Steemians!! - What The Hell Are We Doing Here?! - What Happened To This Place...?

in steemit •  8 years ago 

It's getting darker...

Anger, Hate & Trash Talking has started to become more common than on my Facebook News Feed!

I'm sorry to say that I, in my previous post, talked about how I will reduce my amount of posts I publish.. And here I am publishing a new one, no matter what I said.

Just deal with it this time. I just had to write this.

Power of an army..

No matter if I am alone or have an army of 300... I will stand my ground and I will speak whenever I find something totally messed up. That's the reason for this post!

Little did I know when I joined steemit.. But I loved it from the very first sight. I've read hundreds of stories and I've spent almost 15 hours per day here. Reading your stories, upvoting your content and published my own posts.. During these last couple of days, something happened. Something changed.

This place is getting darker by the minute..

Issues and troubles can be found both left and right on steemit and that's okay. It's actually how it's supposed to be.. Steemit is still new.

Steemit is like a newly born. We have to care for our children.. We need to stand up for them. Carry them. Give them a pat on the back. We have to teach them, motivate them and give them inspiration..

We have to be there for our children. I joined 4 weeks ago. A little longer than that..

I discovered a bunch of things I thought were amazing. Truly inspiring actually. This was literally the first time I got welcomed to a place with no censorship and true leaders. People inspired me. I talked to a bunch of people.. All of them nice, polite and helpful..

A few weeks have passed.. And no matter where I look, I find anger. I see desperate people and I feel pain and irritation.. Hate is everywhere.

Should I turn off the screen or is it still safe enough to have the power on..?

  • I'm starting to be afraid of the sparks that comes through my monitor.. Sparks of hate from one part of the world to another.. From one man to another.. And then back again.

My whole steemit experience is starting to fall apart..

There is no reason for me to bring up any names or highlight users in this post.. Instead, I will let you draw your own conclusions. You decide who this post refers to.. I share the content and you decide. It doesn't matter to me. What matters is, that people change.

One angry user doesn't mean much.. Five people is truly a handful but nothing more than 5 fingers.. However, these users have different reasons for their anger, and that's why we need to listen.

It's okay to be angry. It's a feeling and not a feeling you should take lightly. It's a strong & powerful feeling.

Benjamin Franklin said two great things about anger.

Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.

And...

Whatever is begun in anger, ends in shame.

So, when you're angry.. Calm down and breathe. Count to 10... or 20.

When you've done that, write your post or reply without burning hate inside of you. It will 9 out of 10 times be a better post.


When you encounter someone you can't stand. No matter if it's me or anyone else..

  • Disagree with them. Downvote them if you can't stand their posts, beliefs or thoughts..

But stop the flaming, please!

Don't focus your anger and frustration on specific people. Don't target specific people with your hatred.. It's boring to read, sad to hear and it will be my one-way ticket out of here, if this continues.

I know! .. Before anyone tell me this..

THIS IS THE INTERNET! WE ARE ONLINE! THE WORLD WIDE WEB!

But that doesn't matter. I don't care. No matter how much BS that goes around on steemit now and 4 weeks ago.. This shit isn't good for anyone.

This has escalated quickly.. Perhaps it escalated along with the thousands of new members.. Who knows..? - All I know is that, Steemit has started to become an ugly place..

I didn't sign up to be a part of some kindergarten where you bully your way forward. I came here to be one of you guys.. But I won't be. I can't be. Not as long as I see bullies throwing cakes at the fat kids.


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way to hate on hate. if you want less of it how about starting by not posting with a picture that says hate sixteen times. energy follows attention. resist not evil. create more of what you want to see, instead of complaining about what you don't.

I get your point and I have made a bunch of posts with things I'd rather see than hate. That said, I felt like sharing this as I truly don't want steemit to become such a dark place.. But sure, perhaps I could have done this in another way or perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned this at all. I could even have used another picture but it did what I was looking for. It brought attention.

good on ya. lots of things to keep abreast of that are for the anger making. dangers are everywhere. i'm not saying to keep our heads in the clouds. only saying to keep our focus on the things we want to replace life's horrors with. cure aging, decrease heavy metal pollution that causes people to be angry, violent, increase knowledge of things that allow us to improve. up with the trivium, knowledge is power.

I haven't noticed it. My experience is pretty positive, I generally don't get involved in anything dramatic. I've seen a couple public meltdowns, but I don't really go there.

It's hard to miss. At least for me. Perhaps I'm looking in the wrong direction. I don't usually get easily affected by things like this.. But the things I've seen these last couple of days did have a huge effect. I don't mind people arguing and debating but when it comes to flaming specific people I just feel hopeless. I don't want that kind of behaviour on steemit.. But, I will try to take your advice. I will try to look in another direction..

Sadly it seems that as soon as a new platform emerges there is an inevitable drive towards the anger, hatred and plain trolling that plagues most of the internet.

It's one of the reasons I started taking breaks from places like Reddit and Bitcointalk. I found the more I used them continuously the more I found myself succumbing to the culture and becoming more angry, argumentative and just plain nasty myself.

It seems that this is an issue of internet culture and if it is sufficiently toxic then it has a tendency to spread - pulling everyone down to the lowest common denominator.

Luckily Steemit has been mostly a positive place but I don't think we can be too surprised by the gradual shift.

I'm not saying people should just always agree with each other and never be honest - that is just as bad but it takes very little to take a few deep breaths and make arguments in a rational and level headed manner.

They are much more powerful that way and you will win people over.

Also if you overstep the mark and do end up being rude or overly harsh you can always apologise and admit to being wrong.

It takes guts to do that and people will respect you more for it.

I figure that the rewards and reputation systems will eventually weed out the haters and bullying tactics of some users. It helped weed out bots, and that was a nice breakthrough!

"It's useless to blame the darkness... light a candle instead".

Thank you for sharing. I have started to see the negativity creep in the last week. Steemit doesn't have to turn into other social media sites that are childish or 110% literal.

Steemit has been the escape from those sites. Let's keep it that way.

I totally agree with you! - We don't want steemit to become one of those other BS sites.

Do you people just realised this?
As I observed Two weeks ago, internally , people are jealous of others that make it, some don't .
Your day will come as I did. In the meanwhile , I enjoying my reading here. Sweet ❤️

Here is my link about what have happened, I believe there are other issues too.

https://steemit.com/steem/@bullionstackers/wtf-is-going-on-here

I disagree with your recommendation to downvote someones post because of not being able to stand their beliefs or thoughts. If you encounter such a post simply move on to the next one.

Yes that would oviously be the best approach. I agree with that. The reason I wrote what I did is basically because I would rather see people downvoting than flaming.

  • Maybe you're generalizing based on a couple of sporadic, but in /trending events ?

I felt the negativity, of course and some of the blame is ours. Steemit opened the Pandora box. Very few winners and a lot of frustrated people. This is not an excuse for any behaviour, but it's a fact. You can't be positive in every moment of your life especially when you see everywhere over and over again: "SUCCESS", "SUCCESS", "HOW I WON 15.000$ in 12h" and other titles from the people bragging.

Maybe the intention was a noble one: "Look ! I won. You can also do this." but I have my doubts. We are humans and we like to brag pretty easily.

  • On the other hand, THIS IS NOT AN EXCUSE. But be careful. Generalized negativity is not the result of psychopaths, bad people, evil people, etc. I said "generalized negativity", not someone's temporary bad mood. Generalized negativity builds over time. WE ALL NEED TO BE CAREFUL.

  • But this is not the case. I didn't saw any outrageous behavior here (except earnest that had a thing with lauralemons).

  • After we manage to change the reward distribution to more user types, not only to authors and after we'll balance this distribution more appropriate, the "anger" will dissipate. Slowly. Because will not have something to hang.

By the way, I'm saying "WE" because we are a community, but, actually, the platform is ned's, dan's. I'm feeling like a GUEST in a PROJECT with its own rules. But I want to contribute as I can (and have the time).

My part ? Commenting. Making comments so long that TL:DR. :)

“Seeing the glass as half empty is more positive than seeing it as half full. Through such a lens the only choice is to pour more. That is righteous pessimism.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

Earnest has serious issues, he still stalks her, his new account is @ feminism :(

I generally agree with a lot of your points, but haven't seen much of this negativity or hate raising to the top yet and only that would concern me and drive me away from steem.
I don't have any issues with the sheer existence of hateful or other wise immature posts. Do you?
I'm just curious what you are talking about, since you choose not to provide examples (there are good arguments for that) or point at least out where you see this kind of posts.
I my self only see real bad or destructive posts every now and then, when browsing "new" where you get all the posts before the voting takes place.

Anger is usually only about the one who is angry!

I do see frustration. I keep hoping that the right decisions are made. I don't want to see this great experiment fail.

Steemit will definitely become a darker place from it.. And that is for me personally, a huge failure. I like the idea of being able to discuss and debate whater things that comes in mind.. But to blame and flame specific people are what people can do on facebook or other social medias. I don't want that here. That will ruin my personal experience so far.

I haven't seen a lot of what you describe @hitmeasap but that could be because I have realized that I can unfollow as easily as follow. If a person rants about something occasionally, that's cool, everyone has their times. If the tone of the posts become consistently that, I unfollow.

If you are 'feeling the hate' it's because there is a change in atmosphere by people who are depressed and are actually 'looking' for something really bad to jump to. In other words, hate attracts hate, optimism attracts a more upbeat solution against hatred. Look for the positive in people, topics of great interest helps alot. Take a walk outside and enjoy the sun, the horizon at night. If you want to feel better, take a bike ride and enjoy creation rather than pulling in the 'dark' side. This is my first response on Steemit because I just joined a few minutes ago and I was looking around to see what's available to get a feel of what's happening.

Hope things turn around for you...

SeashoreMary

In my opinion, copypasta/spam is the biggest problem on Steemit at the moment. It does link in with this though, because many of the spammers are using multiple accounts to bully anyone who dares downvote their spam.