Curator Cat Feels Grumpy: Steemit and the Human Greed "Gene"
Feeling a bit grumpy today... or at least a little disappointed and disgruntled.
Which I don't much like, as I am generally a pretty upbeat and cheerful sort of cat!
Ya Gotta Start SOMEwhere!
I remain a tiny piece of catfluff in the greater Steemit ecosystem, but I am doing my best to conduct myself in a way I feel constitutes "right action."
Maybe that's one of those Human "buzzwords" that annoys a lot of people, but what it means to me is that I use the tools and infrastructure provided by Steemit in such a way that I benefit, others benefit and the community as a whole benefits.
Not so happy about the state of affairs...
Sure, I post cat photos, but I also mix in real stories, questions and issues, and people generally enjoy the posts (I think!), and I try to interact with others in a social sort of manner.
The idea here is that we have been given an opportunity to build a social content ecosystem, from which we can not only be rewarded, but also make connections and friendships, practice our content creation skills, pursue our interests, share our hobbies and more.
The basis for what Steemit is and appears to have been designed around the "Pay it Forward" principle, which means we basically have a "gift economy" of sorts.
That's not exactly rocket science.
As A Beginner...
As a newbie, I accept that most new things we undertake in life have a learning curve of sorts, and that I — as a beginner — need to learn the ropes.
I also accept that I — or anyone else — shouldn't expect to be doing as well as someone who has been here for two years and has 5000 followers. That's just the natural order of things.
They might make $200.00 for their post; I'm lucky to make $2.00. It's a slow and gradual building process, and I honor that. The fact that even a $50.00 post seems like "another universe" to me is not going to make me start behaving badly.
Finding it hard to sleep this off...
As an analogy... over there we have Tiger Woods winning millions of dollars playing golf, and over here we have my neighbor Fred who started playing golf last September. Does Fred expect to win millions of dollars? No! Of course he doesn't. No sane person would.
For sure, there's a difference between golf and Steemit: You can't cheat your way into the US Masters golf tournament, but evidently you can "cheat" your way to the top of Steemit. Golf is a meritocracy, based on skills and experience... Steemit is a.... a.... well, I'm not sure exactly what.
And that's why I am wearing that grumpy look on my face.
Humans and their Greed
Earlier today, I was reading numbers whiz @paulag's analysis post on money flowing to bid bots, and found that a little disturbing. Over 30% of all curation rewards on Steemit are earned by bidbots. Ouch.
That came right after I had read a post by @moderndayhippie called "Is Steemit's ranking system being destroyed?" about how reputation scores are increasingly meaningless indicators.
Yesterday, it was Asher's ( @abh12345 ) post on "The Haejin Effect" looking at how the nature of rewards have changed over the past six months and how people in the community are behaving.
Obligatory Curator Cat selfie...
These three posts are all worth a read, if you're interested in the future of our community.
To me, they shed light on various aspects of the same mindset that cuts down old growth forests that have stood for 100's of years "because I want to make money selling wood." And then those same harvesters go on to complain that they have nowhere to take their kids camping in the deep woods...
Mostly, I can overlook the basic notion that some Humans are greedy — and especially when it comes this thing you seem to worship, otherwise known as "money."
What's harder to overlook is when that same greed reaches such extremes that it potentially "ruins the game" for everyone else. Or — worse still — perhaps causes the game to fall apart or end.
Greed: Your Own Death Warrant
The silly thing greedy people often overlook completely is how reliably greed tends to lead to death; that is, the greedy person(s) end up killing the very thing that's the "golden goose" that inspires their greed.
Consider a company where an employee starts embezzling.
They think life is awesome because they suddenly have money for new cars and vacations and WOOT! But then the company goes bankrupt because it gradually runs out of money and now the greedy person gets all butthurt because the very thing that was helping them realize their "dreams" (through selfishness and greed) has been destroyed by their actions.
And sadly — much of the time — greedy people will not "own responsibility" for being the cause of the demise.
Maybe I'm being overly dramatic or histrionic here, but it seems to me not all is well in Steemit Land.
Not All is Doom and Gloom!
We have a really beautiful community here with lots of wonderful people who create marvelous content!
I just hope the recent increase in "community backed" initiatives — witnesses, curation groups and more — will grow strong enough that their voices can substantially influence the direction of Steemit, or even overcome the abusers and misusers.
I think I'll leave it at that. Don't want to distress my daily seekers of "cat content!"
Have a beautiful day!
Even $2 on a post seems like a lofty goal for me. Not enough to drive me to bidbot use though.
I did find an interesting piece by @zpedro on the topic, which includes a tactic for maximising the benefit received by curators by not engaging tge bots for the first 24 hours.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@zpedro/do-you-enjoy-my-blog-heres-some-happy-steem-for-you-1525444315
Thanks for sharing that; he does seem to have a much above average level of consciousness, when it comes to engaging others.
=^..^=
My pleasure. I thought it was a pretty unique take and worth a share
The @curatorcat isn't purring today.
Some nice analogies in the post to help explain a few things.
Although some of my content is a bit like catfood that's been sitting there all day, my overall feeling is that there is still hope.
It's up to those that care to form their own communities and raise there accounts together, being real, transparent, and sharing around. 'We' cannot stop the larger accounts doing as they wish, but we can help each other get by.
Nice work cat, it's 'treaties' for lunch today :)
Thanks for stopping by @abh12345, and for helping out with comment votes and such!
I do believe there's lots we can do; I just hope the community builders develop a strong enough voice to keep us all sailing in the right direction. I read your piece on the Haejin Effect and it left me thinking "WTF, mate?"
One of the misperceptions we can perhaps move by is this idea that you need to get these large votes in order to prosper here. You really don't. If you're part of a fairly "tight" group of 100 or so people with a similar vision (or even as many as you have in the Curation Leagues) you can get quiet a log way by being authentically social rather than buying your way to the top.
I also look at initiatives like @qurator and @steembasicincome where the "power" comes from 100's of little voices, rather than a handful of large ones.
As I have probably mentioned before, the new generation of "community oriented witnesses" can easily move towards the top of the pile if supported by enough small accounts who see this as an opportunity, rather than a slightly twisted cash dispenser.
=^..^=
There is a lot of greed, but there is also a lot of people that are trying to help others on their steemit journey. Some new users find those groups, some new users are found by those groups. But there is one thing about most of those groups, and that is that for the most part they are all run by minnows for minnows and redfish. Yes there are a few dolphin level people that help and one or two whales, but for the most part they are self help level groups. And that is a natural thing.
Like your work analogy, look at it as a school thing, do the kids in sixth grade play with the first graders? Do high school seniors interact much with freshmen, we have a tendency to want to hang with the big kids, but it is our class mates we turn to when we need help with a lesson.
Definitely a good points!
I felt very welcomed and helped by some of the people behind newbie contests and various engagement challenges. I've been part of quite a few, and they are not only fun, but they help you build a following and some SP. My current goal is to get to a level where my upvotes are worth $0.03 or more so they don't vanish due to the "dust threshold."
=^..^=
You will get there, it does take time. One thing for you to think about if you have not seen it or thought about it is using a vote slider. When you get to 80SP you should look into them. using busy.org has one or so I a told, I have no idea how it works, and steemworld.org has a manual vote slider, it is easy to use and steemworld.org is a great addition to steemit.
At about 80SP your vote (depending on price of steem) reaches $0.020 by using a slider you can vote on the content of twice as many post as you could before a slider. This increase the chance of a curation reward, even if it is only $0.001, those do add up. Of course it is a waste to use on a comment, so keep the votes for content post. At 50% on the slider this will still give a person a $0.010 vote.
Thanks for the tips! I use Steemworld quite extensively to keep up with everything like new comments, mentions and so on; it's a very useful site. I figure I'll start looking into vote sliders when I get to about 100SP; until then it's just a game of participation, comments and being part of a few contests and challenges.
In spite of the grumbles of this post, I am really enjoying my time here, and challenge myself to stay in the pages on Asher's Curation Leagues.
=^..^=
The current system is completely broken. I recently got into a discussion with a witness who runs a bidbot because he noticed that I had removed my vote and asked me why. My answer was that I could no longer bring myself to vote for witnesses who ran bidbots. Naturally, he defended his cash machine but what bugs me even more and isn't touched on much is the abuse of delegations leased from bidbots. This is not an ecosystem any more, it is an arms race. I'm hoping that the next hardfork changes things, soon
I'm taking my time with witness votes; so far mostly putting my faith in what I consider to be "community oriented" witnesses. Yes, a witness must be run by someone with technical expertise... but "I developed a subroutine that can query the blockchain from Jupiter" doesn't really help make this a better social site.
There does seem to be a lot of misuse of power in the name of profit. I don't begrudge anyone their right to make money, but it bothers me that there is SO much short term thinking here; it worries me from the selfish perspective that I would like to still be here, doing this, in 2020, and even 2025.
=^..^=
Well put, CC. I think some people imagine they can keep cutting down the forest until there are no more trees, but they won't care by then because they got their profits. Of course, now everyone else has nothing. But the fact that other people join in this behavior as though they had great odds at being one of the three Rockefellers of the Forest instead of one of the average Joes left behind makes me want to beat people with a reality stick.
People complain about the world being "dog eat dog," but then they bite a Pomeranian.
Humans get our strengths from working together (that's what Darwin said). We're eusocial animals like bees and ants. But capitalism gets involved and people seem to think they're all lords in a private fortress.
That's funny!
It's sad, though, how people start behaving badly as soon as there is money involved. Especially given that we have a system that allows everyone to get a share when we work together.
=^..^=
I hope that the good community of Steemit can outweigh the negative. I think they will. I'll have to delve more into those posts you linked to, so I can learn more on the topic.
I don't know how many people on Steemit were part of Digg back in its heyday (which was a long time ago, so probably not many.) But there was a point when many "power users" were mostly posting for pay and kind of took over the front page. Many people ended up moving to an alternative (at the time it was Reddit.) I don't really see something like that happening here, but it's good to point out concerns as you find them. My posts rarely get up to a $1, but I'm still enjoying this place. :)
I also like your use of cat photos in your serious posts. It provides some much-needed levity in the midst of more serious topics. Please stay & keep up the hard work! :)
I remember Digg! There's a name I haven't heard in a while...
Historically, this type of site ("get paid for your content") does not live long for many of the exact issues we are seeing now, the majority of which can be summarized as some variety of spam + greed. It's very hard to build anything long term around a "Let me get mine and get out" mindset.
The few sites that have done OK in the long run — epinions (1999 to 2014), HubPages (2006-still active) — had very tight rules and very tight community policing against misuse, spam and exploitation.
As for the "cat thing" it's mostly a miniature social experiment; a lot of people love cats and when you're cute and furry you can get away with saying things Humans can't!
=^..^=
That is such a good point about how paying for content can lead to a "let me get mine and get out" mentality. I can certainly see where policing for only true engagement (rather than bots) would be the answer. I'd imagine Steemit wouldn't have the staff for that level of policing, but I'm honestly not too familiar with HubPages or if they use staff vs volunteers to handle those things.
The thing with Steemit being "decentralized" is that WE are "the staff." There is no "they" to come and police things here... all such efforts are community driven. People put groups and guilds together and try to create the type of environment they hope Steemit will thrive under. And some? They just don't care.
HubPages uses teams of readers to look at every single submission to determine whether it will be "featured" (and thus eligible to earn rewards) or "not featured," in which case it can be seen and read, but won't earn rewards for "quality reasons." Currently, I think it's about 15% of the content that ends up being "featured."
There is a lot going on here that is of the head scratching if not head banging (as in against the wall) variety. It's like the party didn't start but we were already late to it and all the refreshments are gone.
But yet, here we all are, trying to make the best of a sad situation, which really only has two ways of improving (if at all). Through code, which is out of our hands, is very slow to happen, and by the looks of things, tends to head in the opposite of the desired direction, or we can do what we can, which is also limited in scope, but at least within our control.
So, through the frustration we go in hopes of carving out something in the process and that the hill climbing we're doing will somehow get easier higher up. I think there's a law of gravity and maybe another of physics at play here, along with some biological ones to boot.
At any rate, I've felt your pain and probably will again.
The Curation and Engagement Leagues have helped me out a lot, though. My posts still don't get a whole lot on them, but it's picked up since I've been out commenting and curating more. I expect that the more I go out into Steemit, the more it will pick up, so that's what I'm hoping will happen.
We do what we can, with likeminded
peoplecats within the communities we stride and we all see what the future brings. :)