The actual deception behind deceptive marketing - my reply to @steve-walschot 's post

Let me get it straight - I call BS on @steve-walschot 's claims expressed in his recent post about feeding narcissism. And here is why.

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I think we can all agree that @dollarvigilante 's message boils down to these two points:

• He's delighted about Steem because it allows him to leverage his existing reputation.
• On Steem you cannot expect to make big money quickly, unless you already have a reputation (and reputation is earned through hard work).

That's it. I'm not saying @dollarvigilante used the exact words. But this is the actual message any reasonable person is able to extract from his posts and public appearances. And I bet @steve-walschot is a reasonable person, which implies he fully understands what @dollarvigilante actually meant.

So the actual message from @steve-walschot to @dollarvigilante might have looked like this:

Hey man, I think we need to be careful how we construct our marketing slogans. Phrases like "How I Made $15,000 in 12 Hours" might backfire badly. Some people will misunderstand what you mean, join Steem, become disappointed and then inflict damage to Steem's image.

And that's it. These are valid concerns and I actually agree with them. This would be one marketing professional talking to another marketing professional, trying to come up with the best marketing strategy. Emotionless, professional approach which indicates a genuine concern about Steem's well-being.

Classic political stunt

But what does @steve-walschot do instead?
Let's go through his post.

He opens up with this statement:

@dollarvigilante fan? Skip this post please. This post requires an open, objective point of view before reading! You have been warned.

Well, this is classic political stunt. First you need to divide your audience into two groups: us vs. them. Anybody who disagrees please leave. Did he really want "dollarvigilante's fans" to ignore his post? I bet he wanted the opposite. We are being manipulated right from the start.

Then he says this:

@dollarvigilante only promotes or talks about steemit as 'something' to make a quick cash grab.

This is an outright lie. This is how @steve-walschot wants us to perceive @dollarvigilante 's posts, not what he actually means. @dollarvigilante made a whole post about his Steem payout being the result of several years of work. It's hard to imagine him being more explicit about it:

And, believe me, having the success I currently have in life did not happen "overnight"! It happened over approximately 11,000 nights!

And then the main accusation is revealed:

This means, if his post had failed, we would have never seen him again.

How do you know this? What makes think you can be the ultimate judge of somebody else's motivations? And even if this was true, what difference does it make? What makes you the judge which motivation to join Steem is good and which is bad? Mind your own business, sir.

And then goes the rant:

And yet, there you are, every single post rubbing into others users, community members, on how you got the big payout check in just a couple of hours, while some amongst them have been working for weeks to create for example a usefull tool, like steemstats.com, steemups.com, steemtools.com and many, many more.

Then he proceeds with personal insults:

Your only contribution so far, is making yourself look like a narcissist clown.

But surely, a couple of paragraphs before, he does what every smug politician does - he "shows" respect:

Don't get me wrong, the guy deserves all the credit for what he's accomplished in his lifespan to be clear.

Then goes the advice how @dollarvigilante 's reward should be spent:

Create some super campaign with your 30k that you earned here the last 5 days. Do something.

And he ends up with the worst crime of all - patronizing others and feeling superior:

To be honest with you, I'm not looking forward to have a flood of 'thousands' of people only thinking they can make some quick bucks.

The above statement looks quite innocent, doesn't it? It seems like the guy is really concerned about other people being hurt. But let me translate what it actually means:

I'm smart enough to see through the marketing deception but there are guys out there who are less smart and they will fall into this trap. We need to protect them.

That's a totalitarian mindset in my book: we just want what's good for you.

What's more, as a proper politician, he says he personally is not upset at all. He just represents other people and tries to expresses the feelings of other people, but not his own:

This post is not written out of jealousy or envy. I'm doing very well on Steemit, and would like to explicitly mention that @dollarvigilante may even earn 1million as far as i'm concerned - he's doing a great job. I'm only expressing what i've picked up lately on several media and chatrooms.

This is a classic demagogue in action.

The collateral damage

Yes, I'm quite upset that quite a few whales fell for the political manipulation by @steve-walschot and, as a result, a valuable post by @dollarvigilante has been down-voted into oblivion. I'm really ashamed that this has happened. For me, it felt like a lynch.

@steve-walschot believes he is the guardian preventing the downfall of Steem, but look how much collateral damage he does: he clearly aims to divide the community and fuel the anger.

The downfall of Steem will not come from people being disappointed. It will come from people not being able to bear others succeed.

This is the real danger and @steve-walschot does his best to wake up this demon.

What's the alternative?

Regarding marketing deception, here is my stance: as long as the social contract around the Steem blockchain holds, no real deception is possible. The rules are clear and everything can be verified in the code and the whitepaper. Surely, very few of us can fully comprehend the whitepaper and even fewer can go to the source code level, but still we can choose whom we trust in this respect. The marketing issues are important and should be addressed and discussed but definitely not using the emotional and manipulative language, as @steve-walschot just did.

Regarding the risk of propelling disappointment: people are generally smart and they can handle it. They take marketing with a grain of salt, and regrading those who are not attentive enough - let them experience this disappointment, let's not protect them from going through this process, as this is a very valuable process. Some of them will end up being bitter and angry, but some of them will transgress and make progress when dealing with false hope. This is all good. This is part of the Steem experiment. It needs to hurt, otherwise you make no progress. Remember The X Factor's success? People are tough and they do learn.

As a proper "dollarvigilante fan", I'll end up with a quote by him which, for me, sums up the whole emotional aspect of Steem rewards:

Really, if you don't have a following on other social media sites already, why would you expect you would have one here?