My recent experiment was to get a better view at how newer minnows may feel and this post contains some more thoughts about how steemit works, the role that whales play, the way that whales are treated, and remembering that even though they are called "whales," they are still people.

The goal of steemit is to go "to the moon" and the goal of many minnows is to one day become a whale. For @papa-pepper though, I'd rather not be whale right now, and I certainly do not envy their position. I realize that there is a lot of potential for steem right now and that whales are in a position to earn more than anyone if (when) the price goes up because of how much steem power they have, but still.

They have become the most loved and the most hated (except for maybe spambots) users on the platform.

According to the Advanced Steem Metrics Report for 4th November 2016 from @ontofractal, there were 1016 active users on steemit yesterday. It seems that 641 of those active users were posting. Think about that, 641 authors posting in a day. Many of them post more than once, but even if they each only posted once, that would be one post about every two and a half minutes. In reality, 956 posts were made on steemit yesterday. That means that on average a post was made about minute and a half.

Many posts, like a joke or a meme, can be opened, viewed, and moved on from in less than a minute, but many other posts require several minutes to actually get through. If a post is put out every minute and a half, and you don't need to eat, sleep, or go to the bathroom, there still isn't enough time day to accurately sort through all the posts being added to steemit. This is true for all of us, not just the whales.

However, for most of us, our votes do not make or break a post for other people. As my steem power has continued to grow, the price of steem has continued to drop. Therefore, on its own, my vote has never been worth more than a cent. Right now my vote will not even give you that much. Though it may be nice to see that @papa-pepper voted for your post, most of the time it really didn't matter when we look at it from a financial perspective.

Therefore, it is the whales who bring most of financial benefit to post payouts these days, and it is also them who take the brunt of the negative responses when posts do not get a great payout.

I remember a time four months when I made this post. It had no image and was 154 words long. Yet within 7 minutes of posting it, the total value was over $400.

What had happened? Well, "dantheman" took notice of it, liked what he saw, and upvoted it. Because of the fluctuating value of steem, it paid out at $318.43, but still, I was blown away. Since this was shortly after I started, I was amazed.

Things had changed slightly by the time that "dantheman" made this comment 3 months ago:

Once you reach a certain level of Steem Power, almost every vote puts money in your pocket. When I up vote something, I give the author $150 and I get to pocket $50. That is a huge incentive for me to up vote everything I see.

It looks like the total value of one of his upvotes had dropped to $200 by then, but still. Read his whole post on the matter here: Curation Rewards and Voting Incentive. Now I'm not sure what his vote is worth at the moment, but many other whales now have a total vote value of $10 or less. Hmm... pocketing $2.00 every time you vote don't exactly carry the same incentive, does it?

Much like us, whales can earn rewards from curating, but, because of their higher amounts of steem power, they earn more doing it. This is why every whale in the TOP 20 has a lower reputation than @papa-pepper except one. Only "dantheman" has a higher reputation than me at the moment, because he was one of the whales who also made a lot of his own posts. Many whales do not post much, if at all, and focus on curation rewards from voting rather than on author rewards from posting.

Here is a list of the TOP 20 whales at the moment, with stats for @papa-pepper added at the bottom. The columns are ranking, username, reputation, steem power, and estimated value, with the ranking determined by total steem power for this list.

All data taken from steemwhales.com this morning here. If you are not familiar with that site, please check it out and find out what your own statistics are. The data was accurate at the time that I entered it, and I was in the top 700 for most steem power. Maybe soon I'll be able to put in my 2 cents!

The catch-22 for the whales is as such. If they do not find and upvote the posts of some users, then they are found "guilty." If they find posts that they like and upvote them repeatedly, but then move on to other users, then they are found "guilty." If they try to help a friend who joins the platform, then they are found "guilty." If they need to cash out some of their steem, then they are found "guilty". If they power up, they're greedy and if they power down, then they are found "guilty."

Some days around here, it just seems like they can't win no matter what they do. Maybe I'm a little too "thin skinned," but I think that that would be a lot to deal with.

Anyway, I am so happy for all the whales here on steemit and am glad that they are continuing to play their role. Without the benefits to the platform that the whales offer, it would be myspace or facebook, and many of us would not be here.

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If you are newer around here or if you have never read this post from "dantheman" from 5 months ago, I'd recommend it.

EVIL WHALES

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Since there are ways that users can be notified when someone types in their username, I have chosen to write the whale names mentioned like "this" rather that like @this. This post was not a solicitation for whale votes from @papa-pepper, I was just thinking about some stuff and felt like sharing. The whale images used were from my Steemlife Seascape spray-paint artwork.

Except for the meme I made at memegenerator.net,

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FOLLOW

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Awesome Handcrafted @papa-pepper logo kindly donated by @vlad - Thank you!!

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OPERATION TRANSLATION logo provided by @oecp85.

(click link above for more info on Operation Translation.)