Unpopular Opinion...

I was scrolling through HIVE the other day and I came across something that triggered a bit of something in me. I kind of feel a little guilty about it, but then again, I also feel slightly annoyed. It's something that has become pretty common here on HIVE, and I am wondering if I am the only one who feels this way.

Before I get into it though, let me give you a brief history of my time on HIVE. I started on the platform a little over 8 years ago after I was told about the blockchain and invited by my wife's cousin. I didn't feel like I was the best writer at the time (I still don't), but after seeing some of the stuff that was out there on the legacy chain, I felt I at least had a chance.

I thought that HIVE would be the perfect way to finance a new truck that I knew I was going to need in the not too distant future.

Of course, I quickly realized it wasn't going to happen the way I had hoped. I knew very little about bid bots and all the ways to manipulate the system with the legacy chain. So I scraped along writing posts and making very little on them.

It wasn't long before I realized that commenting was the key to becoming successful on HIVE. I started to focus on that and in my opinion I got really good at it. I'm sure some people may have thought my attempts were hollow in the early days, but I assure you, if I didn't mean what I was saying in a comment, I wouldn't bother writing it. Why waste my time.

Of course, there is always an ulterior motive for commenting, anyone who tells you differently is lying. Okay, there might be a few people who aren't lying, but I think we all recognize that HIVE is a blockchain with an economy, and while HIVE is the most obvious currency, content and comments are the vehicle to obtain that currency.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't comment on posts hoping that maybe the author will start reading my stuff and eventually upvoting it. That's just the way this whole thing works. Again, if you think any differently, you are fooling yourself. Oddly enough, that's not the part of this post that I might consider an unpopular opinion.

Anyway, like I said, I was scrolling through HIVE and I came upon a post by an author that I have been following for a while and after reading it and commenting on it I got thinking about the fact that I don't think I have ever seen them comment on one of my posts. Certainly not on nearly every single post like I do with theirs.

Trust me, I don't expect everyone to comment as much as I do. I sit at a computer most of the day, so it is pretty easy for me to comment on this or that at any given moment from 6:30 AM to about 3:30 PM EST.

Then I went to their wallet to see what kind of stake they have in the chain. It's not a huge deal to me, but like I said, at some level we are in this for some kind of gain, and it's just common sense and human nature that bigger accounts have a better chance of giving you bigger earnings. I guarantee half of my followers only follow me because they think they are going to get a big upvote from me. In fact, I can't tell you the number of times that someone follows me, comments a few times, and then eventually unfollows me because they realize they aren't going to get the upvotes like I did.

Which to be fair, is the same behavior that I just owned myself. I think the difference is, I typically follow people whose stuff I enjoy reading, so if things don't "click", I just move on. If they do, I keep reading.

Here's a good example, and this is in no way meant to call him out, but I read pretty much every post by @tarazkp and comment on it. He writes some good stuff, and if you haven't visited his blog, do yourself a favor and check it out. On the flip side, he pretty much always replies to my comments, but it's quite rare that he comments on my posts. I think that is for a couple of reasons. First, he is an active guy on HIVE and I would imagine it's a full time job replying to the comments just on his posts. Second, my content might not be his cup of tea, and that is okay. Finally, it's possible he reads it but just doesn't have anything constructive to comment. Sometimes less is definitely more.

It doesn't bug me, it's just a fact of life.

But here is what does bug me....

Back to that other HIVE user I was talking about before. As I said, I took a look at their wallet and I noticed that pretty much 100% of their staked HIVE was delegated away to some other project. Which means even if they did start to visit my blog and vote on it, the vote would be virtually nil.

I know, I know, it's their stake and they can do what they want with it.

However, am I alone in being a bit turned off by something like that?

Of course we have the KE now to help put some of those things in perspective, but I don't pay as much attention to that as I used to. Especially now that I started personally moving some of my HIVE off chain. It would feel hypocritical otherwise.

TL:DR

So yeah, long story short, it's kind of turn off for me when I see accounts that are delegating away all of their HP. It doesn't make me mad, because they are free to do whatever, but it does give me pause about how much time I want to invest into creating a rapport with them.

Is that wrong?

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!