The Bots are Winning 🤖

I admit it: a part of me is 12. It’s the part that still loves dead baby jokes, occasionally eats canned spaghetti ... right out of the can! ... and cannot help but get hysterical while watching South Park.

In one of my favorite episodes, ’Goobacks’, the townsmen are in an uproar, believing that their jobs have all been stolen by immigrants. They go to hilariously absurd lengths to protest. And they coin a phrase that has been forever inprinted on the pop culture vernacular, at least in my house. Through an exaggerated redneck twang, tinged with bitter outrage, the men all utter it throughout the episode:

”They touk rrrrr jerbz!”

It’s funny because it’s not true. Reasonable, intelligent people understand that an endless parade of immigrants is not marching into their towns, swooping in, and stealing their jobs. But that doesn’t mean that our jobs aren’t disappearing...

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There’s a progressive utopian ideal circulating globally -albeit a bit radically - of a world where we don’t need money. A world where we choose our true calling. We follow our vocations out of passion rather than necessity. Classes are essentially abolished and everyone either has a universal income capable of meeting all of their needs or a Star Trek-ish replicator to do so at will.

Cryptocurrency is the embodiment of that dream. Or is it?

The single largest threat to human labor and production is robotic technology. Increasingly, the robots are quite literally taking our ’jerbs’. And not just entry level manual labor positions. Robot programming is poised to do virtually everything we can do. Some of it better. Robots are an integral part of the crypto-world. Maybe a bit too integral.

And this, my friends, is where I enter...almost a year ago. A fresh faced idealist, convinced that Steemit would be the utopia I’d been searching for, the perfect platform that I’d been seeking:

1. Create
2. Share
3. Get paid
4. Repeat

Holy shit! An artist’s wet dream! What could possibly go wrong?

“The same thing that goes wrong everywhere, Pinky. Bots. Bots are trying to take over the world.”

And at least from where I’m sitting, they are succeeding.

• Bots dictate upvotes
• Bots dictate visibility
• Bots must be paid to do your bidding
• Bots are controlled by humans who are determined to get a bigger piece of the pie than was already built into the idealistic system that is Steemit
• Bots are becoming essential for any substantial Steemit success

I don’t like bots. I resisted them vehemently for a really long time. And then I decided to experiment with them. Just to see if I could actually affect or manipulate my position here. Sometimes joining ‘em when you can’t beat ‘em is a smart strategy. But here’s the intel my experience has born so far:

• I have less engagement when bots are involved
• My work gets tons of upvotes but very few views
• Most of the upvotes are negligible
• I don’t seem to make any more than I would without the bots; overall it appears I’m making less
• I jeopardize being upvoted or curated by various human communities because my projected payout is artificially boosted by the whole bot process
• As in most areas of real life, the bot situation is stacked in favor of those with deep financial pockets

Being a starving artist, most of my pockets are full of holes. I don’t have endless financial resources to invest in Steemit. My investment is limited to the quality work I am able to produce. I was led to believe that that was enough. I was led to believe that I could work hard - yes, work! - and I’d be rewarded in turn, based on merit. So far that has mostly not been how this Steemian’s experiment has gone.

So what will I do?

That is an excellent question. Not one I’ve yet to answer satisfactorily. For the time being, I’ll keep plugging away. Maybe, just maybe, one day my blind tenacity will actually pay off.

What’s scarier than an army of dead babies searching for sustenance?
One. Relentless. Artist.