Am I a fool, are my own values getting in the way of utilising the site to maximise my returns? It definitely appears so as I need not spend 10 hours a day on 2 or 3 posts, answering comments or curating at all as I can get a better average return by vote buying or through delegation and self-voting.
Personally, I don't look favorably on it, but I don't think any the less of you about it ... for now. Ask me again in a month if you stop writing good stuff and heavily upvote your own stuff.
What I'm more interested in is the behavior of the system over all rather than what any one particular user is doing. It matters what we each do but none few of us can reach all the others, so what you do doesn't really matter. It's the trends that matter.
yes, I know but it feels like the gap is ever-widening and there is little chance to close it the way things are going but, at least I can potentially share a little bit out. maybe it makes a local difference.
Now I have a moral dilemma, am I meant to upvote my comment or yours? :P
Oh, this will be my note: current curation 15-17 SP a week.
You are walking the path of moral dilemmas, but you should get something out of it, in several ways at once. 🤓
Btw, I have been upvoting my own posts for a month or two consistently. The vote now is 2.50 instead of 75 or so. There is no way I am going to write 70 posts a week although I was writing 30-35 for a long time. At the moment it is about 15-20ish. But I may have to go to 25ish but unsure.
I figure that gives , around 50 full votes a week to spread in the community at different levels so we will see if it is able to return the fee. I am not the best curator but have been adding my votes to @ocd the last few weeks after I powered up as there is no way I can find, sort and read 20-30 articles a day.
I am not very systematic with these things but I will try to put a post together to at least cover me thoughts on it each week. I only just got the delegation and my VP was already burned to mid 80s. I have to say it has been nice to add a little more than usual to some posts that I think deserve it and people I know consistently put effort in in various ways.
I'm done thinking too hard about self votes, the community has spoken on that issue. Vote buying still concerns me but not from a p2p point of view, I quite like it from that aspect really. But I think the system itself has several serious flaws.
You know, the blogging-as-earnings idea has never sat well with me because I've observed it leads to entitlement, which leads to fear, which leads to anger, butthurt and ragequit. I think you don't suffer from that mindset one bit, but I've seen many a meltdown when support is withdrawn by a "fan base" for whatever reason, or big flags come in to counter them. Then it's about food on the table, but why was Steemit putting food on the table to begin with?
And yet I know this is the position some (many?) find themselves in, doing whatever it takes, as well espoused by your recent post. Still, you cannot feel entitled to the continued patronage of voters. Nor the price of Steem.
Hypocrite who is raping the reward pool with bought delegation while boosting his own posts over others who don't buy delegation, all while spam posting. Also supporting a notorious vote seller and helping him gain more power and corrupting the system even further and encouraging others to do the same.
10/10 I approve! :)