You Can Check Out Any Time You Like...

...but you can never leave.

I'll admit, I should have done more research on Steemit before I set up an account. If I had, I would never have joined the site.

Live and learn. I had some friends who seemed enthusiastic about it, so I joined without looking into it and started posting before I understood the implications of what this site is. I still don't understand exactly what this site is, in fact, because it's written by and for programmers, and I'm not a programmer.

I know what it's not, though, and it's not a site for writers to reach readers. Since that's what I was looking for, I won't be spending any more time with it. Ordinarily I'd delete my account, but evidently there is no way to do that here. Nor is there any way to have your content taken off the site.

That single fact alone, if I had taken time to read the FAQ, would have prevented me from ever posting here. I'm not blaming the Steemit admins, as I say, it was my fault for not doing my due diligence. I made some assumptions based on my experience with blogging sites that do no apply to cryptocurrency mining sites. Whatever the heck "cryptocurrency" is.

So I, in essence, have thrown away a novel. Fortunately it's a novel that I wasn't all that happy with, and posting it here did motivate me to finish writing it. Practice in finishing projects is never wasted.

The big problem with Steemit--one that I expect will prove fatal for it in the long run unless addressed--is that it is not set up for readers. The interface is cumbersome, and a first time browser looking at the Trending Page is not going to find much to make her or him stick around.

Yes, there is good quality content on Steemit, but it's buried--you have to spend time learning how to find it.

As I write this, over half of the articles on the Trending Page are either hints on how to game the system and get to the Trending Page, or rants about how other people are gaming the system and taking over the Trending Page. The rest are mostly articles on controversial subjects, the majority poorly written and some downright incoherent.

It's rather like a supermarket bringing customers in through the back, past the dumpsters and mop buckets and piles of cigarette butts where the employees sneak smokes, and then waving a hand vaguely in the direction of the grocery aisles.

This doesn't stop content creators, who expect to get something for the time they spend on the site, but it does discourage casual browsers who just want an entertaining read.

From what I can see, virtually all Steemit users are there to sell their own work to other Steemit users. There are, essentially, no customers.

Unless that changes, which would take some serious overhaul on the site design and also a lot of time put into curating the content beyond counting upvotes, it is simply not going to have anything to offer writers who are looking to expand their readership.

In theory I have something like a hundred dollars in steemit dollars, which seem to differ from Monopoly money only in that Monopoly money has an actual physical existence. There are articles that claim that it can be converted to real money, but they all begin with setting up accounts on other sites that I have also never heard of and have no reason to trust.

It's Nigerian Prince Money, as far as I'm concerned.

Again, my fault for joining something that I didn't understand.

I don't anticipate that anyone will ever read this, and given the way the site is organized, anyone who does will almost certainly already be in too deep for my warnings to do any good.

Ah, well.