Threatening To Quit

in gimmicks •  7 years ago  (edited)

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In the short time I have been here I have seen a few people announce they are leaving. The funny thing is, most of them are still here. This is not unique to Steem. It is a gimmick that seems to be common all throughout the blogosphere.

I Don't Like Being Manipulated

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I don't begrudge anyone trying to drive traffic their way but gimmicks annoy me. This one annoys me more than most. When you do this and then I see you blogging a few days later I unfollow you.

Part of your connection to your readers is a thing called verisimilitude.

From dictionary.com:


noun
1
the appearance or semblance of truth; likelihood; probability:
The play lacked verisimilitude.
2
something, as an assertion, having merely the appearance of truth.


Simply put, once you prove yourself a liar or a manipulator, I quit. Is your relationship with your audience valuable to you? Are you willing to jeopardize it with a gimmick?

How I Answer These Questions

I put effort into cultivating relationships. It isn't easy and it isn't always fun. I am an antisocial bastard. Winning friends and influencing people does not come easily to me. I am not going to throw all that work away on some cheap trick to attract more people. I would rather have an audience that chose to be here because they like what I have to say.

Conclusion

You do what you want. We all have to answer these questions for ourselves. However, if you value me as a reader then don't threaten to leave. Because once you do, I'll quit you.

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Surely I am not the only one who feels this way.


If you like what you read here then please give it an upvote and a resteem. Follow @wdougwatson to keep up with my journey to freedom.

Until next time, Keep Steeming!

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Years ago, I was an early adopter of Epinions during the dotcom bubble. It was sort of an early version of Steemit, done badly. People were always talking about quitting, announcing I’M LEAVING in a final post, and then coming back five or six days later.

Yeah. It drives me crazy. If you are unhappy with the platform, write about it. That is legitimate. But don't use gimmicks. I have no time for that.

Thanks for your comment man.

There's two reasons for that as there's two people that do that.
Some people do that sort of thing for clickbait and to get more views / upvotes / comments / attention etc depending on the platform.
That's the major reason this happens and the other is the minority but does occur.

However there also is the person who gets overwhelmed by what made them upset and truly does mean it when they say they are leaving and then later on after they have calmed down realise they were overreacting and they continue using the platform, embarrassed about how they overreacted and they prefer not to mention why they came back as they'd rather forget about the whole thing.

Being either of these people is not ideal, but the second person is a lot more innocent than those who do it for clickbait. The second person got upset and made a mistake and just want to forget about it and move on and still enjoy the platform they are on.

Unfortunately both lots of people get lumped in together which sucks for the second person and means they probably actually should talk about why they came back but many don't. I feel for the second type of person. Everyone gets upset and everyone overreacts at times. I know I have, just not about wanting to leave a platform.
However I agree that the people just clickbaiting are annoying.

My wordiest commenter returns. Glad to see ya again. My steemit feed is a bit bloated so I haven't caught any posts from you if you have been writing.

I agree with your statement. This second category of "quitter" does exist. I can generally spot them by the overall tone of their blog. I generally show them mercy and keep reading when they return.

You should explain yourself if you are in this category though. Let your readers know what happened. This will help strengthen your relationship with your audience.

Thanks for your comment.

Keep Steeming!

Good to see you too. I've been around but my last actual post was 6 days ago. Been working on a video that is just taking a bit more time than normal, and haven't really had anything significant to post in the meantime apart from more of the story I'm putting up but I usually leave about a week between the chapters of that.

"You should explain yourself if you are in this category though. Let your readers know what happened. This will help strengthen your relationship with your audience."

Oh certainly I agree there. It would be a lot better to do so. Some people don't though and I understand why, but it would be better for them to do so so that the audience understands and it builds the relationship rather than confuses it.

Yeah. I guess it all boils down to the fact that we are human and imperfect.

Yeah. The Wilfred bit from the US version? It looks like it but hard to tell since it is mostly him and he's the same in both and I'm not picking the actual scene in my head. I've seen all of the US version but only some of ours so I don't know if ours had a scene like he's in there.

O_o

I think you may have gotten your signals crossed here.

lOl

By ours I didn't mean you and me. I meant my country as a whole. I've seen all of the US version but only some of the Australian version, and I haven't seen enough of our version (the Australian version) to know if we had a scene in it like that. You can't tell by looking at the actor as the same person plays Wilfred in both the original and the US version of Wilfred.

Oh, I see now. The gif. lol.

I have no idea. Just a funny contextual image to spice up the page.

I've actually never watched Wilfred.