Trigger Warning: I agree with @grumpycat

OK guys, so I am about to drop some bombs that might not make some people happy, but hey, you can't always make everyone happy and they are things I have observed since my first day here and I have wanted to talk about for a while.

I know that some people don't like the fact that @grumpycat makes a lot of money on his posts, but he brings up some good points that I have to agree with.

(This post might make people unfollow me. I'm sorry guys.)

Nearly a day ago, a very well-known and somewhat controversial whale, @grumpycat, dropped a blog about Grumpy-Compliant posts. Now this was a bit vague, but I believe that if you are invested in this platform, you understand what a Grumpy-Compliant post would be. This might include but not be limited to:

• Not using excessive amounts of upvote bots

• Not upvoting your shit posts in the last 12 hours of their 7 day runs

• Not just posting a YouTube video with little to no explanation of its existence

• Not just posting a photo with little to no explanation of its existence

• Not using stolen photos that you rip off of other people online

• Not writing poor quality posts that don't really add anything to Steemit, and if you do, not upvoting them into oblivion

• Writing good quality content often

• Making meaningful comments that add to the original poster's conversation

I honestly think it is pretty clear what a good quality post would/should be if you have been paying attention to this platform at all and if you give a shit about this platform at all.

Whether or not you agree with @grumpycat and his particular flavor of posts is irrelevant to the reality that Steemit is being inundated by crappy content. The kind of content that people are flocking by the thousands here every day to try to escape. If something isn't done about people making money on crap, then good content becomes threatened by terrible pictures of a Canon camera.

(Screen shot courtesy of my good friend, @pawsdog, who is working tirelessly to call out and eliminate shit posts. You should check him out because he is a verifiable badass.)

Now, you may be thinking, well this isn't so bad, Beth, I could potentially be on board with this. Shit posts are going to bring down the platform, ok I can jive with that. But, I am not done yet.

I think in the future it is going to be hard to delineate a shit post from a not-shit post, as everyone has varying levels of acceptance, and some people see this as an inorganic overreach. I have seen a lot of comments criticizing @grumpycat because they feel he shouldn't get to decide what "good content" is.

One poster in particular, @DineroConOpciones was quite fumed indeed to find that one of his posts was one of the first targeted by @grumpycat. He went on and on about how it was unfair for his post to be called out as a shit post, and many people agreed with him, to the tune of over $1000 and nearly 2k upvotes.

My question however is, do these people really think that @DineroConOpciones is so amazing that his posts are deserving of all that support, or do they just hate @grumpycat so much that they would rather side with @DineroConOpciones than see the bigger, broader point I think @grumpycat was trying to make?

Here's where shit gets real and you may not like me anymore...

I don't think people should come to Steemit and drop their work from other money-making sources.

Now let me clarify. That doesn't mean you can't share pictures from your past, or past artwork. It doesn't mean you can't post YouTube videos of a song you recorded two years ago, or a project located on another site that you are excited to share. I get it. I did it. Actually my first few posts were links to YouTube videos because I didn't even know about d.tube yet. But as I got into the community, I realized that posting links from YouTube wasn't helping the Steem community grow. And now everything I post goes on d.tube because I want to help it grow and get bigger.

Let me double clarify, I have ZERO problems with linking if you do it properly and in a way that doesn't amount to a shit post. For instance, the always amazing @aussieninja just made an amazing post where he posted pics from his photography past and wrote an eloquent explanation for all of them. Beautiful. I love it. He also sometimes links to YouTube videos to show his progress on his Ninja Warrior adventure. He always seamlessly slips them into his well-written blog updates. This is perfect. This is how it should be done. I am not saying you only have to use d.tube. But can you honestly tell me that this is helping grow the Steemit community:

This is the latest post from @DineroConOpciones that he so vehemently defended. It is literally just a YouTube video and a link to his Twitter. The only thing that even relates to Steemit is the fact that all of his videos have to do with Crypto. What a deal then huh? Just drop your links to your previous work on a website that you know is full of people interested in Crypto with ZERO fucks given about the actual platform itself, but merely the money that can be sucked out of it, and the followers you can get for your other mainstream social media platforms. (News flash: we are actively trying to get people to migrate from these platforms, not vice-versa.) I did some looking too, and it wasn't just this one time. It appears that his entire existence as far back as I have looked has been dropping YouTube videos in an attempt to get YouTube subscribers. The only difference now is the ludicrous amount of money he is now making by just putting up a link that he is likely already monetizing on Youtube.

(I couldn't get the whole page in the screen shot, but it is another YouTube link drop with the only other text being a link to his Twitter. Note the amount, nearly $1,000)

(Yet another YouTube link that raked in $713)

So this is the quality content that nearly 2k Steemit users think should be saved from the gallows of the almighty @grumpycat downvote? I don't get it. Why are people really on here then?

There are some people on here that bust ass daily to make quality posts, I have named three of them, but there are so many more, and they are barely topping $100 on their highest payouts. They consistently release quality d.tube videos, blogs, music and much, much more. They aren't just copy and pasting a link and getting out of dodge.

So there it is ladies and gents. My potentially rage-inducing post. I want Steemit to stick around. I want a platform that offers its users more than any other platform. People can see the advantages here, but instead of sticking around to help build it, they continue to use the non-blockchain platforms and then just link dump.

None of this is technically wrong of course. There really are few rules on here. However, even in a land of few rules, there are still consequences. Those consequences come in the form of pleasing or pissing off the powers that be (the whale overlords). And there may be some that abuse their power, but I think in general they mostly want what's best for the platform and can identify what isn't. This is a clear cut case for me of what isn't.

mic drop