RE: I Don't Want to be a Sellout and a Few Other Things I Find Somewhat Humorous About This Place
I had a thought the other day, I'm not sure if it's possible, but what if there was an inverse to curie, like @theanti-curie which would be a downvote anti-curation trail.
I think it could be reserved for the worst offenders like 90% of the time (like the post that guy made telling people he was going to make a post)but every now and then just hit something that is trending and probably shouldn't be.
It wouldn't "Solve" any problems but could serve as a significant deterrent to people promoting up garbage to trending. It's unfortunate, but I think the only thing that motivates humans more than greed is fear, and just having the looming fear that they could be targeted by @theanti-curie could make a big difference I think. Just spit balling :)
I'm one of the few who would actually downvote some of this junk we see. When it's really bad, I noticed others would join in on their own. On a few occasions we're treated like lesser humans, thugs. I have to tell you, it's annoying.
I won't be flagging posts any more, because it's not working. I can take about $2 away from a $600 post. That doesn't make people afraid. If one gets scared and learns how to blog like a normal person, another one of these trending page hijackers shows up to replace them.
What I'm trying to say is rather than those folks working against us, they could be working for us. I remember that post where the guy paid hundreds just to tell everyone he was about to write another post. He's such a genius right, so he could advertise the fact he's about write another post, and people could include that important message as an ad in their own posts. If nobody clicks, the genius should probably try a new approach. The way it's all set up now, they can keep throwing shit at the wall hoping something sticks. They have no incentive to improve and many of them are so delusional, they think they're successful, so not much will change. They're in the business of misleading people, false advertising. Renting a lambo for the weekend and telling people they own it. That's how they live, so I'd sooner find ways to embrace these kind of people so everyone can make money off of them and their advertisements.
I just had a peek at the trending page. If that was my list of ads to choose from to include in my post, I'd probably select the young lady who's taking the sellout approach with her music. She's about to lose half of the $600 payout, and I'm not sure if she even knows that. She had to spend that much to get her video near the top, but in reality, I was once getting 200-300 views per post, I could run her music video advertisement for one week, giving her 1400-2100 potential views in a good week here on Steemit. Others could select her ad, which would offer her many thousands more potential views. If she takes a loss on this promotion, it doesn't matter because she got the exposure she paid for instead of a few curation reward chasers and new members who leave brainless comments. I don't think there's even one genuine response out of 70 under that post. Would you pay over $300 for that? These folks think they're taking a shortcut, but all it's doing is making them look bad.
I can only assume that the makers here are focused on really big ticket items having to do with the entire STEEM ecosystem at the moment so I don't think there's going to be any big changes coming from the top down.
That's why I was thinking a curation trail could help. The problem you mentioned, your downvote only taking a few dollars from a $600 dollar post, as well as not as many people downvoting all in force, a curation trail would solve, and it wouldn't need each person to actively do something per post or for any feature changes(I don't think) Curie's 100% upvote with the entire trail of several hundred followers is well over $100 I think and that would wreck someone's post payout enough to make it a pretty big loss, but it would also wreck their reputation, which I think might serve as enough of a deterrent to clean it up a bit. Like I said, not a fix, just a deterrent.
I don't expect any changes. Just more of the same.
I'm aware of what's ahead. Soon enough there won't be a trending page that functions in this manner. These promoters and those who promote won't have much of a market. Nobody will go to the advertisement community just to watch these folks boost their posts and be congratulated by people who think the authors are successful.
I'm to the point now where, rather than flagging, I'd prefer to find ways where we all work together, instead of against each other. The best content producer here, whoever that is, loses visibility the moment the worst blogger buys a vote. That's ridiculous.
The worst blogger can put their ad on the best bloggers post. The logic behind the banner link functioning as the vote button is simple: If one clicks the banner, the content producer who hosted the ad loses a vote because the member who clicked the banner has now traveled away from the content producers material, and chances are the one who clicked the banner won't travel back to drop a vote down. If we add ads that don't function in that manner, we create another headache where we're working against each other instead of with each other.
I hear ya, I do like the idea of coming up with creative solutions that are positive instead of punitive.
We don't even have to force these folks to take a hit by pushing them aside to the promoted tab. Create a new section for the promoted posts, call it the MARKET. People love shopping, right?
Steemit is much like a giant magazine, and people buy pages to promote their products in magazines. A real magazine turns that process into a money making machine. People don't buy the magazine for the ads, they buy it for the content. Steemit, as a magazine, is not benefiting from the current internal marketing strategies of placing the ADS on the COVER of the magazine. The content needs to POP, and the ads are just there, and those ads help pay everyone who's producing content, plus those marketing their products get eyes on whatever they want to sell or say. This is incredibly basic stuff, and somehow the concept is flying under the radar here. So there's no need to complain, we have the right ingredients, now we just have figure out the recipe.