CULTURE CLASH: The Reason You Don’t Understand Steemit Is Because It’s Like A Gift Economy Not A Commodity Economy

I’ve been getting a lot of Steemit Chat messages that I’m currently not answering. Actually, I’m getting messages from all over social media requesting my advice about Steemit and cryptocurrencies. I’m not accustomed to this level of attention and I find that I’m now unable to respond to everyone. However, I don’t want to ignore people as I think that’s rude, so I have started to think more about how I can help people better understand Steemit.
I now understand why people find it so difficult to comprehend: Steemit has characteristics of the gift economy and we’re all living in a European-dominant commodity economy paradigm. Let’s first explore the gift economy.
A Gift Economy is one where status is given to individuals based on what they give to others as opposed to a commodity or exchange economy where status is given to those individuals who have the most (Pinchot 1999). -Learning To Give
Native cultures are based on the philosophy that humans are the stewards of the natural world, and not consumers of the world’s resources. Unlike European American values, “wealth” in Native American culture is not measured by net worth, but rather by a combination of spiritual qualities, material goods, and behavior. Leaders are selected for their ability to take care of the tribe by sharing their wisdom and wealth (Millett and Orosz 2002). -Learning To Give
So, let’s take a look at a concrete example of the gift economy in action on Steemit.
A well-known, popular Steemit user, @papa-pepper, exemplified this gift economy behavior towards an individual, @darthnava, who was going through a difficult life situation. @darthnava recently wrote a post in which he described his challenging medical situation: he received some life-threatening MRI results and found out that he would be needing surgery immediately. He also revealed in his post that he didn’t have the funds to cover this life-saving operation. The Steemit community responded swiftly and proactively, with a huge majority of the whales (large account holders) upvoting his post to over $17,000, which was more than enough to cover his medical expenses. However, @papa-pepper went out of his way to donate $2,ooo USD out of his own pocket to @darthnava.

After @papa-pepper made his huge donation, the Steemit community once again went wild with upvotes, cheering on @papa-pepper’s generous spirit and the entire community lifted up @papa-pepper, almost to a king status.
These upvotes turned out to equal a significant amount of money, too. This type of behavior is more reminiscent of Native American tribal culture, not European commodity culture in one very specific way: @papa-pepper acted from his own conscience, not from an institutionalized philanthropy paradigm. He didn’t donate to a charity, he donated to a person directly by acting from his own conscience. Here’s @papa-pepper’s belief system in a nutshell:

It’s a simple statement but one that is currently not embedded in our mainstream commodity-centric, obsessive net-worth culture:
“It is important for us to help one another when the opportunities present themselves.” -papa-pepper
The gift economy is further understood when we look at what happened to @papa-pepper after he had made the huge monetary donation.
The Steemit community was so overjoyed by his act, that they began upvoting his comments about his donation. These upvotes from the community turned into a significant sum of money. @papa-pepper’s account was then padded, but the real boost came in the form of his enhanced character, increased status and leadership position as a caretaker of the Steemit tribe. Steemit at this stage, it is a tribe, I would assert. And @papa-pepper like myself, came into Steemit with nothing, and also does not have a huge account. His account is a medium-sized one, and he’s considered to be a dolphin. There are plenty of accounts much larger than his. But his account is growing due to his behavior and status as a power giver. This is opposite of what is currently being touted as a successful, killing-it-entreprenuer bro meme: