As someone who likes to experiment and try things out from time to time this is one of those instances. Since the hardfork, one of the biggest things I wanted to see was a healthy trending page with a whole lot of different content and not the same authors over and over. Along with more comments then an author could reply back on.

As such this starts right after the HF happened and leads up to today.

Flagging

For the first few days, I was like many other people. I mostly went to front page trending to find something to flag. I was quite unhappy about what trending turned into over the years. It seemed to have lost its value for actually putting in the time and getting such recognition when you could just buy your way into it. It also felt like it reflected it by what was up there.

After a while, it seemed things changed in a major way. The platform seemed to have created this culture of fear and that kind of sucks.

While I never been a fan of bidbots I’ll admire the risk-takers who had the balls to put so much on the line to get it up there for what little attention it would get. Not enough people are willing to take such risks in this world and that can be rather boring when everyone turns into “yes” people. I might have more anarchist in me than I’ll admit.

After all that we could clearly see the auto votes and voting circles take place without needing to look into the matter. Regardless of anything some people no matter what ended up in trending. It would not have mattered much if they posted a nearly blank post or the Banksy levels of amazing.

This lead to some strangeness in people having to flag themselves as they could even see it was an issue. This also seems to put a lot of pressure on some people in having to keep a certain level of post. Regardless of platform once a content creator gets to a certain level they can’t even go to the store without it making the news. I think for now the people at the top are safe until the platform grows a few hundred times over.

I Almost Didn’t Mind Trending

We also had for a while a very low barrier to entry to get into trending. It was nice not seeing the creep of posts raking in hundred or more fighting it out for top slot. It seemed like maybe there would be some organic posts popping up there from time to time. Without a massive helping hand by a single voter.

This also seemed like people could pop up in trending for a short while and then vanish down the ranks. I personally think that is how trending should be. Someone does not need to be up there for days as we should have so many amazing and talented people on this platform it’s always changing.

That, however, did not last long and I become rather frustrated with trending again. Those who control trending kept putting up the same topics and people into it. The biggest topic is Steem and more directly SteemFest. As soon as one post about SteemFest faded out of trending another one popped up as if by design. Most of the platform is not going and unless you have lived under a rock you should know by now. I don’t mind there is content being made about such things it just gets tiring seeing the same thing as so you become fatigued.

We are also now in this weird state of fear. There are people no one wants to flag for the most part even if that same exact post would have been flagged into the ground if written by another. Some of the people up there have in the past threated to sick their whales on you and have your stuff zero out till you quite the platform. While others carry such high positions in communities that no one wants to piss them off by flagging. You also just have the people with mountains of SP that small fish don’t want anger.

Commenting

For me at least I view trending as a place that should have a healthy amount of comments on a post. It’s supposed to be in theory the best our platform has to offer and for anyone in the world who just stops by to see it. So you would think there be high levels of engagement at the top.

Since I was giving trending a try again I started to reply to a couple of posts a day when I could make the time. It was not as often as I was hoping but it is what it is. Some of these trending authors flat out ignored any of my attempts to engaging with them. While others would comment back even if I left a bare minimum of efforts comment.

I’ve noticed quite a few posts that went into trending without any real comments (i.e only auto-reply/I flag post comment.) They didn’t seem to get a single one while up there either. If they did it was only a couple at best. That to me shows something is still not quite right about trending.

This part of trending still seems kind of sad. It also makes you wonder how many have any kind of faith restored in checking out trending. You would think comments would be flooding in on those posts. Perhaps there just fewer people around than I thought or there is a bigger issue at hand?

Final thoughts

While tending had quite a few different people and amazing posts mix into it. There were also a lot of the same people and topics being repeated over and over. If I was interested in following the people who are regularly in there I would have done so by now.

Ultimately I’m going back to only checking in on trending one a week if that. Anything the platform feels is important will surely be repeated in it till you have an aneurysm so I won’t miss out on the news.

As far as me using the shit post tag. I consider one of my posts to be as such when I won’t be sharing it on other platforms and on social media. This was just some random shit I wanted to get out of my head.

Going to go enjoy another S’more and enjoy the night. Cheers!

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Screenshots/photos are taken and content was written by @Enjar.