The Critic #1 - Circle Jerks - CryptoRoots - Forking Around

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Well it has been a long time coming, your favourite critic @Cryptogee is back and he just can't keep his big mouth shut!

For a while now, I have been reading posts from our Steemit overlords and keeping quiet, it is not so much the posts that have moved me to start The Critic, but more some of the sychophantic responses.

So in the interest of some balanced opinion, I will be providing the voice of criticism to Steemit. That's not to say that I'll be whinging and whining and complaining (that's not my style), no I'll be adding some much needed constructive criticism to the platform, with my very own brand of @cryptogee cynicism.

So without further ado, let's dive into the first edition of The Critic.

The Return Of The Circle Jerk?

So our old favourite Whale @berniesanders is back with a bang (did he ever go anywhere?), the self-styled Dedicated Asshole has been shaking up the Steem pot, and I for one applaud it. Not because I want to curry favour with Mr Sanders, we've had our disagreements in the past, it's more for the reason that Steemit needs a conflicting voice or two. Otherwise we'll end up in yet another social media echo chamber.

For those of you who weren't around about 10 or 11 months ago, a certain @fyrstikken, Steemit's own South American viking, joined the platform and immediately went on the attack. He claimed that Steemit was one big circle jerk.

The term implies that one person says something great about Steemit and then everyone agrees, and this builds and builds until the trending page is nothing but complimentary articles about Steemit.

There were various arguments back and forth about whether it was true circle jerkery or just people expressing their delight at a new and wonderful concept that was working and apparently taking the world by storm.

The upshot was, that (most) Whales agreed not to promote Steemit articles any more, because it may put off people coming onto the platform, who felt that they couldn't, or didn't want to write about Steemit, and felt that that was the only way they would get rewarded.

It worked, many Steemians, myself included, stopped writing about Steemit, and for a while back there, the trending page flourished.

However now, I am seeing a creeping back towards the old days, the current trending page, as of writing this article has 8 out of the top 11 articles about Steem or Steem related topics. That's just a shade under 80%

Add to this, the fact that if any of the Steemit Overlords publish an info article about Steemit, the comment section turns into a nauseous pit of circle jerking, where you will drown in steemen (see what I did there?).

Critic Verdict: Whales, stop just randomly voting up any article that mentions Steem (apart from this one of course). Listen it's fine to vote up whatever article regardless of subject matter, however at least reward effort and not copy n paste bullshit.

Steemians, stop fawning over every single announcement made by the Steemit heirarchy, quite a lot of their decisions are absolutely crap, let them know when they are, or they will keep feeding us crap whilst thinking they are great.

Should We Embrace Our Crypto Roots?

This kind of carries on from the last section, as well as Steem articles dominating the trending page, we have crypto currency articles in general also making up the general zeitgeist.

I only mention this because last summer when I got my BBC director friend to write a couple of articles on Steemit. He gave up after a couple saying; "I don't think I'll do well because I know nothing about crypto or Steemit..."

I tried to convince him otherwise; however the trending page left me with little to argue with. However is this such a bad thing?

Maybe we should just embrace it, maybe we are already, the fact is, I have read some damned fine crypto articles on here. There are some really knowledgeable people, from @nanzo-scoop to @joseph and a whole load in between.

Perhaps we will be known as The Number One Place For Crypto News & Advice, which isn't a bad thing in itself. Especially given the current rise and rise of Bitcoin and the alts.

My only worry is that, ultimately, we want mass adoption for Steemit, because that is the way we will end up dominating the world. Crypto language can be convoluted and confusing, which can turn off the vast majority of people coming here looking for this new revolutionary form of social media. So a balance must be struck, exactly how we strike it, will I'm sure be a matter for conjecture and debate.

Critic Verdict: As with so many things on the platform the Whales and to some extent the Dolphins shape what is popular. If crypto gets rewarded then we will see a snowball effect.

To be fair we have seen other subjects being heavily rewarded as well, however not in as much proportion. There is nothing wrong with specialisation, and in fact I think it's a good thing that we have so many crypto experts here.

I just hope to see other subjects rewarded to the point whereby they take over the trending page, if only for a matter of a day or two.

Forking Around

I am not really criticising this one way or another, however HF 19 is coming and I haven't seen much written about it.

For those that don't know a hardfork is a fundamental change in code, for the most part changes take place that only the real crypto heads can understand. However no and again there are new implementations that even the likes of me can get their heads around. For instance the reason why payouts are now 7 days instead of 24 hours is because of changes made in HF 18.

I know there are ways to find out what is coming up in HF 19, however I'm waiting for news from sources like @teamsteem.

Critic Verdict: Hopefully these changes do actually improve the system, and hopefully the majority of us non crypto techs will be able to understand them.

PLACE YOUR THOUGHTS BELOW GOOD OR BAD DON'T BE AFRAID TO CRITICISE WHETHER IT IS STEEMIT OR ME THIS IS YOUR SAFE SPACE FOR CRITICISM. THE BEST RESPONSES WILL BE HIGHLIGHTED IN ISSUE 2 UNLESS OF COURSE YOU DON'T WANT ME TO.

If there is anything you want me to criticise, feel free to PM me in Steemit chat.

Cryptogee