I had a friendly (and very popular) whale take a look at my Hive account to see if it would pass muster to receive upvotes from his bot. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that my content wasn't the issue, but that two things with my account itself were.

Now, for obvious reasons he couldn't go into detail or else people might try to game the system he uses in his script.

But if I had to guess, it could be one of three things.

1) Political

I had to step away from Twitter (it was still called that then) awhile ago, as the political winds were getting a little to toxic for me. I'm one of those Americans who's very patriotic, and quite tired of the world demanding that we intervene in every foreign crisis, then accusing us of acting as the 'World Police' when we do.

In order to get us to take sides, they'd say: "America must live up to its global responsibilities" (and be the world's police ). While almost in the same breath saying: "The US thinks its the worlds police, and should stay out of other countries business."

If you're America, you can't win no matter what you do. If you help, you're intervening. If you stay out of the conflict, they say you're being protectionist.

Can't win.

Christ, make up your fucking minds.

Look folks, you either want our help or you don't.

I'm quite fine with the US pulling up the drawbridge and letting the rest of the world deal with itself without our interference, and I was not at all shy about saying so on Twitter/X.

I love this country. And if you live here, on balance, everything considered, You Should Too.

I might be on somebody's 'do not upvote' list, due to me (and many other Americans) getting tired of our country being pulled into one war after another. Who the hell knows?

I have to add this. If there really is some secret "do not upvote" list where they meet on dicsord and add names to, You guys are the whole reason we've lost so many good people over the years on Hive. "Since he doesn't support spending ENDLESS American taxpayer money backing my country in the latest endless war, add him to The List.:"

A growing number of Americans are sick and tired of funding war after war overseas especially in Europe. It's one of the reasons Trump won.

These people have been killing each other for thousands of years, and I think we need to let them sort their own differences out.

Why are over 100,000 US troops still in Europe 80 years after WWII ended? Who benefits from NATO? (hint: it isn't us!). At what point do they form an EU Army and start providing for their own defense as opposed to relying on the US taxpayer to foot the bill?

Who needs "allies" like that?

With an over 30 trillion dollar deficit, we can't keep funding this forever.

Trust me, I LOVE Europe, but I'm getting tired of defending a region of almost 450 million people (larger than the US), while we neglect our own problems right here at home in the USA.

My family has fought in every war this country has been involved in, and after saving Europe TWICE in WWI and WWII, I think we as a nation have done our share. Enough already.

So who knows, maybe some foreigner got a bug up their ass and had their feathers ruffled, but I don't give a crap. And I say again: You either want help from the US, or you don't. And if you'd rather we mind our own business and let you face your problems alone, I'm ALL for that.

So there's that as a possibility.

2) Stake

More likely, I think my low stake might be one of the problems. But If you've been reading my blog over the years, you already know why that is. Being the "responsible one" in the family and having to liquidate my holdings a few years ago to assist an elderly relative (Gotta look out for our elders!).

Being robbed of everything I owned and having to start over again, as a struggling student.

Losing funds on ionomy.com, and having Coinbase switch to a service that my bank does not support. I've also heard horror stories about this service having bank accounts frozen.

With CB, Paypal, and many exchanges now requiring use of this creepy service, keeping me from being able to turn my fiat into HIVE like I used to: bank>Coinbase>ionomy>hive-engine>powerup HP.

That all explains the low stake after 7+ years of Steemit/Hive.

3) Posting Frequency, and Savings

If I were a whale looking for someone to upvote, I'd likely take a look at metrics that would tell me if they plan to hang around awhile, If they're serious about building long-term on Hive.

Do they post everyday? AND... Do they have a little chunk of change sitting in HBD savings and are adding to it regularly? Hhhhhmmmm... I'm a solid "NO" on both of those, due to being a working student over the years as well as the family responsibilities (and the robbery), mentioned above.

But...

I'm working on it, and am making a run to earn the HiveBuzz monthly badge for this month, buy either posting or powering up 1 HIVE per day (or both as of this writing).

On the increasing stake front, I simply need to find a way to turn my fiat into HIVE so that I can powerup regularly. If the ionomy theft hadn't happened, I'd have thousands of Hive Power right now, as I had planned to buy HIVE on a regular basis.

However, I'm confident that a solution may be found so that I can continue building my account.

So there you have it. I'd like to thank the British whale for taking the time to look at my account and share his thoughts (I won't name him, because I don't want him to think I'm fishing for an upvote).

And for the precious handful of you that DO upvote my content, I see you and THANK YOU. My current goal is to see if I can make it to the end of the month and earn that monthly badge. And after that, they sky's the limit! :)