Are People On Steemit "Fake Nice" Because Of How The Rewards System Works?
A couple days ago I was graced with the pleasure of being interviewed by David Pakman who was a joy to talk with about Steemit and the Steem blockchain. @davidpakman's blog is full of interesting interviews with many creative Steemians and David is great at asking some really good questions.
One question, in particular, we talked about that really got me thinking more after the interview was this. As David put it:
One of the comments I'm hearing a lot from people who I'm bringing over from my YouTube channel to Steemit, which of course is drastically different in infrastructure, it's drastically different in etiquette and in the norms that have developed.
One of the most common things they mention is that it seems that everyone is "fake nice" to each other in order to get upvotes whereas on YouTube things immediately sort of degenerate into just insane ad hominem and insults.
Some of the people I bring over from YouTube immediately pick up on the fact that Steemit seems to be much more cordial and I guess my question to you is,
Do you think it's cordial because it's genuinely more cordial or is it because there's no real advantage to insult people because of how the rewards system works? Source
That's an interesting question worthy of more discussion but before we go there I must point out that in my view platforms where people cloaked behind anonymity slinging insults at each other are truly disingenuous.
People do not act that way towards each other in the real world most of the time. It's not the norm to have people throwing personal insults at you throughout the day as you interact with people. That's something that only happens on sites like YouTube, where people feel free to express the vilest of human emotions to each other safely hidden behind a screen wall.
When is the last time you insulted some random person, attacking their character and intentions in a vile and public manner? I'm guessing most people don't do that very often, if at all. We humans, have adapted enough intelligence to realize there is no advantage to behaving in such a base manner. Our instincts nudge us to cooperate with each other for mutual benefit and such behavior is counterproductive.
David Pakman is a television and radio host, political commentator, and Internet personality. He is best known as the host of the internationally syndicated political television and talk radio program The David Pakman Show. He also is the managing director of Vivid Edge Media Group, which produces The David Pakman Show. A naturalized U.S. citizen, Pakman was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and was raised from age 5 in the United States. Pakman is a self-described liberal/progressive. - Wikipedia
While cordial discourse between civil human beings may seem like "fake nice" to people used to the demeaning dialog exchanges on YouTube, I posit that the way people behave on Youtube is the abnormally "fake not-nice" behavior that is at odds with the norm. There is no path to have any meaningful discourse when people attack your personal character simply because they disagree with your point, something commonly found in the comment threads of YouTube.
One reason this kind of behavior has grown like a fungus in a Petri dish on websites like YouTube is there is no accountability that comes with personal face-to-face engagement. Somehow this lack of accountability, while feeling shielded by anonymity, gives free reign to humanity's darkest verbal expressions. It's the ugly side of human nature written in indelible ink for the world to witness and I find it very distasteful.
Steemit, on the other hand, has a system of accountability worked into its fabric with incentives for communities to work together, just like real life. We have an incentive to be civil to each other in mutual support. This fosters an environment with fewer assholes. As far as I'm concerned I want to spend my time in places with the fewest assholes per capita as possible and Steemit is that place.
I have seen so many trolls on platforms like YouTube whose sole purpose it seems it to destroy any chance of having a real intelligent discussion even if it means reversing their position they so venomously were defending only moments ago in order to confuse the person they are talking with. Any intelligent response results in attacks on the person's character and personal beliefs. It's really disgusting to watch but hard to pull away from, like a gruesome car accident on the side of the road as you drive by.
Art Markman, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin commented about getting sucked into the flame wars that are Internet comment threads.:
"At the end of it you can't possibly feel like anybody heard you. Having a strong emotional experience that doesn't resolve itself in any healthy way can't be a good thing."
A perfect storm of factors come together to engender the rudeness and aggression seen in the comments' sections of Web pages, Markman said. First, commenters are often virtually anonymous, and thus, unaccountable for their rudeness. Second, they are at a distance from the target of their anger — be it the article they're commenting on or another comment on that article — and people tend to antagonize distant abstractions more easily than living, breathing interlocutors. Third, it's easier to be nasty in writing than in speech, hence the now somewhat outmoded practice of leaving angry notes (back when people used paper) Source
Why people act rude and insensitive on platforms like YouTube I'll leave to social media psychologists to discuss, but I for one prefer the more civil and meaningful discussions on Steemit.
No doubt the media is partly responsible for setting bad examples on how people work out their differences, but even with the lack of good examples, we tend to self-censor ourselves in our daily interactions so as to foster cooperation.
Edward Wasserman, Knight Professor in Journalism Ethics at Washington and Lee University, noted another cause of the vitriol: bad examples set by the media.
"Unfortunately, mainstream media have made a fortune teaching people the wrong ways to talk to each other, offering up Jerry Springer, Crossfire, Bill O'Reilly. People understandably conclude rage is the political vernacular, that this is how public ideas are talked about," Wasserman wrote in an article on his university's website. "It isn't." Source
The further away you are from someone you're trying to communicate with the harder it is to do and since 90% of communication is nonverbal, writing as a form of communication with another as you would find in a comment thread requires even more understanding of the other person's perspective before you can truly respond meaningfully.
The communication process is compromised further when there's no accountability or even attempts to hearing someone's perspective when it differs from your own. Here on Steemit people behave more like we normally do in the real world. Thinking that being nice is somehow fake just shows how much the discussions on YouTube have degenerated into useless, unresolvable insults.
While people do disagree on many topics there seems to be a basic level of common decency in the way people interact on Steemit which I find refreshing even though it is more aligned with the way people actually interact normally. It's interesting to note that common civility would seem unusual to a YouTuber looking into the Steemit platform for the first time as if the very idea of people being nice to each other is somehow strange behavior with questionable authenticity.
Since when did being nice appear suspect of being real? I can only hope that the rude assholes who flock to YouTube to indelibly vent their insane, ad hominem frustrations to content creators there are repelled from coming to Steemit with their rude manners once they see how "fake nice" everyone is to each other here.
I want to thank David Pakman for his time and interest in interviewing me and found his questions insightful and engaging. If you would like to hear more of this interview go to Steemit Interview: @luzcypher talks Steem community, SBD & STEEM, music on Steem --- by @davidpakman
David Pakman Interviews LuzCypher About Steem
Great food for thought.
I admit I find it very annoying to read comments that do not add value to the platform. "good read, keep it up" "wow such fascinating"
Basically, comments that could have been typed up by Doge lol
Even worse when it's a comment written up by a bot that clearly doesn't have an opinion or a grasp of what was discussed in the article!
I feel those greatly pollute the steem blockchain. BUT! They are much more easily skipped over than the hatred comments on YouTube! So it's probably a net positive.
Hope they find a solution to that issue in future versions and/or projects.
Agreed. Empty but nice comments aren't the worst thing, but I try to say something that might be constructive somehow. Asking a question you genuinely want answered about someone's post or the art/other work they show in that post is probably a start.
Are you referring to both issues there, or just the bots? Is the nature of how Steemit works likely to allow for such things to be improved in the future? Forgive how green I am. :)
I'll bite in the most cordial way luzcypher. My first corporate job when I was sixteen had a meme at the cash till that has stayed with me: 'it's nice to be important but more important to be nice'. ( how the corporate world has changed:(
That said, I do agree with much that you've said but also have criticisms of the Steemit template.
-the algorithms here make Steemit one of the most censored sites on the net. Most of the trending page is filled with those that bought their way there. I'll use a golf analogy to help flesh this out. In golf, it's really easy to prove merit, not so with the trending page on Steemit. Now, it's not entirely true though as one can judge syntax and grammar in writing, production value in music and video, but even factoring in those parameters most of the stuff at the top of the heap here has been bought and doesn't merit the exposure, IMO.
-I've come across few places in real life where virtue signaling, obsequiousness, and sycophantic brown nosing is the norm as it is here on Steemit. Except maybe in the golfing world! This aspect of Steemit is definitely fake compared to real life.
Well, I guess my criticism is minimal in that regard as that's about it. Yes, though, there is no Social Media site as good as steemit at the moment.
Good post, Cheers!
Thanks for this. I'll go watch the interview now. I agree with your analysis of asshole behavior. I think some personalities are just shitty. That's just the way of it. But yeah, there is something wrong when being nice is seen as something to suspect. Niceness can be used to manipulate, and it surely is employed that way on here. But the basic psychology of being nice to others is so that they'll cooperate with you. So it kinda follows logically to end up being the wisest way to behave for your own interest and the interest of all. Being nice works. Who knew? I do think the culture of other platforms tends to be toxic and that's why I no longer bother with them. At least for now, there seems to be some cohesive sense of unity here and a sense of it being a real community versus the culture of other sites. I hope that continues and grows into a healthy form of self-governance that works to weed out the assholes. Or at least starve them of any benefit from their behavior.
One thing I've thought on, myself, is how everything is so open here. It's all visible. There are no privacy settings. In real life you can whisper something in your friend's ear and then shake another's hand and say something entirely different and they not be privy to the private chat. That's not the case here, and I think that might make for some interesting relations between people, especially those who relate on some things and don't on others. In one way, I think it's neat because maybe we see we have more in common than we thought with those we otherwise wouldn't ever speak to on the street or think to be friends with in real life situations. I find this particularly valuable being in America and seeing the current divide we now have due to politics. Maybe this can work as a counter to that to expose people with opposing viewpoints to the day to day similarities in each other's lives and therefore help them find ways to relate. Slowly we might mend that tear in our nation's fabric. Idk, just a hope, and a tangent, but it seemed relevant to what you've mentioned.
Yes, it's something that does happen in general because of how things are structured towards money/SP. If you act like an ass and don't have lots of SP, then you can lose support and even get flagged your rewards away. If you have lots of SP, you can be a dick and flag people and swear, and no one does anything because you have the power and others don't, so you get away with it. People don't stand up to the power players who have the concentration of power (SP) on the platform in fear of losing support or of being targeted themselves. Fear rules in large part. Youtube people don't have to fear anything, they can be dicks just to be dicks and don't need to be rich.
That's a great point, and I'm glad I read this now instead of further down the line(I'm very new.) Does this seem like a trend that will naturally continue and have no real solution? Curious on your take.
I don't see a solution other than people learning about issue and wanting to change behavior because it's better to do so...
I think, although there is a monetary incentive here, regular people have to work together here to get that money (with some exceptions). If you're an asshole to someone here they will remember, potentially lowering your chances of that monetary reward in the future. There's no incentive on YouTube to be nice, and no consequence if you're not. Although it's for money on steemit, it's similar to how you earn reputation interacting with people in person. If you're an asshole in person, word of this will spread and keep you from gaining good reputation in the future from others.
I kinda don't even care if they're fake nice, as long as they are...
I don't think anyone would be more satisfied if people would be mean and curing their frustrations on steemit as they do on any other platform because of anonymity. It's hard to be at peace with negativity. And the worst thing is to ignore it.
Balance is the key of life, but one must know how to use the negativity as a fuel, rather than as a distraction of what really matters in life and letting it control them, so they have to cure the consequence, and since sport is not an option for most people, internet got them covered. I love people who have been through a lot and still have a smile, as I said on the start, even if it's a fake one...
We all have ups and downs and frustrations and happy moments, but we choose which ones we notice, and which ones we share. :)
well said.
Most people are fake nice to get upvotes but not everyone. Either way people are far more careful with their words here which is great even if there is some fairness.
Its not that hard to spot fake nice vs genuine IMO so not to worried about it.
Would rather have fake nice comments on my posts than people calling me a looser for no good reason hahaha
Of course I am always open to conscious constructive criticism.
I'm real nice and a real asshole sometimes, so, I've got that going for me. Lol.
How you doing @quinneaker? Miss you guys.
One of the phenomenon we have seen on the internet is that because people can post anonymously they feel they can say things with no repercussions and this often brings out the worst in people.
What is interesting about Steemit is that while it is still anonymous there are real repercussions for your actions. Because there is a monetary value tied to your actions those actions become more meaningful again and people actually think about the implications of their actions keeping some of those worse instincts repressed.
That is my theory anyways for why you see people behave in a much more cordial on here. It's not fake nice, its just a place where your actions have repercussions again and that changes behavior.
Agreed. To me, interactions on Steemit seem more in line with how people engage in the real world. It's OK to express different points of view but that doesn't mean the discourse should disintegrate into a venomous mudslinging marathon. No one behaves like that in real life without repercussions.
Exactly. It is strange to think that people come to this site think it’s weird there aren’t a bunch of insults being throw around instead of thinking it’s weird that is happening from the site they came from.
Of course people are affected by the rewards, but I think a lot of people that end up here are just genuine and tend to be more thoughtful to begin with; they're here because they weren't, generally speaking, enjoying other social media. Very quickly you experience a different culture here--before you even really fully understand the reward system. And between wanting to adjust effectively to the culture we find ourselves in as a natural human trait and simultaneously finding the difference so refreshing, people fall into place here for the most part and then it just perpetuates. I think the cordiality is one of Steemit's most important qualities, because it's the thing that most people notice first, as most people don't see the rewards for a little while. It keeps people here for the first bit while they get the hang of things.
The other thing is that being cordial isn't being fake. A person can be gushy and manipulatively nice, giving far too much that isn't proportionate, but cordiality is just decency, even if you don't like the person--again, think of people in real life. You don't have to be rude to the grocery store clerk because they annoy you; you generally try to be polite with the frustrating coworker. This is just the hopeful norm of a civil society.
Good post.
Thank you for this extremely well written and thought out post (that's me being real nice). Personally I enjoy the tone of discourse on this platform - it is by far the most supportive and positive platform I have been on. I increasingly prefer to be on Steemit / Dapps than on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc.
This seems to be how most steemians feel. Compare that to the way mainstream social media websites make people feel.
I am so excited for Steemit in 2018! Anybody else feel like some BIG is about to happen?
@Ozwald