Adapt React Readapt Apt

As a memorable line from the TV Show The Office US, it does remind me quite often about Steem and how things work here. The platform is forever in movement, constantly filtering out what does not seem to be working out for it either through curation or competition. It is hard to compare it to things as it is truly unique and something not many may have seen the same way before.

As someone who has been here from almost the very beginning I can tell you a lot has changed, interestingly enough things have only kept picking up the pace on how quickly they change and adapt no matter what is going on with the price.

We've evolved so much further from just being a blogging platform. I like to think the blogging was one of the early adopter phases which let you earn Steem easily if you got familiar with it and learned its ways. Of course there has always been a lot of abuse, behind the scenes deals and ways to leech as much value as possible while giving nothing back to the platform, but even these things are filtering their ways out over time. Easy Steem earned easily ends up on the markets. The layer of competition keeps growing while the inflation does not, this is a very interesting aspect of our platform and economy.

The change of psychology and how users view the blockchain has quickly changed recently too, although it may be due to the quick increase in price with Steem being the first to make moves recently, I also think many are starting to realize the potential of Steem and how much can be done here. I've mentioned in many posts before that the majority of dapps and projects being created and moving onto Steem today are mere remakes of already existing and popular ones introduced to new advantages such as censorship resistance and the rewardpool. The ones I'm really looking forward to are those that have not been invented yet which will only be possible on blockchains such as our own and blow everyone's minds that something like it is even possible. I believe we still have some way to go to start seeing those but with competition and more and more users and developers joining our blockchain it is headed in the right direction.

There are a lot of authors who have gotten comfortable to the way they do things on Steem, I do realize that "the system allows it" being one of the more popular excuses. Many seem to forget though that the system also won't forget. It might be the curator in me talking right now but I find it absurd that so many popular Steemians continue vote-trading, longing for more and more stake and power through ways that completely push off newcomers and other users that put a lot of effort into our economy. I often get quite annoyed seeing this happen constantly, especially considering there are ways now for you to passively earn the same amount of rewards by doing nothing than delegating your stake to bid bots or distribution bots. Although there's still a lot of room for improvement in that regard as well I still think it's the wiser choice than to daily continue shitposting and votetrading with other similar sized accounts just to get the most out of it. The difference here is that you push your content you seem you don't really want to be writing to the top of hot and trending lists which in turn degrades the quality of the platform to newcomers and at the same time jeopardizes the success of the platform.

For these users I just have one question. Is it really worth it? Do you really think your content is something that will bring people to our blockchain and will be worth pushing up the lists forever? I fail to often understand what their endgame is, I realize Steem Power is really powerful and buying it not only gives you a lot of influence and rewards but fame comes with it as well. Is it worth clinging into fame if you deep inside know the only way your content is getting all these rewards is because you keep vote-trading your way up? Think about it, the only thing that is keeping you relevant in any way is that you can't post 10 times per day or that you can't self-vote 10x of your vote daily. I don't know, I'm rambling a bit and I wasn't initially going to go into this at all but it just seems a bit sad in my eyes. Authors who constantly are out for max rewards, authors who pride themselves on how much followers they have made even though they know most have just come because of their trending time. Authors who barely have any skin in the game but use their discounted delegations to votetrade as much as they can to constantly shove their 5 minute posts into the faces of anyone daring to check out trending or seeing our platform for the first time.

Similar to adapting to other things and learning from mistakes I am sure that over time and trial and error users today will start learning to do better. Although I realize that curation is just not incentivized the same way as posting is right now I am still baffled at how so many long time users who should be doing quite well by this point in general are just out looking to maximize and never being full. Even if it means throwing it all away and seeing other platforms or blockchains surpass them because of their greed and short term thinking. I do hope that in the future the users that were long term and proved their actions time after time will be remembered for it and those that were only out for themselves while risking what we have here today won't be the ones at the top of the food chain of the reward pool.

I realize my identity here on the blockchain is anonymous and many often relate it that it may mean it's because I'm trying to abuse the system without facing any consequences, but if I wasn't I would be ashamed bringing my friends to this place if all I did was vote-trade and suck up to whales to maximize my earnings and stake no matter what. Maybe this is why a lot of the bigger users who engage in this sort of activity don't have a lot of friends they bring onto the blockchain, who knows.

Some times I wish the curation algorithm would change just so these mindless activities change and that we start curating for content and effort and not because of the stake behind those accounts. When the time comes that these issues get tackled I wonder what those users will end up doing instead. I wonder what those who've somehow managed to get to leading posting reward positions will do when everything suddenly changes and they find themselves with no stake left and no way to further abuse it. I imagine they will start complaining at how unfair the system is and that their account age and amount of followers should count for something, that they deserve to be making rewards here forever just because of their history. That's gonna be a fun day, until then there is nothing else we the others can do but ignore them and reward those we believe won't turn into giant pricks, this will require some trial and error as well as proof of brain still has that human element weakness of trust.

It will improve though, sooner or later. It is destined to.