Chasing the Steem Dream
Many people join Steem, but many people also leave Steem after some time. What's going on? Why are some hooked and stay, while others don't bother chasing the Steem dream?
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There are issues when people join, surely. They don't understand how the platform works. "get rewarded for posting". "Make money posting anything" they've been told. Is that all there is to it? No, because you need people to vote for you. And not just anyone. The voters need to have money in the form of SP to allocate rewards to you.
Then if they do get some rewards, well it's in STEEM. Then they need to covert it to fiat, usually by first converting it to Bitcoin. That's all so complicated for newcomers. They want things to be simple.
What would help, is a standardized explanation that was available on the main site for them to access. Then they could better understand it, despite it's complexity as an unknown process to getting their money in fiat.
Posting anything is pretty simple, but even then, do we just want anything being posted, where people try to make money posting things that comes from others? No, that's why there is SteemCleaners.
Steem isn't like Facebook, or Twitter, where you can just post links and now, because you're on Steem, you will get rewarded but such basic media sharing. Steem requires more effort. It only makes sense, since your going to make money, you should be putting in effort and doing some work to get some reward. Not simply link-dropping.
This is another barrier for the masses. They don't want to do the work. They just want to make the easy money by doing what they do elsewhere. And when that doesn't work, they often leave.
Is the blind drive to bring in more people all that matters, and not what the platform becomes? Should everyone just be rewarded based on being favored by others with Steem Power to reward them? Should we just inflate the blockchain larger and larger just to support masses of link drops to promote the adoption of more people staying and getting rewarded for it?
I think we should be realistic about how big Steem can get via a so-called social media platform. Unless we just don't care what is here, or how big the blockchain will get by supporting anything at all from being posted. It's not a company making money hosting the blockchain database along, but dozens of people hosting the exact same data, when it's not required. Nothing is required though, right? So we just accept anything because that the goal, to accept anything because it's cool to have it immutable that way? Really?
Is this the purpose of an immutable trustless decentralized database? Seems a bit overkill to me. What are we doing really? It's odd to me. Trying to wrap my head around this for the long term...
Anyways. What do you think is the reason for you or others staying, while others don't? Why do those of us that stay, stay? What is the Steem dream? What are we chasing? Are we being led like donkeys with a carrot? If there wasn't money involved, would we still be here, chasing the Steem dream?
Made from source at Wikimedia
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Thought provoking questions for sure. I think some people leave because they don't have the skills to do more than copy/paste stuff they like. Others are realistic about the time to money ratio, so they are just being practical and decide to leave. Many are confused about how it all works. It took many months for me to figure out how to use the site, let alone turn STEEM into Bitcoin. Some don't get the connection/attention they crave, and their talent being ignored is bad for their mental health. I could go on.
Months back, I could transfer 3 Steem, and get around a 10 spot of spendable currency. Last time I did a transfer, I didn't do the math first, and with the fee taken out, I received 35¢. I'm no longer chasing a dream. I'm here in part because I like the process of making posts, and reading posts. I'll admit I also like recognition. If there was no reply to posts or comments, I think I would leave. Steem was on the upswing when I started, so interaction was rarely lacking. What would be the point if the population was so low, that nobody was even around to see my posts? I also get it up my sleeve to be an activist, and spread the word about this or that. That said, I put Steem away for periods of time, but history shows I always come back. Community is I think the main reason people are staying. They have found meaningful friendships, and a loving community.
Not that I'm planning on packing up and leaving for good, but I am more understanding than I used to be toward those who quit.
Curious now about your reasons for sticking around?
Hope and stubbornness. That's why I'm still here anyway ;)
I had high hopes for Steem. But that got shattered when I saw how it's a plutocratic system, when the rich didn't like my success of being voted on, or the content, and flagged me. I was being flagged 80-100% off my rewards for months. I delegated 30,000 SP for 6 months about, then came back and haven't been flagged non-stop. But my high aspirations are not what they used to be after seeing how the power is really set up to do what it wants here. Money rules, plutocracy. I don't use bigbots, but I value being rewarded. Otherwise, it would be just like any other platform, but with a lot less people lol. Steem has many challenges to surmount as everything is pushed to a blockchain and no leadership really.
That sounds like it was absolutely horrible! Were you posting the same kind of content? People who get rich can be so petty, drowning out competition like that. Glad you are back. :)
The scammer Jerry who made all of the videos about how one could make money blogging brought me here. I had spent years self publishing and had burnt out on it. I was skeptical of Bitcoin but couldn't deny the pump I saw happening that had no rational explanation. This was my entry into the crypto world using a skill I possessed. I looked at the trending posts and hot posts and knew with my research skills I would make a killing.
It wasn't but a month or so that I saw what bullshit he was touting and almost threw in the towel believing this was all a scam. But I saw some posters whose themes intrigued me and began making some connections as I discovered research I had never come across before. I am skeptical by nature and take stuff like Q and other fantastic truther claims with a grain of salt. Yet for some out there stuff, I began seeing actual references. Over the next several months connections grew (such as with you) and here I am 10 months later. I still have not bought into the cult mentality some seem to have about this place and blockchain in general, as it seems to me they would want us all using blockchains as it records every single move, unlike fiat that can be handled in the dark of night.
Despite that, I have been able to help others at least equal to the little I bought, so if it folds and I lose what I have accumulated I have been able to help others who cashed out because they needed it more than I, so I didn't lose anything really.
I have argued this with one of the strongest cheerleaders here, taskmaster. He pushes the idea that people should post 5-10 times daily to redistribute the wealth. I asked him several times who he thought would actually be voting on these posts of no value. I often don't have enough for all the quality posts in my circle, absolutely none for crap.
I also believe it is obvious given the current state of Steemit.inc and the costs that they can no longer maintain, that it is possibly why they drag their feet on new signups. Believe it is why some are chased off the platform. They can't handle the costs for tons of posts, especially shit posts. Plus, even the new blood that isn't shit posting and gain quality followers are indeed, as taskmaster somewhat deduces, taking payout from the mouths of the wealthy. The less lower class here, the more for the top. I think of it as an incentive for some of the behavior we see from some of the less rational at the top. Their rationale is get off my playground, this money is mine.
I am definitely here for money, although it sure isn't happening now. It may never happen. But possibly Steem may hit big and if so then it was a good gamble. If not, like I previously mentioned, I participate in communities where my participation has benefited others more needy and in a way it was like I was able to give them my money.
Oh Jerry Banfield? Yeah that guy is a nut.
It is shared thoughts that change the world for the better, toward everyone enjoying a better quality of life. Money is only a means that also plays a role in the bigger scheme of things. If this platform can serve as a seedbed in which innovative thoughts can be cultivated and grown to where they can be planted out and have real value in terms of having a happier society at large, I think it will have succeeded.
The rewards for good posts should perhaps not be seen as an incentive, but rather as a form of compensation for the time spent doing so. Not all people with good ideas can afford to spend the time expressing those thoughts in understandable language and publishing them without going hungry..
A good rundown on your history here, thanks for the feedback. Good points made. Many want mass adoption so that Steem is seen as a good investment for people to buy into. Otherwise, mass adoption doesn't mean more buying if it's still not attraction, because most of the people coming in aren't going to be buying STEEM. If that is assumed to be what happens, it will be another failure. And further, with that adoption, how it is sustained to support them all? Can everyone get rewards? There's a bottleneck in here that will take time to overcome... but the RocksDB will help on the technical side though.
You raise some very interesting points....
You're correct I think, in the 'people want it simple' paradigm.
I'd never been 'in crypto' before, used exchanges to turn into fiat etc...and many people would be turned off by the idea.
'They' want easy, and not a learning process...
I also have my doubts as to steemit (or whatever) being a mass adoption social media platform....
And if not, it does indeed beg the question 'what the hell are we doing here, then?'
Everyone has their own circumstances of course, but for me - due to my very small needs - when steem is around $2.5/$3, I can supplement my life with it - while still growing slowly...
I have an emotional attachment to this place, that's for sure - this was my first real foray into writing my truths (and inane BS, to of course..).
I'm happy to write here, build some steem on the 'off chance' that it does become 'something'.
What that 'something is', I don't know - I seeing it purely as steem price. Whether its because of social blogging or because it a pizza deliver blockchain...or whatever... I honestly have no idea into where this is going, if anywhere..
I use this to improve my writing skills (lots of room there!), and am already using what I've learned, (or maybe it's just a self confidence because of writing daily, on here)...
Whatever the reason is , I'm now branching out in ways I never would have done before - in ways I'd never have thought of- before finding steemit..
Now, where's that carrot....?
You are a talented fella that's for sure. Glad I joined just to meet so many interesting folks w/out the toxic/click-bait atmosphere of FB or Twatter.
...you give me way too much credit! lol - but cheers.
Next you will be doing porn posts!
.....if you knew how many hundreds of hours I have of my own material....
...never going on steemit - keeping the two worlds very separate, matey..
OH bugger - do a comedy porn post then :)
mmmmm......interesting.........verrrrrrrry interesting......
Yeah, the future is uncertain, lots of hopes, but will it go anywhere... The carrot is in your wallet ;)
The stakeholders' hearts were not into the social media part and we didn't do anything to sustain it. We didn't build it, we didn't promote it, we didn't improve it, we weren't nice to new users. It was obviously an afterthought and not near and dear to anyone's heart or wallet.
Those who stayed were likely into crypto and willing to go through the process to learn.
I've been on teams building young companies and there is almost zero resemblance between what happens here and anywhere else.
DPOS... would be great for a plain currency. If you want to accomplish something that takes effort, planning and a strategy it is a terrible model as building a sustainable business takes a different set of skills than mining or even developing.
In other words, DPOS takes no consideration of Skill Set and knowledge. I don't think I would invest money in another DPOS product without a defined leadership team.
I'm having trouble seeing what DPOS has to do with it. How would things be different with a POS model?
All dpos does is sacrifice a little security for a huge efficiency boost by eliminating competition.
DPOS it what allows us to control 90% of inflation without having to run a node. Right?
I wasn't comparing the 2, but yeah I hear you. I guess I should say, a foundation, a team, a plan seems pretty important if you want to build anything in any kind of a timely and competitive manner.
Yes, STINC seems very A.D.D.
They seem to be constantly running around working on this or that without any real focus.
Truth be told, I don't expect them to release any kind of amazing product... and I don't think they have to for this to be an amazing platform. The ultimate key is going to be creating a system of organization and governance where no one is in charge; to create development teams who may never even meet each other in the real world and get paid fairly.
Once that happens, STINC will be irrelevant and we might even want to think about forking and deleting the stake of several whales if it comes to that.
LOL, yeah what ever happened to those big plants with that idiot sneak saying Steemit was going to focus on mobile. mobile mobile mobile. And where is that mobile? All those months of working on mobile and nothing to show for it. That's where wasted dollars went :P
Resetting stake is a good idea for a fork, I've thought of it. But supporting an infrastructure on the current RAM hungry code is easier to do when you'e the first like Steemit inc. Who want's to help pay for a fork that is organized better? That's when I gave up on making another version that's better.
haha i forgot about that mobile fiasco... so bad. I'm sure there is a much more elegant solution for witness code. The blocks themselves are quite basic. It's once you start trying to interpret them that it starts getting exponentially more difficult.
Scalability has not yet been solved with Proof of Work coins. The closest to market solution may be Bitcoin Core's, corporate patented, Lightning Network. My ultimate vision for the steem blockchain is for it being the open sourced version of the Lightning Network.
The next bull market in crypto is likely to take us to critical mass in terms of mass adoption. Without the existence of working scalability solutions then mass adoption of cryptocurrency will be a prolonged flop, like was witnessed in 2017's bull market.
Centralized organization and leadership is important, and something that gets shunned in the blind drive for fully decentralized systems. Decentralization can happen when people learn how to handle doing things that way, but we're far from that on Steem and society at large.
Agreed
Yeah, the not nice to new users part. Many more were ignored. So many people just slipped through the cracks. I find myself glancing a person's reputation sometimes, but we were all there once, and wouldn't have wanted others to judge us by our reputation or seniority.
Most people are quiters and thats why they leave.
The ones that stayed, hustled, invested, produced great content will be rewarded greatly in the long run!
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Being a supporter of blockchain technology since around late 2012, when hearing about steem on Jeff Berwick's Dollar Vigilante youtube channel in 2016, it perked my interest. This Delegated Proof of Stake thing sounded like a game changer.
With steem becoming one of the fastest crypto networks, while having the lowest transfer fees, it seems that if the game has not been changed it is certainly in flux. With every new dApp the network is showing to be so much more than just a blogging platform.
Leaving this project now would be like walking out half way through a good movie. If Steemit, Inc. can deliver on MIRA then there will be no stopping this chain, in my opinion.
RocksDB for the win ;) I hope it helps make things more economically feasible for development.
I came here for the money originally and now stay for the community. I haven’t had the quality of posts and comments like it is on here so that’s awesome to me. I do hope that crypto recovers prices but who knows.
Interesting thoughts @krnel. I think pushing the popularity of STEEM, the efficient and reliable currency, rather than promoting steemit.com as an easy money media platform will have a much more desirable outcome.
Rather preserve steemit.com as a platform hosting a community of like minds sharing and developing valuable thoughts, bolstered by rewards in a more valuable currency, than overpopulating the place with mindless money-chasers.
It is the demand for STEEM in the market on the steem blockchain, but outside the media platform that gives it value in terms of other currencies.
Sir @krnel I'm also a new commer in steem. Your shared items is so grateful for me sir.. You're right. I'm supporting your idea sir. I think there is the other fact.. The price of steem Dollars is not growing up.. For these reason many new commers leave it.. If you don't mint sir @krnel can i ask you a little question? How can I grow myself in steem?? I'm waiting for your answer sir..
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