Childish Behavior on Steemit.. When will it stop?

When I was a kid oh so many years ago, me and my grandfather were having a conversation about people; how they act and how they handle themselves in business. You see he was what many would have outwardly considered a lowly housepainter, a laborer and just the average guy; and it was the tendency of people to over look or write him off based on appearance that made him so successful.

Truth of the matter was that he was an extremely sharp and successful business man with years of experience. He was a World War II veteran, a Former United States Marine of the 1940’s, purple heart recipient from being shot in the testicles (yes true story) with an accompanying Bronze Star with combat V for continuing the fight, manning his Browning Model 1919A4 light machine gun to lay offensive fire into an oncoming Japanese night assault; this in spite of the fact that one of his testicles had departed his body for good. I don’t know about you, but me, even as a former Marine, you have to appreciate how God Damn tough you have to be to continue the fight without missing a beat after receiving a gunshot wound to the nuts. FYI, he went on to have 4 boys and a daughter with my grandmother; some dudes are just so manly they only need one.

What warriors look like when they age :) My Grandfather "Papa"

When he left the Marine Corps he went to work for Mayflower Moving (yes they have been around that long), he also worked as a butcher, and at a pickle plant before moving from California to Georgia where he started a small painting business he eventually grew into a considerably wealthy multistate enterprise. His style was very low key, humble and fair; he never dressed flashy, never treated his workers as if they were beneath himself, when his sons began to work for him he did not promote them based on them being his children and instead started them at the bottom doing the shittiest of the shit jobs under the supervision of employees that had been with and dedicated to him and the company for years. When I worked for him in the summers as a 13 year old, I was carrying buckets, cleaning brushes for other painters, and doing the shit jobs for those whom had put their time in just as my father had done before me. He gained respect through his honesty, fairness and ability to relate to anyone.

He was the type of guy and still is at 93 that can befriend anyone and strike a deal where everyone feels as though they won. I still respect him a lot and often seek him out for knowledge about the ups and downs of life.

Getting back on point, we were having a discussion about people, or more correctly he was trying to impart some of his wisdom upon me and help me to understand the motivations of men and why some act the way that they do. He told me that “the people that go around and worry or complain the most about being fucked over by someone are usually the same people that go around fucking other people over” Their worry stems from fear that karma is going to pay them back or that someone is going to do to them what they are consistently doing to others.

Why am I bringing this up? Two reasons, 1) I see it as a relatively common occurrence within the Steemit community, 2) I think it is neat that something an old man told a 12 year old boy 30 years ago is still valid knowledge; experience in timeless.

So how does it apply to Steemit? Well for those that follow you will remember this post from a couple days ago.

https://steemit.com/steemit/@pawsdog/please-join-me-in-flagging-a-shit-post-and-reward-pool-abuser

Is the title somewhat inflammatory? Yes.. but it gets the point across. Aside from that, the overall content of the article is original, insightful and serves to explain and provide example of a manipulative practice that is detrimental to the platform.

As my content is usually interesting and somewhat well written it was resteemed by a whale ( @grumpycat ) whom is involved in whale wars with other power users over the type of behavior mentioned in the aforementioned article. That said, and as I explained it in a later comment, my mentioning of this detrimental practice does not align me with any particular faction or user of Steemit. My article expressed my dim views in regards to the practice of purchasing votes hours before a post is set to pay in order to farm the rewards pool. It just so happens that @grumpycat shares a similarly held dim view in regards to this practice and has considerably more horse power in the form of a $3,000,000 Steemit account to enforce his beliefs.

Shortly after publishing my original article I started to receive negative comments from users under the mistaken assumption that I’m somehow an @grumpycat fan and for lack of a better term “on his nuts”. I also started to receive negative comments asking me to respond to his desire to power down X amount of STEEM, him sending STEEM to Bittex, his alleged use of the @checkthisout account, allegedly upvoting himself, allegedly raping the pool while saying he is protecting it, allegedly trying to crash the price of steem etc. All those being comments I received and non reflective of my views nor did I put those out there. I also use allegedly not to promote innocence or imply guilt, I use it as I simply have not taken the time to look into it and have no comment one way or the other. To that end, let me say this.. I don’t care what the man does with his money. I cannot be in his head, or attempt to relate to how I would feel if I had a stake as large as his in the site. Regardless of the politics involved he is using permissible site features in a way that he feels will benefit him, he is not breaking the rules and thus whatever the issue is, it is a site issue and not a user issue. Don’t hate the player hate the game.

To that end, the last sentence is not a glowing recommendation for all his practices, nor is it admonishment for those I may not agree with.

It is perfectly acceptable for a user (me in this instance) to agree or mention specific policies of a user they may agree with and still disagree with other polices of the same user. This is no different than a person liking a politician’s stance on one issue and disagreeing with their stance on another issue without ever being for or against said politician. Yet here on Steemit we have bands of thugs, just as in real life that pulled people from cars and beat them in the street for agreeing with a certain political candidate now gang up and down vote other users accounts out of sheer malice due to disagreement or because they thing a user may like someone they don’t. This is childish behavior at best and certainly not beneficial to the community in any way shape or fashion.

Getting back on point, specifically this article https://steemit.com/steemit/@pawsdog/please-join-me-in-flagging-a-shit-post-and-reward-pool-abuser

As a result of the mistaken assumption by some users that I may be for or against a user they do or do not like these little groups of morons started down voting not only that post, but also other unrelated posts just to be dicks. In fact the first major downvote/flag I received was from @uradick and while I may not agree with the down vote as it is purely politically motivated and he did not have the courage to comment like a man and state his opposing opinion he at least limited it to the post that offended him. I would still like to talk to him at some point and understand his reasoning; wishful thinking on my part.

I also noticed this in the a.m.

Two users.. @sianer and @pivi went though and downvoted not only that post but basically every other post on the first page of my blog. So me being me, I called them out here:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@pivi/flag-abuse-help-needed#@pawsdog/re-pivi-flag-abuse-help-needed-20180109t162652550z

Granted there SP is such that I don’t really care, other than it is the intent of their actions and how it illuminates the fact that there are so many little cockroaches like them lurking behind the walls within Steemit that it annoyed me. So much so that I wanted to retaliate and down vote, in fact initially I did and flagged https://steemit.com/steemit/@pivi/flag-abuse-help-needed where he is whining about being unfairly flagged for some lottery thing someone felt was detrimental to the community. I summarily undid my down vote as I can’t call someone a hypocrite while being one myself in down voting his article based on the fact that he pissed me off with no other justification. So instead I upvoted some posts from other users that commented on my other articles.

I am putting this out there not to whine as my grandfather mentioned about being fucked over but to illuminate another practice within our community that needs to stop. Flag wars, going after unrelated users whom may be friends with a user you don’t like, or whom may agree with something you do not etc. Behavior such as this does nothing for the community, in fact it only discourages users from commenting, expressing their opinions and bettering the site by providing good content. It’s sad, it’s childish and in actuality is more a reflection of their poor character than anything else. We should be trying to help other users, to elevate them, to get them to our level, not acting like dicks maliciously down voting entire blog pages out of pure spite and malice. This type of negative behavior does not help the community and certainly does not align others to your cause as it just makes you look like an asshole. My aunt once said “nobody like an asshole”… It’s true, we tend to distance ourselves from them over time as they only create chaos and disharmony. People like peace, people like harmony and for the most part they like to get along, people like people that help them, understand them and validate them.

Those that intentionally and continuously act so as to disrupt the peace are so consumed by their own anger and hatred that they are blind to the fact that it is their very actions that bring them such misfortune and alienation from the greater community.

I know this was a ramble, and I should be doing a market report but I just wanted to put it out there that we should be doing more to help each other and the overall Steemit community than tearing each other down because we don’t like what they do like or they might be friends with someone we don’t like etc. Leave the high school drama at the door and let’s put this shortsighted bullshit to the side and look long term at building this platform so it can benefit us all.

Related Articles:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@pivi/flag-abuse-help-needed

https://steemit.com/steemit/@pawsdog/please-join-me-in-flagging-a-shit-post-and-reward-pool-abuser

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