Who Do I Follow on Steem & Why?

My first impression of Steem was that it was a place filled with bots, where people liked to remain anonymous and just talk about general crypto stuff. Then after I delved deeper into various communities on discord and engaged posts more often, I found out that this wasn't the case, and actually made connections with people.

In over two years of Steeming, I have encountered quite a lot of interesting people and I doubt I'd have actually ever met people like these, considering my small social circle on traditional social media. I have different levels of interaction with people I meet here; some are personal and very casual, while others are semi-formal and stay within the chain. Here are some of my friends that have made an impression on me both near and far, and in no particular order.

@Steemmat

Matt is among the earliest people I had frequent conversations with on This platform. Most of our interactions were on his 100 reps fitness blogs but as time went on, they digressed to personal stuff relating to family and life in general.
In recent times, he's been into recycling and flipping items with impressive profit. One thing I respect about him is his approach to life and how he manages to take on big challenges that I know would break me for sure; like that awful accident that his mum survived and how he faced the challenge. It is really inspiring and Matt is a guy I genuinely look up to as an individual.
He motivates me to exercise, always available to give a lending ear to my ideas, no matter how "dumb" they sound.

_{Yes I made an upvote bot but back then, everyone was doing it}

Fun fact: I actually learned about Comedyopenmic through his interaction with @idikuci back in 2018 and a lot of my Steem experience was shaped by this.

@trumpman

I can't keep a straight face while writing about this asshole. I mean he lives in Greece but believe me when I say he's the most Nigerian person I have ever met on this platform. We have a weird relationship that involves lots of talk about penis(mostly his), mum jokes and any other dumb shit that comes up. He's my nigga and the only white boy I've ever known capable of wearing that title.

_{Nabbed his stupid ass on Twitter}
This is probably the only part of our conversation I can even allow the world to see. Okay maybe this one because it is hilarious

_{And yes, the promo is real}

@penderis

I can't even remember how we started talking but all I know is that we're individuals living in different parts of Africa(South Africa and Nigeria) with a similar disdain(putting it lightly) for lots of things in our society. Our conversations are far from formal and if there's one impression I got from him, it's that White Africans are also miserable and helpless as the rest of us. Due to the sensitivity of our conversations, I won't be posting any screenshot but trust me, it's some wild shit you don't want to see. Okay maybe @trumpman may like it.

@idikuci

The contest and witness account for @comedyopenmic has been offline for a while but the connections I made through that contest still exists and they have been a part of my life or my experience here.
I remember in 2018 when I wanted to apply for Australian immigration and @idikuci supported my unsuccessful attempt. That was a lot of money to me and a huge gesture that's stuck with me for a long time. Steem is not just about the technology/blockchain, it's the people that make it work and there are many others doing nice things all over the place. That's one of the things that keeps me going and I do my best to help others as much as I can.

@lordbutterfly

_{he can't be this handsome but for the sake of Steem, let's assume he is}

This dude is always backing me up on Twitter, encouraging me to keep Steeming and posts impressive rants that stick. He's also a member of an exclusive discord cult where we talk about topics varying from cryptocurrency to random weird lady drinking urine. He's from the country that has the most fuckable President.

_{This is not a joke, she's a President}

@Pangoli

Pangoli is a guy that grew on me over the years through interactions on discord and WhatsApp. He's not been active on here lately because of school and other exertions but I'm glad I met him. His influence helped me discover Oracle-d that's recently changed to Yoodoo, thus developing a new style of writing and earning around here. We got to talking back in 2018 when Comedyopenmic was still running and I was looking to bring more Nigerians on board, to showcase our own flavour of humour.

I encouraged him to try some comedy writing but that didn't work out.

Other honourable mentions that laziness will not permit me to write elaborately for are;

@mistakili: lives in Nigeria, sick of the system(in Nigeria), met on Twitter and found out we have a mutual friend he's probably trying to smash but afraid to admit. You know who I mean Akin, don't lie. We'll meet up for drinks one of these days.

@josediccus: Lagos boy that I got to talk with recently. Mass communication student in Yaba Tech I guess, and not much of a drinker. He just wants to make a better life for himself and works hard to achieve it. Love that about him and we keep in touch regularly.

@elsiekjay: Last but not least is this pretty lady. She previously lived somewhere in Kenya but recently migrated to Madrid. I'm always creeping around her page to watch her videos and most times I have no clue about what she's talking about but shit, I have this huge crush on her so I just listen anyways. One of these days, I'm just going to man up and just shoot my shot.

Every day I interact with a lot of interesting people and lots of them affect my impression of peoples, culture, and places. It's been a pleasure and I'm grateful to the entire community for being so awesome through it all.

Thank you for making it this far, please check out some of my older posts;

Who Do I Follow on Steem & Why? | Ecency