Sometimes blogging turns suddenly from a free-flowing stream of ideas into a slog, an interminable fight with what feels like gravity, a task to rival that of Sisyphus.
This is not just an artefact of the Steemit blogging experience. It's always been there. This brings some relief. It's not about me, it's not about today, it's not going to last forever, this too shall pass.
The big question we're answering here, every time we write, upvote, flag, comment (or don't do any of these) is "what happens when you add a financial incentive to a blogging platform?" - it's the big question of Steem and it will never definitively be answered, no matter how many clues pop out right in front of our eyes. That's what makes it endlessly fascinating to me.
Take the flag wars, or, as I like to call it, the fight against the hydra - every time you flag one reward-pool-raping donkey another seven spring up in its place - or something like that. Well, some of the consequences of our incentivization are: people get greedy, people get cross with people who get greedy, people feel like something's being taken away from them, people fight to defend what they think is theirs. All that gets played out. And we learn a little bit more. I mean I don't feel like I see that in my everyday life, all the squabbles over stretched resources have been ironed out and I've become distanced from them because I have enough, I have a house, food in the fridge, utilities that just work. If someones filching my wifi, I'm not really bothered. Is anyone filching my electricity supply? Probably not, given the practical difficulties and the general standard of living in this country.
But playing this Steemit game gives me access to skirmishes happening on my doorstep, I get the thrill of watching without necessarily taking part. I get to observe from afar. I think I've flagged a post once. I'm not sure what my rules are about it. You have to be acting pretty shittily to get flagged by me. But when people ask me "that Steemit, does it work?" I marvel at how complex a full answer would be.
One small part of it is "do you actually earn money?" and of course the answer is "yes, and...".
How do you earn more money? Well, today I'm just pushing this rock up this hill. And I expect tomorrow will be much the same.
Hmmm. Well that was an interesting and unexpected post @lloyddavis. I don't experience you as pushing a rock up hill at all.
I had noticed that you hadn't made a video but was thinking you were busy with Steem Camp. 😊
I'm not really sure what the underlying message is. Are you feeling a bit fed up with your Steemit experience?
Just wondering . . .
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No, I think mostly I got bored with who I was being here. It's not that I've been inauthentic, rather more narrow and excluding bits of me. I think I just need to stretch some different muscles - all is well :)
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Oh. That's interesting. I like what I've seen of you. Hope you're not going to change who you're being here too much! 😍
You need to do what's right for you of course. I look forward to seeing what develops next. 😊
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What's happening here is not peculiar to Steemit or even online communities although the focus or justification in this instance is the financial incentivisation of blogging.
We're very sensitive to unfairness. Some work by the University of Leicester a couple of years ago found that we are "hardwired" to co-operate through our evolutionary development (part of our biological make-up rather than a cultural phenomonen) and a corollary to that is that we have a reaction to perceived or real unfairness or cheating. It's part of our survival mechanism so, I guess, a good thing, and one that's been undermined through the rise and prevalence of ideologies around capitalism and neoliberalism, both comparatively new and very persuasive sets of ideas.
The challenge, I think, is what we do about unfairness or cheating, when we come across them. We do love drama, and we do love getting into the drama triangle. That must produce some kind of satisfaction for us ("there, I won, I'm right" maybe?). It's also massively tiring and destructive.
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It feels like there's a lesson to be learnt and it feels like its a summary of your experience on steemit, anyway I love your writing. I think there's a lesson here.
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The reward plunderers are an annoyance. It's unfortunate that they top the trending page as they set false expectations and can give a bad impression to new users. We want the best content to be up there, but it's not always happening. We also have people buying massive votes to trend. I know it's people just exploiting an open platform in unexpected ways, but I feel it could be better. Some choose to flag to counter these activities, but you risk retaliation. We're still exploring what this platform can be.
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Yes sure. We are also pushing this rock up this hill. I hope tomorrow will be better.
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Well as far as the #steemit is concerned i do believe that it is win-win game because everyone gets rewards over here. Flagging strategy is good just to control the spammers as the create useless mess in the comment section and author gets bored of it!
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interesting post
thank you for posting this
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All things and every thing is a provision so that what we experience sometimes things we do not want, situations that are bad from the war or the effects of it always carry a bad influence and the effects that disfavor human beings.
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Yeah True...
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I feel extremely similar to you. the hydra is so accurate.
Why people believe that there will ever be a way to mandate morality in here (because that's what it actually is....)
people are greedy. but trying to "fix" that - is really only going to force limitations on the people who are already doing things by the book. The greedy snakes will just find a way around it anyway.
and yep - another day, another .04 post hehehehe
but - i love steemit. so i take the good with the bad and hope that enough people who act honorably will stay - and the people who act "shittily" as you so eloquently put it... will run away and hide somewhere else hahaha
but... since i've been doing my treasure hunt... the trolls have started to come out from the rocks. Today, I had someone read the post, find the clue, and then post the answer.
just.... why? lol why ruin it for everyone else? i shall never understand the minds of the socially inept. twisted little pinheads, they are.
i asked him to delete it (because flagging only actually increases people's desire to actually read that comment). but i doubt he will.
such is life. lol
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