No worries Jay, thanks for the response! The comics community here is small but friendly with a couple vets like myself and @cryplectibles who have been here 2+ years, so don't hesitate to ask any questions you need. Steem can certainly have a steep learning curve at first, but it's worth it in my own opinion!

Thanks for the explanation. I have to say, I doubt the difficulties you experienced has anything to do with the old account at all. dTube can be unreliable at times, it's built on a newer decentralized file storage technology called IPFS, and I know that sometimes the servers get overloaded. Plus, the timeframe during which you were experiencing a lot of issues coincides quite nicely with some recent major upgrades and changes to the Steem blockchain technology itself, which left a lot of smaller accounts struggling to transact for a little while. Fingers crossed you don't experience too many more issues, but I wouldn't count on it! It's all a part of being on the "bleeding edge!"

There's no way to delete accounts. Everything put on the blockchain is permanent! So be aware of that in everything you share & post! I would simply choose whichever name you like best and run with it. (Again assuming the problems you encountered had nothing to do with the old account at all.) Then simply make a post on the secondary account directing folks to follow you at the primary account, maybe change the account tagline at the top of the page to direct people similarly, and just let the old account go dormant.

And lastly, sorry for being such a suspicious creature! When there's a bit of money involved, we've had issues with plagiarists and ID thieves in the past and I could totally see someone swiping your content just to upload it here for a few votes! Basically, the best way to prove that you are the owner of Trending Pop Culture is just to link to your Steem profile from somewhere on the site, or perhaps make a Facebook post or Tweet. (We love the publicity too!) After all, anyone can make a profile linking back to any site... but only the owner of the site could possibly link back to the profile thereby acknowledging they know it exists and control it.

Steem is really an amazing technology and tool. Again, let me know if you have any questions. I could totally see integrating Steem to bring your readers along and allow them to benefit from the experience as well. There are tools like SteemPress which allow you to crosspost directly from your WordPress, and FinallyComments which would allow you to embed Steem comment sections directly on your site if you wanted.

For instance here's an old post of mine that I actually wrote on my own site here. It cross posted to Steem with SteemPress, and then I used FinallyComments to embed the comment widget from that post, so comments mirror between the two locations. You can login to Steem from my site, comment, upvote, etc. It's really amazing! I could totally see it working for you and your readership, and help bring a bunch more comic fans on Steem.

Take care and thanks again for clearing up the issue!