Yesterday there was much lamenting and weeping over the supposed mean-spirited flagging of poor little @sweetsssj by @dan.
Here's the first post I saw about it.
As I had already muted the poor lonely little thing a few weeks ago, I had to look at her blog to get an idea of what people were so upset about.
The first thing I noticed?
At least, after I noticed the ridiculous payout amounts.
Was that poor, sweet, innocent little thing had apparently been trapped at Atlantis for over a month.
Were they holding her for ransom?
Is this hand gesture some kind of signal?
I guess these photos are by poor @sweetsssj but she didn't give any attribution for the, very professional looking photos in this post.
It almost looks staged doesn't it?
I'm not a professional photographer but I imagine it would be pretty difficult to get a shot like this with all of the funky lighting from the slot machines.
Wow, how much do you think a non-alcoholic (because I'm sure that sweet, innocent little thing doesn't drink alcohol) beverage costs here?
Do these photos (and practically ALL of the photos in her posts) look like they came from an Atlantis travel brochure?
Or maybe they look like the kind of photos Atlantis would stage for advertising purposes?
Here was an interesting comment from @pal about this post.
Hmm, could she, perhaps have a little help from the entire marketing department at Atlantis?
Could you afford to spend over a month at a resort like this without someone comping you for lodging and food?
Maybe someone will post an explanation but there's also the possibility that something not so honest was going on here and the Powers That Flagged are being ethical and not exposing something shady that they took care of for the community?
A few weeks ago @ats-david wrote a post about allowing advertising on Steemit.
I hope he forgives me for paraphrasing it but, advertising is coming sooner or later, and it would be best if we get out in front of it and control it.
I'm wondering if Steemit hasn't already seen a month's worth of advertising from Atlantis and, not only did the community not see any revenues from Atlantis, I'm wondering if we funded their ad campaign from the rewards pool?
Look at the posts in a fresh light and decide for yourself.
All photos from the blog of @sweetsssj but I'm unable to say who actually took them since she didn't give photo attribution in the few posts I looked at.
If I'm wrong I'll issue a public apology.
One thing is a guarantee. She DID not take those photos her self nor in ANY of the posts she has made.
Another thing is a guarantee is she did not give ANY credit whatsoever to anyone.
I however don't think that the photos were taken by the casino. She may have gotten free stay or made a deal to get a discount but she has professional photos in EVERY post she does with a photographer .
II am pretty sure she has a job that pays her to travel and has for sometime.
Even though her rewards are LUDICROUS she still can't afford that lifestyle on these rewards alone. She MUST be getting paid to travel and do these promotions. She is simply posting on Steemit about it also to make EXTRA.
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I actually muted her early on, I figured there was no sense trying to point those things out.
What's brought me out of the woodwork is the people weeping and wailing over the flags. Poor innocent little thing being picked on by big the nasty founder.
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hahaha yea.....poor girl not making a thousand $ for eating at a fancy restaurant. What a hard life....
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yeah, but she still makes a buncha bank.... one flag isn't gonna stop her... take a look at that......
Wallet
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yup
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Interesting post about one of the most popular person on steemit. I agree and disagree with some of the opinions.
The photos are sometimes too perfect, definitely wasn't her taking the photos as she appears in most of the photos, and some have been edited to enhance the quality.
I disagree with the comments "how do you have the time to do all this? and how can she afford to stay at this resort for 1 month", because she could be married to someone wealthy
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Oh, you had better be careful with statements like that. There are a lot of Social Justice Warriors who would take offense at the idea that the only way a woman could afford that lifestyle would be if her husband had money.
On the question of time, I seriously doubt any one human being could produce the sheer volume and quality (I never said the work wasn't high quality) that she was posting.
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hi theblindsquirl, no offense intended towards women. I am just stating one possibility of many. If you get 1000 dollar per post then she could easily afford the trip, and would commit the amount of time needed . She also has mentioned bitcoin a few times, which opens another possibility that she has bought bitcoin when it was low at maybe 5 dollars, and now she is enjoying the profit on travel and can afford a photographer to travel with her.
Time and quality, definitely not done by her alone, so i think there is a team of photographer and writer, editor.
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I usually avoid the Hot & Trending pages altogether as I've not seen much in terms of quality content that wasn't already showing up in my feed.
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I sometimes look at her blog and other hot trending ones to learn how to blog and what people like to see in the blog
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You could learn just as much from reading travel brochures from expensive resorts (or maybe Caribbean cruises) if that's the audience you want to target.
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Just for reference, I have been to Atlantis. It was in the fall, so I can't say it compares to the time that sweetsssj was taking pictures there. However, during the day, the casino is mostly empty. It wouldn't be hard to take pictures of areas without people.
For marketing purposes, I think I would want to take pictures of an active casino, which would encourage more people to come try their luck.
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Could you afford to spend over a month there?
There's something that doesn't add up with this.
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I could do a "month's" worth of photos in a day.
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So do you think she's "innocent"?
And, would you give yourself the attribution for all of the photos in your posts?
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I usually don't give attribution to my own pictures. But, I think I would maybe do an article on how I setup my shots, if I was taking the pictures myself.
But...I guess the question is, does she have to reveal that she's a travel agent or a marketing person for a travel agency?
On the other side, when she takes some of her steem and gives it to puppet accounts to upvote her own posts, that's is wrong. I think there should be more @sherlockholmes investigating the big reward pool winners to see if they aren't scamming the system.
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I would say, she's probably a travel agent and yes, they get comped to "review" locations for their "travel business". And, she could even do group travels, which means she would get comped for her trip and then paid by the group for booking her trip.
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Very good point you are making there @deanlogic no wonder you have logic in your username! Have a WONDERFUL day!
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Totally obvious what the truth here is. The pictures are too perfect. She is too perfect...I mean they put a busty "model" in all these great pics almost always showing midriff in locations that are always PERFECT. There is no real content here. It's just eye candy.
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It's apparently not that obvious, there were a lot of people who came to her defense yesterday wanting an explanation why she had been flagged for 15 days.
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It doesn't look like her earnings have dropped much....good grief. People are so gullible for polished ad campaigns...
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George Carlin: Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
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Wish Carlin were alive today :)
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Authors that reliably trend are perfect vehicles for mining the rewards pool, and bots are programmed to time their votes so as to maximally extract rewards.
Linking SP to VP has created of Steemit a rewards mining mechanism, and the social media is merely a gloss that lends it the appearance of something with other value.
@sweetsssj will continue to trend and create a mechanism that allows curation rewards to be extracted from the pool, until VP is delinked from SP holdings. I am not holding my breath waiting for the change.
The SEC's recent announcement that it will regulate cryptocurrencies that operate as securities, as Steem does, will force a change. Unless there is a dramatic revision of how VP is weighted, Steemit will be regulated out of existence.
Fakebook will love that.
I won't.
Edit: I don't want to confuse the possibility that something can be done with an assumption that it was intended to be done. People make mistakes, and the devs may have been saints.
OTOH...
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Yeah, the system is pretty efficient.
Your entire philosophy is the direct opposite of what The West stands for anymore.
Consume, consume, consume and don't stop to think about anything.
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I Alwyas Knew There Was Something Fishy With @sweetsssj , Upvoted And Resteemed Bro !!!k
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I have a hard time believing that one of the founders would flag someone for 15 days for no reason.
There may be some people that owe @dan an apology.
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Let us all resteem and EXPOSE this bi7ch!
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I think it's been taken care of already.
I think it's a good lesson to learn from though. People come here and blindly follow & upvote the most popular people & posts.
She's really no different than Kim Kardashian.
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Ohhh DAMN! I just realized how right you were
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Hey I have something very interesting to ask you about but it has to be private. Lets talk in steemit chat.
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wait a minute.
You're saying that there's such a thing as ethical and 'up front' advertising?
Really?
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There's a lot more than meets the eye. Those who know will never say.
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They don't have to say anything. It's the blockchain and it takes about 2 minutes & half a dozen right-clicks to figure it out.
It's probably morally wrong of me to say that 80% of the population wouldn't believe reality if it bit them in the ass and dragged them into a retention pond at Disneyworld.
All I want is an honest shot at paying my rent, if someone wants to make that kind of easy money they should start writing government grant proposals. Then they wouldn't even need to spend time taking photos and writing descriptions in broken English.
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Well that is true. Yet there is still another juicy bit info the block chain, in its self, can't reveal.
However, I'm a strong believer in all truths are eventually revealed.
It will come but not from me.
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@dwinblood has started digging into a different issue that's very interesting too.
I've decided to sit back, watch and be amused (if I can manage to keep my big mouth shut). ;-)
https://steemit.com/steemit/@theblindsquirl/how-i-found-peace-by-embracing-the-anonymity-of-my-own-insignificance
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Usually the best thing to do. I just my life and let the flow go with it.
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Hmm, strange I never thought about this!!
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Amazing post @theblindsquirl have a happy journey here
i just upvoted your post and following you. you can follow
me at @zeeshankhan .i hope you will follow me back
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Comment spamming will destroy your reputation here.
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ok bro i understand
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I need a Sugar-Steem-Sponsor-Daddy to sponsor month long trips too and document them. :(
lol
I'll even wear my Black Canary cosplay costume wherever I go! haha
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Need a photographer?
But it needs to be someplace with a nice climate.
My guess is that Atlantis can be crossed off the list.
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We will specialize in third world countries, to bring them exposure and help raise their economy. You can be a model too. You already have the experience remember that one post? lol I think we could be very successful. Making an appointment for my Zika vaccine now!
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If I'm going to be a model we're probably going to need to aim a little lower, maybe a 4th or 5th world country? ;-)
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haha oh stop!
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Interesting.
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This post was resteemed by @resteembot!
Good Luck!
Learn more about the @resteembot project in the introduction post.
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Some people are just able to manage their time.
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And some people take advantage of the goodwill of others.
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I agree!!
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I figured she was one of those asian influencers amd started ignoring her posts. The giveaway is that her photographer is never in any of her shots.
Having the influencers come here is a sign of maturity for the platform. Influencers cross-promote so some of their crowd might end up here too. I think it's a net gain. Though I think that influencers should be upfront about their sponsors, and we should have better tools to avoid them if we want.
"Quality content", "valueable content" isn't an objective thing. If we want a large community then we have to allow a diversity in what diffetent subcommunities find valuable.
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Upfront & honest earns a lot of leeway as far as I'm concerned.
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Interesting post! Exciting times, with great power comes great responsibility! Have a WONDERFUL day!
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This is the one question. Who is her photographer? Has there ever been a selfie picture of her and the photographer. Or does she carry around her own tripod.
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I've always suspected she is working for a modeling agency or travel company.. but it doesn't bother me too much. At least she puts out good content and doesn't post spammy comments all over the place like a lot of these bots now days
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So let the modelling agency or travel company pay her, and be honest and upfront about it.
Let the fully informed community decide if they want to reward her.
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Yea they should be up front about it
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Good to see someone draw attention to this. Noticing this Steemit user rake in hundreds of dollars in profits for essentially being cute is to the great discredit of the platform itself and every time she pops up it makes me realise that Steemit is far from the finished article. The platform needs to regulate good content as a community or it will always be open to abuse.
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I'm not going to knock someone for making money by being cute, the market should decide what's popular and we all have to rely on the tools we have to get by.
The part that really bothers me is the pretending to be a sweet innocent lonely little thing when she's really just a shill for a multi-million dollar corporation.
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Im not knocking her for being cute , Im saying that if Steemit is going to provide any type of alternative to facile, low grade media it needs to promote quality in its contributors , otherwise I may as well just turn on MTV and look at cute generic faces on there.
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Exactly!
I hope that there are enough influential people here who share that viewpoint.
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Holly cow!!! I had no idea. Wow.
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What surprises you the most?
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I guess I never thought about where the pictures were coming from. I always assumed she took them.
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To tell you the truth I never even considered that.
I had muted her after the first few weeks here because of how ridiculous the payouts she was getting for something as artificial as her posts were.
It wasn't until people started wailing and moaning about the injustice done to her by evil Dan that I even looked again. When I saw that she had been posting "reviews" (all of them 100% positive) about Atlantis for more than a month, I thought that somewhat "fishy".
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Hmm 😐 interesting. so her posts were for advertising purposes. Kinda like double dipping with the platform and probably getting paid by the resorts too.
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I've got no proof of that. Someone suggested that she's one of those people with a huge following in Asia.
But spending a month at the same resort, and posting about what appeared to be virtually every aspect about the place other than how well the employees are treated and how happy they are to have such bright futures thanks to the wonderful people at Atlantis seems too perfect.
Seriously, never a backed up toilet or a cold steak, maybe a salad that had some wilted lettuce?
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Hmmm lol well, to be fair to her, like most people on social media usually only post the good things going on.
I guess it's hard to know exactly why Dan downvoted her.
Interesting topic though.
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I doubt anyone is going to get the explanation they're demanding from Dan.
Thanks for the conversation.
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As an un-professional photographer I can say a lot about @sweetsssj's photos.
She definitely has a person that follows her around that is quite good at taking pictures. None of the pictures are particularly hard to take, you just have to know what you are doing with a camera. As in, I have never seen any spectacular art worth photographs. But, I have also never seen any bad shots. This is usually done by someone who has enough expertise taking lots of photos and choosing the best.
Almost all the pictures are small photo shoots. Each one has a carefully selected clothing ensemble and area/background/lighting.
@Sweetsssj has also done enough small videos of her singing and dancing that we know she is a real person.
The only question would be, is this a small two person crew, or is it something bigger. My guess is the former.
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Agreed, but they all look like they could be dropped into or taken from a travel brochure.
It's the pretense that bothers me, I registered with Steemit as an individual, not a business. People should be able to make an informed decision as to who to give their upvotes to.
Sadly, there seem to be a lot of people out there who are easily duped and maybe a few people who will make agreements to benefit themselves at the expense of the poor saps who think they have a chance at building something from scratch with their own hard work.
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Excellent post, greetings ..
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This post received a 2.6% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @theblindsquirl! For more information, click here!
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