Vote Your Own Posts to Get Rich, or Vote Others’ Posts to Be Happy. Your Choice.
It’s no secret that you can hoard your Steem rewards if you want to. There are no limits to self-voting, so you can quite literally upvote yourself at 100% power ten times per day and collect rewards.
This is pretty selfish and lame in my opinion. Jerry Banfield points out a troubling fact in his recent post: https://steemit.com/hf20/@jerrybanfield/we-double-our-steem-power-upvoting-ourselves-every-181-days - we can double our steem power every 181 days just by self-voting.
Note: After writing the first draft of this post, I was warned that Mr. Banfield may make misleading claims some of the time - I haven't done enough research to know either way. Consider this info with caution.
OK, right now you might be thinking “sounds great, I’m gonna start voting myself more!” Here’s something to consider:
The Science of Being Happy
Check this out: https://www.livescience.com/2376-key-happiness-give-money.html
This article talks about studies done to test how our spending habits make us feel. People were given money and told to spend it a certain way - either selfishly, or by giving gifts to others. Here’s what they learned:
"Regardless of how much income each person made," Dunn said, "those who spent money on others reported greater happiness, while those who spent more on themselves did not.”
Why do you earn money? Survival is the baseline. Beyond that, most people just want to be happy. They view money as something that can enable them to have more good feelings in their life.
The science is in: If you want to use money to feel good, give gifts to other people.
This has nothing to do with politics, taxes, welfare, or whatever. I’m saying that YOU should choose to give more of your money away. Whether that’s to charity, doing nice things for friends and family, or whatever else.
On Steem, it’s even easier. Just VOTE FOR OTHER PEOPLE! Don’t hoard your votes, it won’t help you feel good. Sure, I upvote my own posts 1-2x per day. However, the real joy comes from voting up my favorite posts that I see. Watching a post go up $1.00 in value when I vote it is just a great feeling.
And besides - what goes around, comes around. I didn’t start earning $30+ per post by upvoting myself, especially back when my votes were worth a mere $0.05. Nope, I think it was the opposite - by engaging with the community and trying to give back, it worked out that I was rewarded with way more value than I ever could have expected or asked for.
Do you have a story of a time you were generous with your money and felt great about it? Share ‘em in the comments, as always I’ll upvote my favorites.
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Resteemed this very amazing post thanks for sharing. I especially liked the part about not being selfish and giving beyong the limit of survival. Have a great day
thanks mallorcaman, appreciate it
I don't think there is anything wrong with upvoting your own posts, after all it is on by default and some users may not even be aware that they are voting for their own post. Voting for your own comments can get a bit cheesy. I was contemplating voting this one up full strength to see how I would feel... lol.
It is an interesting social experiment for sure since we all stand to gain from building community. It does feel good to vote for others but without a certain amount of self interest and investment your vote does not do as much.
It's only really bad when it's extreme. I have seen one recent user posting tons of comments with very little content, all self-upvoted for $5+... unfortunately there's not much I can do about those things.
Spreading the wealth and cooperating is a very good thing. I think there used to be some guidelines around this like giving a certain percentage to the church or community of what you earned.
If you ask me there is nothing really we can do about this self voting (except flags) because any technical solution can be gamed. Besides I really feel it is much better if people can find their individual choice and do as their heart guides them in this issue because we have no way of knowing all the things they may have experienced or are going through.
As they say in Zen, "Greed, hatred, and ignorance rise endlessly, I vow to abandon them." It's much easier to simply let these things go than try to cut them down.
In any case since I never posted anything today, I'm getting the happy feeling of posting up my comment. Hopefully voting your comment up too will give you a happy feeling. :)
You can’t measure this issue globally. Every person is different and believe me, that A LOT of people would be happier if they could just help themselves. And they will up vote themselves just because they can – and they will feel more satisfied than if they shared what they had. It’s just a state of mind what makes you happy or not. That doesn’t mean I support that, and i stick in real and virtual life with people that share more than hoard. I just disagree with the "study" you’re referring to.
Interesting. I definitely agree with you that many people - particularly those who are struggling to survive in some way - will need to help themselves first. Once somebody reaches a certain level of comfort, giving to others then starts to provide even more happiness I think. Although it's certainly up for debate!
You are absolutely right that any "global" measure of happiness is too broad to be useful. I'll have to think about this one.
Yes when one has more he’s more likely to shift the idea of what makes him happy and he may incline to helping others more! That’s a good point, although again, not always. I’m really happy that I made you think more deeply about the issue :).
I do both. I vote for people's posts or comments if I like it.
Then once every few days will go to the comments page and upvote a bunch of my comments that are close to payout date.
Just to get something from them at least, by the time I do that my voting power are fairly low already.
Just recently got my vote slider so was voting 100% all along.
I am partially addicted to voting and mostly have 40% - 60% voting power.
Interesting, thanks for sharing your process. Why do you wait until the last minute to upvote your comments?
I do it this way so that most of the voting power goes to helping other or as they say new content.
Then when the comments are close to payout I just upvote them with what ever voting power is left so to make at least something.
Feels more fair to me than to just self vote myself.
Love it! Great article! And yes agreed. I think that we inevitably feel better when we do things for others. And it doesn't even have to be financial things. Even just getting something for someone, or helping someone carry something. These are all helpful things, and I think these little acts are some of the biggest sources of happiness we have. I think everyone can admit that they get a sense of happiness in helping another person. One way that I've been doing this recently is that since HF19 I've not upvoted any of my own content. Granted I'm still fairly new, and my vote wouldn't do much. But I'm saving all of my voting power for other people's work. Thanks for posting this! Cheers!
That's awesome! You are being a very conscious Steem citizen. I'd even say it's fine to upvote yourself at least once a day, almost everybody does that. Thanks for reading!
Thanks @heymattsokol!
We are a community and ir depends of each one. I never upvoted my self but sounds like a good idea for some posts.
I agree with you. We all have to do our part, although Upvoting oneself is ok in moderation
Great post @heymattsokol!
Helping others is always helping yourself, whether intentionally or not.
thank you!
There is a good message for all if we go deeper into it...well presented
Thanks
It is better to give than to receive ! You will reap what you sow.
That's the truth.
Why not both?
This resonates, I like this 😊 If there's a way to bring happiness to others, whilst at the same time ensuring ones own needs (whatever they may be) are met? Then this is the way to go.
I'm still wrapping my head around steemit. Adore the community, proud to be part of it.
Truth be told? I'll probably learn as I go, discover the balance that I'm sure is there.
You are on the right path.
I think both is genuine - I do upvote my own posts 1-2 times per day, and might give small 5-10% upvotes to a few of my comments if I want to "bump" them towards the top of the comment list.
But when a user is spending 30+% of voting power on themselves, I start to personally feel a bit annoyed, like "c'mon, help out the community! This isn't just about you!"
Only my two cents, definitely - my opinion is only one of many.
True, I make sure at least 2/3 of my votes go to other steemians. But sometimes it helps to give your post a little boost. No harm done.