here minnows can only support, I saw dozens of people go into whale wars with small steem power and they went to dust and now they quit only because of someones selfishness and greed, ofcourse some people here are for a good time and meeting new people and discussing topics about what happend in each other lives and enjoying the time while you are not busy in the real life, but thing is, there is always someone who is here for the money itself and nothing else, in 1 month I commented around 400 times and the past week I commented maybe 10 times, because I didn't have the time to engage, but I didn't go and boost up all my comments to make a profit, I upvote my posts for visibility because I don't have an audience that cares for my articles, sure I have couple of people voting but I'm sure 90% of them don't even read the article... Am I supposed to quit because of that or keep trying and find people that enjoy my work?