Is Creative Content Still Relevant On Steemit in the Era of Autobots? An Experiment Pt.1

I probably won’t get any upvotes for this post because I am going to be a little bit critical about Steemit, and these days being fanatical about it seems to be the winning strategy. But I come from the creative world where constructive criticism, observation and broader thinking, serves to improve something. So with that in mind, I am going to step outside of my comfort zone and apply a little critical observation at the risk of being downvoted by those who have more than me.

So let me state for the record, I want to be a 100% fan of Steemit. I actually was when I first began. But after being on the platform for a little over a month, I would say I am firmly a 70% Steemit Fan. It isn’t the philosophy of content creators getting rewarded for good content that makes me wan -- that idea is still amazing to me...I just wonder if Steemit, in the way that it is right now, still holds any real value still for creative content.

I have seen so much great content go completely unnoticed and unrewarded, and yet I have also seen such mediocre content on the trending page with some pretty high payouts. I keep asking myself “How is this a trending thing!?"

So I began binge watching several Steemit strategists on dtube. Pretty much they seem to have the same message --just invest $1000, $1500, $2600 into Steem and start using autobots. Well that isn’t really a sound option for me, and I am pretty sure it isn’t an option for a lot of people, new to the crypto community. But more so, I am confused by this well-established practice being the direction Steemit is going in. I mean wasn’t Steemit built in order to reward the content creator? To build a new community? If all we are doing is paying to get noticed does the quality of content even matter?

I think if I started in 2016 I would still be 100% all in. It’s working out super well for those cats….ehem I mean Whales. When they started out, their tokens where getting great payouts and with so few people it must have been difficult not to get attention for their posts. Today they can now afford to bid high on every post, with numerous autobots at once, resulting in an excellent ROI on both their time and financial investment, but with the growing number of minnows entering the community each day, there is so much more competition for your posts to get noticed by anyone whom can afford to reward you for your contribution. So often a minnow is lucky just to earn a “cent” of the SBD. Just like in the trending posts, it often doesn’t matter very much if your content is quality or not. I am continually seeing such good content going completely unnoticed because the creator doesn’t have enough SBD to use an autobot.

My understanding is that in theory, I could post a picture of a big steamy turd and if I had the money I could pay to get it upvoted on the trending page. Then Auto voters whom are set up to cast their votes, but never have to read or look at content, will systematically upvote my steamy turd, simply because I paid for votes. This seems like more of a wealth based popularity economy rather than a content economy. Or am I just missing something here? I am new and I don’t pretend to know everything about Steemit.

So here is what I am going to do to determine if content still matters on Steemit, or if gaming the system is the only way to earn a steemit buck. I will be publishing this post twice. Part.1 will be the organic method. Not Bots --Just engagement with people, and hope they find my post interesting enough to give me an upvote based my content value. I will compare the number of views with the number of upvotes

The next day I will post it again but this time I shall bid on my first autobot to help garner some attention. I will also compare the views to votes ratio. Next week I will post my conclusions.

If nothing else it will hopefully help me navigate these choppy waters of how much time I should be spending on my content or alternatively which method is better to utilize to reach a wider audience…stay tuned.