The Ambivalence Of Cryptogee

Have you ever felt ambivalent about something? Or perhaps I should ask if you know what it means first.

Before I explain what it means let me just say that I thought I had felt this emotion before, but up until just a few seconds ago, I don't think I ever truly had.

Blogging Ambivalence

You see I was looking at my blog and on the one hand I feel very blessed and happy that I have a steady stream of voters, even if most of my income comes from a very small proportion of said voters.

I'm also happy that I seem to have a small band of people who regularly engage with my articles. Some of them do so on almost every one I put out, others engage when I write about something that interests them.

However what I'm a bit down about, is that despite my seven and a half thousand followers, I don't even get one percent of one percent of them engaging with me.

Follow Me Follow You

It seems that the plague of new Steemians begging follow for follows has somewhat abated. I myself never saw the point. Even if somebody does follow you so that you can follow them; what does that do for either of you?

Unless of course the follow for follow beggar happens to be writing about something I'm interested in, and does it well. Plus I myself am writing something that the follow-for-follow beggar wants to read, then what's the point?

I know there is the social proof argument, whereby you are more likely to follow or vote for somebody with a huge following. But for me that argument seems to breakdown on Steemit.

If that were the case then I would be getting more votes today than I got a year ago, because I have a few more thousand followers. That though is patently not true, I get less if anything!

Power Up

Perhaps the big difference between now, and when I was getting a couple of hundred votes per article. Is the amount of SP I had then in relation to the amount I have now.

Then I was a dolphin, or is it orca? Anyway I had about 20,000 odd SP, and that it would seem was the reason for my superb engagement.

Reality Bites

In a lot of ways this is a good thing, my ego was being massaged to the point whereby I thought I was this amazing writer/content producer.

Now though, after seeking counsel from people outside of Steemit, I have a much more realistic view of how good/bad I am.

The one thing I do miss though is the engagement, and I'm not talking about the sycophantic oh you're so wonderful and great and your content made me cream my pants type engagement.

I'm talking about genuine feedback and even some of the arguments I had back then.

Back To The Future

Anyway like I said I'm incredibly grateful for the voters and commentators I do have. By and large it seems to be made up of people who genuinely like what I do. With a bonus of me really liking a lot of their stuff too.

However my ambivalence won't leave me, I feel happy and sad at the same time. Happy for the attention and sad because of the lack of it.

See You Soon!

Anyway, I don't want to come off as ungrateful. Like I said above I feel very blessed to have the people I do have engaging with my content.

Also I'm glad people like my stuff, and in many cases I like theirs. So please keep 'em coming, sometimes I don't have the time to answer all of them, however I do try.

Once again, thank you to all of my genuine followers and commentators, without you, none of this would be possible!

HAVE YOU EVER FELT AMBIVALENT ABOUT A SUBJECT? HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT STEEMIT? HOW DO YOU FEEL IN GENERAL? AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!

Title image: Soroush Karimi on Unsplash

Cryptogee