Another Steemit Rant, but I'm High and Mellow This Time

Open letters seem to be the big thing right now, but nah, this is just a post.

I'm not big into these Steemit posts, but I'll try to make an all-inclusive good, bad and the ugly type of post here.

Most of you know I almost ragequit the whole thing a week ago after scrolling through the Trending page, but did eventually change my mind. The severe nicotine withdrawal I was on probably had a lot to do with the tone, now I'm high as a kite, so let's try the whole mellow and at least quasi-constructive route, okay?

Why am I still here, you ask.

The rewards? Of course, to a point. But I don't think the payouts on Steemit are anything to write home about unless you're at the very top constantly. Most of even the three-figure payouts are chump change, which is why I don't always get the big fuzz about them, unless you live in a third world country - and even then it brings forth the question of whether it's somehow Steemit's duty to work as a type of UBI ATM, but I digress.

Actually, no, I don't digress just yet because I thought of something.

In Finland, I've argued for a long time that a big problem with politics as a career is the fact the pay is actually too low, as opposed to too high.

Hear me out.

I don't want politicians to even exist, but let's accept, for argument's sake, that they just have to be a thing.

Everybody wants politicians to be paid less, but my point is that in Finland the current pay rate of around 7000-8000 bucks a month is an absolute failure because it's attractive to those who lack skills to make bank in the real world by running a business, and too unattractive to those with actual skills.

An opportunist whose only talent is bullshitting his way through everything finds a risk-free 7000 bucks a month, that doesn't require any type of talent, to be a godsent, whereas someone who has some actual ambition, talent and the ability and willingness to work hard on his craft can make double, triple, quadruple that amount in the private sector by running his own business that provides goods and services in the marketplace.

This fact will ensure that a career as a politician in Finland will forever only attract the talentless bums, and the potentially worthwhile people will avoid it like a plague, and do something better with their time.

This is also a reason why I don't really trust people posting their TA on Steemit; if you're good at it, you're being published by a legitimate publication, or you run your own, and being paid real money for it. Usually, when you can only give something out for free, it means your craft is not valued by the market. And there's usually a reason for that.

But that's neither here nor there. At least as it pertains to this post.

Let's talk about the good things about Steemit.

So, first off.

Okay, so I need another puff to think this through, I'll be right back.

Well, in all honesty, Facebook has begun banning me for stuff I've said four-five years ago, so there's that. I don't even think it's a person reporting me, I think I'm on some blacklist that gets bots run an automated scan on my profile and if they find a bad word or expression, out I go.

Steemit has that going for it.

And yes, my ever vain, but paradoxically equally fragile, sense of self was flattered by the number of people saying it would suck if I no longer posted here. So, the good guys do exist.

It did make me wonder, though, why is that I only ever see the vast majority of these people whenever there's a big drama going on, or if I announce I'm taking a break or whatever have you.

I guess it brings us to what is probably, still, the biggest flaw of the actual Steemit website: the user interface.

I bumped into interesting folks in the comment section of my ragequit post that I didn't even know existed.

This goes to show that overhauling the user interface in such a way that it makes it possible to find content that one is interested in should be the foremost goal of the development team.

I doubt it is, however.

Communities were supposed to be a thing last year, and we're still waiting.

The reason people use vote bots is simply because, for 99% of the people, all of their posts simply get swallowed by the void, never to be seen or heard from again.

The lucky few get to be on that elusive whale autovote list that means that they've made for life and can pretty much fuck around and do whatever, but most of the stuff here is near invisible.

Followers obviously don't mean jack shit since 990 out of 1000 are either bots or dead accounts.

Visibility always comes down to the whale vote, and nothing more.

After all that rambling, here's my first actual point.

A lot of the dialogue on Steemit revolves and hovers around the rewards. Yes, it's the unique gimmick that makes Steemit Steemit, and it's also the reason we're here. If you claim otherwise, you're lying. Don't be a liar, okay? Let's just acknowledge that. Okay, acknowledged.

But, somehow, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, et al. don't need to pay their users. Millions and millions of people don't need to be paid in order to use those services. Hell, most are so addicted to Facebook and Instagram, they're constantly online. They get physically anxious if their phone battery dies out and they can't check their notifications.

Even though no one is paying them cent one to use those services.

Why?

Because humans are more complex than the dialogue on Steemit would have you to believe.

In addition to monetary benefits, we also crave attention.

And it's that lack of attention - for the 99% - that most likely leads to them giving up on Steemit after a while.

Facebook was better designed in this regard since when you create your account, you get to choose your friends right off the bat. You don't just post and hope that someone interesting decides to add you to his or her feed, you send the friend request right away.

Should he or she accept, your posts are on said person's feed and you're off to the races.

People don't spam other people's Facebook posts with "Good post, thanks for sharing, follow for follow?" because there's no need.

And the problem works the other way, as well: just as the lack of attention for many drives them away, the lack of interesting content for the rest does, too.

Steemit has users struggling to find an audience and an audience struggling to find content.

Now, should it be easy on social media to get noticed? No, I'd say it's always hard work, it's the nature of social media and the attention economy.

But the GUI shouldn't actively be working against people finding an audience. That's my gripe.

The trending page is always the same stuff: it's haejin; people who don't like haejin; adsactly; some more haejin; more people who don't like haejin; a few people wishing for haejin and people not liking haejin to meet half-way; sweetsssj doing a variation of the same post she's been doing since the summer of 2016; Jerry; and sometimes it's something about cooking.

Oh, and Jeff Berwick because you just gotta have Jeff Berwick.

Certain people raking in X amount of money isn't even that big of a deal to me. I respect the fact that people are greedy, people want money, and money makes lives better. It's completely natural to want to make money, and I never really vilify anyone for wanting to make money.

To paraphrase Jerry Lawler, I've been rich and I've been poor, and rich is definitely better. It's not even close.

Whatever the system is - whatever the system is - people will find ways to game it.

Seriously, go watch some Pokémon Red or Super Mario Brothers speedruns. The amount of time and energy people spend in order to break, glitch, and manipulate those games in order to reach the optimal results is beyond crazy. And I'm someone who's really good at that, too.

There will always be those willing to dedicate all of their time and energy into gaming a given system.

Especially with money involved, Steemit will never escape that. And I think we can accept it. There's no point really fighting it, or denying it.

Be the trending page as it is, the problem with content discovery remains. I'd venture to guess most intelligent people simply stay away from the trending page altogether because that's often where the worst content of the entire site gathers to.

Pretty much defeating the entire purpose of a trending page, but hey, Steemit is different. It's "special".

Steemit has lost a lot of the interesting people that were here back when I joined, but some remain and I'd really like a better way to find their stuff. Maybe it could even lead to some, gasp, engagement.

We should also be able to follow tags, not just users. I think this omission after two years is rather embarrassing, honestly.

It's 2018 and expecting people to manually type www.steemit.com/created/whatever is just- I don't even have a word for it, it's just so laughable.

Right now, there's a problem where I may post certain stuff 99% of the time, but for instance this morning I was thinking about making a post about why I think infant circumcision is wrong and should not accepted by a western culture. Maybe that post would get attention, leading to people following me, in hopes that I post more about that topic.

But it would only be a one-off, and following me would just lead to the user's feed being cluttered with stuff he doesn't care about.

Leading to awkwardness in both parties.

So, in addition to being able to follow tags, the users should be able to somehow organize their own content, and maybe people could only subscribe to certain type of content by a given user.

I guess we have to talk about haejin for a bit.

I have a different view on the topic every day, but the gist of it is this, at least this is pretty much how I see it:

On one hand, haejin is probably harmful to the overall growth of Steemit. He seems to anger people, exposes a flaw in how the inner mechanisms of Steemit work, and he makes the whole thing seem pretty fake and most of all scammy.

But on the other hand, I do find myself getting frustrated with quite a lot of the criticism he receives in the comment sections, as well.

ranchorelaxo, or whatever the fuck it is, is probably his own account and he most likely just self-votes.

But.

The money for the ranchorelaxo account came from somewhere. It didn't just appear from thin air.

So, effectively, what haejin is doing is just a getting return on his investment.

He put money into the system, in hopes to milk it try, and that's basically how Steemit works anyway. As things stand right now, this is the one and only incentive of powering up: to milk STEEM dry. Everyone is allowed to do the same thing: buy STEEM, power up, and self-vote to one's heart's content.

Of course, most everybody can't afford it, but just because someone can, doesn't mean he should be hated for having money.

Having said that, I can't escape feeling that, on a more personal level, he feels rather obnoxious - I always raise eyebrows when someone uses a word like obtuse unironically, in an attempt to seem intimidating and intelligent - and I wouldn't place a lot of trust on his TA. Although, if some people truly find it beneficial, great. But see my earlier point about giving stuff like TA for free.

It's just that the people who are angry that they're not making X amount of rewards just by being here are almost equally infuriating, to me.

Things like "You should give back to the community" and some such are just silly, in my opinion.

Although burning some SBD is always a good idea that benefits everyone, including the one burning it.

One of the issues here is that the community still doesn't understand downvoting the way I think it should. Flags are always taken as personal attacks - and, to be fair, often used as such - even though they should simply be used as tools to control the allocation of STEEM, no different than upvotes.

This has been a problem on Steemit since day one, and flagging here has been equated to pushing old women down the stairs and other equally ridiculous shit like that.

Heck, done flagged two of my posts at 100% the other day, and you didn't see me make a mile long whine-o-rama about it.

Even though I obviously should have since those things always make it to the trending page.

It's his right as a stakeholder. Maybe he felt my posts were shit, more power to him.

But even if you find haejin to a problem - and I've made this point before - he's just a symptom, not the big bad in and of itself.

Hell, I'll make fun of him if I want to, just like I'll make fun of anyone else, including myself, but he's not doing anything the blockchain doesn't allow him to do.

That's what I feel a lot of people are forgetting.

The big problem is the fact that several of these part hardforks have moved Steemit away from what was the original vision, and that original vision had checks in place for all the behavior that we today deem harmful to the platform.

But I haven't answered the question: why am I still here? Why am I here ("just to suffer?"), despite the fact that this place pretty much sucks, in my opinion?

I already talked about the money, though the amount I make on Steemit is rather pathetic, but then again I don't feel my stuff has a big appeal anyway. I write fiction that's so convoluted it makes Twin Peaks look simple.

So, it's something else, but what?

Okay, here it comes, you ready?

Drum roll.

I'm too fucking lazy to build an audience elsewhere.

Boom, there it is: me breaking Steemit's #1 rule: always lie, about everything, all the time.

I don't expect things to change, I don't even think Steemit is a priority for Steemit INC anywhere, it clearly lacks vision and is just kinda there. This is what it's gonna be, folks. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

No, we're not getting communities, and no, we're not getting a sleek mobile app, or anything like that.

What you see is what you're always going to get.

Maybe it's what Steemit was always going to be.

In the meantime, I'll just wait and see what happens when dan launches his own version of Steemit. I'm pretty sure it's going to be a lot better - mostly because it's been the deviation from dan's original vision that's always made this place take a step or two back in terms of quality.

But it may be the exact same thing, too.

Edit: Something I forgot to mention in the post was the the Promotion feature should just put posts on the Trending Page.

Say you promote a post with $100, that $100 should just be treated by the algorithm as being part of the payout, placing the post somewhere on the trending page.

So all of the money now being thrown into the promotion services would just get burned.