Steemit's evolution: The path to Pokemon Go is through the iFart
I am not the first to mention this, but there have been rumblings of discontent in the community over who is getting the biggest blogging payouts, and more importantly, for what. Personally, I am one of the biggest advocates of free markets you will ever see. But I must admit, things like the $30,000 makeup tutorial and thousand dollar memes gave me pause. After sitting down an thinking about the issue for awhile, I think I may have found some perspective. There are two main events in recent tech history that I feel are very important to remember.
The first is the development of the granddaddy of modern cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin. Think back to the earliest days of Bitcoin. How did people earn them? By running a client on a computer that solved math problems. Math problems that didn't need to be solved. People that mined coins in the early days didn't do anything significant, didn't do any 'work' themselves, achieved no epic feats and created nothing of aesthetic or functional value for any community. And yet those that mined Bitcoin in the early days and kept them became multi-millionaires. All because they ran an arbitrary client on a computer solving arbitrary math problems that gave out randomly awarded bitcoins.
And that is the point to remember. Steemit's system is coupled with a social media platform that requires activity from us, the users. But that activity, just like mining in the crypto world, is completely arbitrary. It doesn't matter if we create or upvote makeup tutorials, shitty memes, bouncing tits or the best poem of our generation. The platform simply needs to be used. Our robot overlord cares not what the hairless monkeys click on.
And so we come to the issue of fairness, worthiness. Lets look again at the early Bitcoin miner. There are many examples of how the first miners made their coins, such as a guy that worked at a library and ran the mining client on all the computers since no one would notice or care. Did he do something worthy of millions? Of course not. He simply had the foresight or the luck to participate in an unknown, but groundbreaking technology in its infancy.
While the early crypto miners were rewarded beyond anyone's imagination, we should take a moment to appreciate the advantage a Steemit user has compared to other platforms. If you are a fan of more evenly distributed wealth, this platform is for you. While Bitcoin and other cryptos created a very small number of multi-millionaires , Steemit is successfully creating an army of multi-thousandaires every day. This platform is giving us a means to more distributed wealth that I personally haven't seen yet with other digital coins. Even the shooting star of a post that everyone is cursing is only 10x more valuable than many, many other successful posts. And a good blogger could easily end up with 10 successful posts before too long. This is hardly the gap between millionaires and the wannabes that forms when other crypto currencies take off.
But while the robot overlord and economics don't care about the content on this site, we do. If the content is garbage, it can hinder the growth of Steemit, and no one wants that to happen. So should we be concerned that some guy's crappy meme made 500 bucks, or an underwhelming parody of the makeup tutorial makes 10k? For answers, let's look at the early days of phone apps.
Back in 2008/2009, phone apps were completely new, groundbreaking technology. Does this mean we had apps to solve humanity's greatest problems? Did we have anything like Pokemon Go right away? No. It means some guy made the iFart. Don't believe me? Take a look:
That's right. Some dude put a sound file of a fart on your phone. And made hundreds of thousands of dollars - maybe even cracked a million. Is that fair? Or worthy? Maybe, or maybe not. It just is. And the important thing is that people were buying phone apps period. Yes this one is ridiculous, but if money goes to that market for anything, that market will grow, and higher quality products will follow. Eventually we got Pokemon Go. Before that, a man's life was saved after he was buried alive in an earthquake because he had a flashlight first aid manual on his phone.
Here on Steemit we are using a platform and technology that is completely new, in its early stages of evolution. And randomness - complete randomness, is a key part of the evolutionary process. We have no idea how exactly our social media site is going to develop. Seriously - that's the problem - no one has any idea what the hell is going on, or what is going to happen next. So don't worry, the truly amazing content will come. Bizarre spawns of early evolution are also to be expected for awhile.
So make peace with the chaos. And even when platform matures, don't be surprised if the market awards 10k to the occasional fart in the wind.
I've been a bit surprised at the anger I've been seeing from some people at the supposed "unfairness" of what's going on here. They see an educational tech piece net a couple bucks while a splashy fluff piece makes thousands and they cry foul... forgetting that the barrier to entry if fucking ZERO and there's ZERO censorship. As you pointed out, most people don't know how any of this works and it's probably the chaos that's making them uncomfortable. One guy straight-up told me that when he goes on Steemit, he can't tell who's in charge and it scares him (!)... Even if I didn't make a dime, I'd still come here just to watch the fascinating social experiment unfold.
Maybe a mixture of feeling left behind, with the few chosen ones on the popular list just leaving a blazing trail, while oneself waits for a whale to upvote because any other upvote isn't worth a dime. As the article then moves closer to payout one feels left out, no matter how many votes. The contrast is just to big right now, as it doesn't matter how many votes one gets, but only which votes. Kind of a centralised power to me.
...and of course there is the usual "Im poor because you are rich" greed.
It will be interesting to see if this smooths out in the future. If more people actually go down and earn more by voting early, and if a dynamic sets in that leads to a better average $/vote ratio.
That's supposed to be the best strategy for a 'minnow', or someone with no voting power. The best way to use your vote is to look for stuff under 'new', and vote for what you think will be popular, and ideally, for what you think is good quality content. This is especially the way to go if you can't seem to get good rewards for your blog posts.
Bingo.
Also, when Adil's account was hacked, he had me post an article on his behalf and it has netted almost 7k so far... so it would appear that collaborating with more established writers could be quite useful. This happens all the time in the book publishing world.