I know I approached this topic in the past, but I'd like to do it again, mainly because I see more and more people on Steemit and all kind of other websites giving up on the type of content they used to create and publishing more "mediocre" things in order to get more views and to be noticed by more people.
I can understand why anyone would want to be more popular, especially online. In a lot of cases, being known by more people means receiving more money, and I think most of us would want that. However, when you lose your integrity because of that, when you intentionally start creating content you hate simply because you want to get the attention of those mediocre people out there who can't understand the type of content you were creating before, I think that's when you lose your self respect.
Giving up on something you like and forcing yourself to create mediocre content and to please the "mediocrity" out there, people who can barely think for themselves and who spend most of their time tracking down what popular people do, hoping to find out more "spicy" things about them, may be a good way of getting successful fast, but it is, in my opinion, degrading, and it makes you look stupid, despite all your "high numbers".
You can simply see this on YouTube for example, on all the channels you can randomly discover filled with bad jokes, people who spend most of their time screaming, people playing popular games and overreacting to absolutely every single thing they can in order to "please the masses" and so on.
You can even see this on all kind of articles you find online. People giving up trying to approach fairly interesting subjects, and just writing a lot of shitty things hoping to get the attention of some kid who doesn't yet care about anything except games and having fun.
I'm not saying that creating content for those people is wrong. If you like creating it, then good for you. There are people out there who draw cartoons for example, and you could consider them "bad artists" because they are not trying to draw realistic things like a lot of other people.
However, as long as they like drawing cartoons, as long as they do that with interest and joy, then let them do it. If they're happy, that's all that matters. But when an artist with amazing potential gives up on everything they worked for and stat drawing "silly little things" hoping to get money and to get the attention of a certain group of people, then for me, that's losing your integrity and giving up on your goals just to get something simple, something everyone can get.
So, in my humble opinion, I think people should give up on the idea of trying to create mediocre or bad content hoping to get as much attention as possible, and just strike for something better, for high quality content, even if that means getting noticed less.
Money and fame are important to some people, there's no doubt about it. But losing your integrity and lowering the quality of what you do hoping to be discovered by mediocre people and receive more views/money/comments just makes you look stupid, nothing else.
Integrity is, in my opinion, the most valuable quality someone can have, bar none. In every aspect of our lives.
I think you can never achieve complete integrity, though. To put it in math terms, integrity is a limit function heading towards infinity. You can aim for it, but you will never achieve it fully.
Moreover, there will always be times where you stray from the ideal path. It just isn't possible to be objective all of the time. The key is to surround yourself with people who will push you back on the path in a way that is natural and acceptable for you.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Well said! It is indeed impossible to achieve complete integrity. Everyone, at some point, decides to do something "easy" or approach a "popular" subject in order to get some more attention from others.
That's just how it is. Sometimes we do it intentionally, sometimes without even realizing it. I'm sure I did it many times in the past, not sure how often because I wanted to or because I simply had a random idea.
What I believe is that more people should try to not change the entire content they create and to produce "mediocre" things out of a silly desire to receive more attention.
As an example would be a person who wrote nice and informational articles in the past, and suddenly starts getting naked or showing random parts of his/her body just because that gets him/her more views.
Another one could be a person who does nice and interesting videos on YouTube, gameplays for example, with interesting games and great sense of humor, and suddenly starts playing random crap and yell at everything because people enjoy that and he wants more attention.
That's the type of situation I was referring to in the article, people who change what they do and decrease the quality of their content hoping to get more and more attention, simply because it's an easy way of doing things.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit