Dr. Steemlove or- How I Learned to Stop Complaining and Love Pro-Steem Posts

Since the early days of Steemit, three things became obvious really quickly:

1. Steemit related posts do really well with rewards
2. Lots of people hate the amount of rewards Steemit related posts earn
3. These people named these posts "circle jerks"

The last point is just a bit of fun trivia, but the first two points are important. They may appear to be a dichotomy at first glance, but I hope to make sense of this and why pro-Steemit 'circle jerk' posts are not only a valuable component of the Steem platform, but necessary.

Protip: All businesses that sell a product or service advertise or market.

At one point I dabbled with the idea of majoring in marketing. A few classes in, I realized I hate selling things and popped smoke on that insanity. Despite the short-term misery of learning about focus groups and diversity in advertising, I did learn some interesting concepts.

According to the US Small Business Administration, spending around 7-8% of your gross revenue for marketing and advertising for traditional business models. This is for companies making less than $5 million.

Professional Analysis: That's a lot of fucking money.

Conclusion: Pro-Steemit posts are the equivalent of marketing/advertising in traditional business models.

Steem is not a traditional business model.

Measuring the gross revenue doesn't seem to be accurate for this analogy/analysis. Look at it instead as an open hedge fund that accepts investments and pays other people to create products that people will be attracted to. However, this 'hedge fund' is only playing with around ~$500m in cryptocurrency.

That's peanuts to many hedge fund sizes. Observe this fancy graph --

Professional Analysis: There are a lot of really wealthy bastards with money sitting in really big funds.

Steemit is a decentralized hedge fund that invests in content, people, and ideas.

The marketing for this sort of 'alien business model' is baked into the structure itself, REQUIRING internal and organic leads for more investments.

As the ancient lore tells, Facebook got big by being an exclusive club at first for college students with specific .edu email accounts. Facebook (and other social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube) seek to aggregate all content/thought creation on their platform in order to simultaneously aggregate all user information for the sake of data analytics... aka feeding the AI beast.

Conversely, Steem seeks to accomplish a similar goal of being the aggregate of all content/thought creation while sharing the dividends of investment revenue and token value appreciation.

Rather than a central point of gravity absorbing all revenues in exchange for data (read: Zuckerberg), Steem atomizes and decentralizes users based on investment into the platform (Steem Power) who become localized centers of gravity.

Think of it as a galactic ecosystem compared to a singular black hole... in which nothing shall escape... the Zuck shall own all.

If we aren't for ourselves, who will be? Definitely not this individual--

Or this creepy bastard... CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey--

So, next time you see a "Steemit Circle Jerk" post about how awesome this place is and how great it would be for everyone to come here and start posting, remember that its ultimately no different than all the stupid fucking commercials you see on TV, print, or anywhere else your eyes tend to go.

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But most importantly, fuck Jack Dorsey.