My Rant on the "Follow for Follow" Phenomenon on Steemit

in steemit •  7 years ago 

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Lately, I've noticed a surge of "follow for follow" requests on Steemit. Not surprisingly, many Steemians, particularly the great content creators, have lashed out at this practice. To them, it's an insult and a cheap way of subverting the system to gain increased popularity without having to earn it.

I take a slightly different approach. I actually don't mind the follow for follow requests; I just choose to ignore. Why I do this is the subject of this video rant. Enjoy!

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I'm not a fan of follow for follow...but I understand it and have done it in the past when I was new. I think there is a place for it when you don't have many followers. Once you have authored a few posts and are over maybe 100 followers, follow for follow adds no value.

Yeah, that's a great point...I think a lot of folks do it unknowingly or unwittingly, and grow out of the custom.

People naturally kiss the asses of the rich, I won't name names but there are some people that only have tons of followers because they invested a ton of money and are a whale so there are tons of people just begging for a Whaley vote...
It's the same reason some people don't tell anyone if they receive a huge inheritance or win the lottery or something… they magically start to amass a ton of friends and the friends you did have start to treat you differently and seem to always want a hand out now.. same phenomenon. I think for some newbies it's extremely hard to start getting upvotes and followers no matter how good their content is... i've seen new folks with extremely good content get straight up ignored because they are brand spanking new and maybe people think that following them isn't going to get them anywhere..

I know those big whales as well, lets wait my friend and we will earn what we want instead of begging.

Please follow me and I will follow u back

@mccchan

What a lovely reply to this post!

Nice actually

Thank you @bullishmoney for sharing your thoughts about follow for follow situation :)

You're welcome! :)

Trust me, many people will start writing about guns and Jesus right after watching your video.
Be ready to follow a million users on Steemit :D

Haha! I wish I was that important! :)

Spammers don't do analysis or think before doing anything, they just do!
See @mccchan comment on this blog, I was like seriously?

LOL! I thought that was pretty funny! :)

Also, I love it when people comment here or on YouTube within seconds of a video being published ... there's just no way in hell that you actually listened to anything I said! :)

Exactly!

Haha, "please follow me!" Those people will naturally peter out as time goes on. Their follows are superficial, the people following dont give a rats ass about their content. I think its a boom bust cycle, that would require constant begging for new followers.

Totally agree. I see, however, an exponential increase in F4F, which is why I just ignore it for the most part (no need to stress about it for more than it deserves). Then again, it could be a boom bust cycle as you mention...we'll see what happens :)

Halfway into this you said: "I don't ever see follow-for-follow accounts that also make good content."

AGREED! This is my big annoyance with it. So many of the people are just spamming or worse. It seems like with only 24 hours in a day, there's enough time to make great content OR spam comments all day - not both.

You must feel better though by being chill about it. I just get enraged and turn into the hulk when people start follow-for-following my comment section.

Sweet, I'm glad I'm not alone with my assessment! Having said that, you're right...I feel better being chill about the F4F issue. I look at it this way -- F4F will be exponentially worse than it is right now. I don't want to stress myself out over it, and give someone who truly doesn't care emotional power over me.

I just ignore it, and so far, it's working. But I feel your anger and frustration...these are mostly assholes trying to cut in front of the line!