As the title says I want to talk about succeeding at crypto. With there being red on every screen I check I think it is important to hold on to our perspective through changes. This is my perspective today
I am coming from the bottom looking up. I don't know how to succeed per se....or maybe even how to play. I can't help but to imagine this experience like the movie Finding Nemo. We are all doing what we know to survive, and the blockchain is the wide open ocean. Each day I log into Steemit and go. I am a reader, upvoter, and commentor. I love to read things I have never read before, and also enjoy a good read about something I already know but from someone elses perspective. Today was no different....but it was.
It seems that the struggle was real today. I was looking around for posts from people that I read almost everyday and they weren't there. After doing more research on several accounts I noticed they hadn't posted in several days. Normally I think about it just being an aspect of life. Perhaps they had something going on. As much as I would like to believe they were busy, it just seemed to line up with the Steem value drop . Was there suddenly "things to do" across the board? I noticed the usuals. The ones running programs, or the ones that function as mentors, but there was a gap. I saw a gap between new accounts and program curators. The average joe was missing. The 35-50 reputation seemed to not be as active. This is just what I noticed and think it is important to point out.
SEEDY UNDERBELLY
While cruising around Steemit this morning I went looking for something new. I was checking out all sorts of tags looking for good content. I stumbled onto something I didn't love. Posts were generally earning less rewards....except for anything talking about cryptocurrencies. These posts are regularly north of $100 per post. Once I started down this rabbit hole I learned more about bots and self voting. I learned how some top accounts are operating like a business. Not so much for the community but exploiting the uncensored ability to do what we please. This has lead to artificially inflated posts and accounts. This has also lead to a digital war between large accounts, and they are running bots against each other. Call me naive, but I didn't know this was a thing. I suppose in any type of system that you can earn rewards for you will have those that abuse and those that defend.
With this I noticed a paradigm of operation, or should I say survival. There are several levels that have been "given" to us to show our success to others. While I am still a very...very small account I have seen a few rewards.
Naturally in any situation we cling to the largest animal in the area to help us survive. It seems that minnows seek out large accounts in an act of self preservation, but hardly get noticed because of their low reputation or lack of content. Minnows seem to give their own steem to bots in exchange for votes and resteems, which I also did. Next there are the larger accounts. The larger minnows and dolphins that have experienced the whales, but seem to be in their own. They are not chasing larger accounts, and are involved with minnows as much as they would like. The whales at the top are winning. They have set up systems to earn as much money as possible and are often supported by minnows paying for votes.
So as looking at it from the Nemo point of view. The minnows are down on the reaf and spend most of their time looking up trying to see a dolphin or a whale. This means they are involved and post, but maybe not thinking so much about others on the reaf and are trying to get their account to standout and be seen. Like a billboard. The larger minnows and dolphins are not on the reaf per se, but close by. They help the minnows to build billboards, and do their own thing. The whales do what they want. Often unable to see the reaf and those on the reaf, the whales use the dolphins to support the minnows.
So this may be a crude way to see it, and I am sure there is a better way to explain it. There is even the chance that I don't see the full picture or the developers goals for Steemit.
QUALITY CONTENT
The highly subjective phrase quality content seems to be part of the Steemit vernacular. It is an undefined void that exists to determine the direction Steemit goes. We all have a different view of what quality content means. Some may see a funny meme as quality content, and others may think it has no place here. Or even something as simple as the length of a blog. Do you write a short form blog or long. Are there pictures and graphs and page breaks. Those are all great things, but what about the subject that is being discussed. That is where the invisible wall goes up, except we don't know where the wall is or what side we are on. We just know we want quality content.
As my time on Steemit continues I have my own personal goals. I have a goal to create a vlog 6 days a week, and make quality posts that others might enjoy. With that being said, is our time on social media about purpose or enjoyment. Is it all bitcoin metrics or philosophical vlogs. The other measure of quality is the response of people. If people think something is in fact quality they upvote it and resteem it. If not, it just disappears. This is an amazing aspect except for a couple of things. First, bots artificially increase a post based on the author thinking their own work is quality. Not talking anout resteeming but upvote bots
Another is self voting. This is something I don't understand because it is an act of inflating our selves in a perpetual cycle into an endless upvote earning increase. The more we earn the more our steem power goes up the more we give as an upvote the more we earn. With these there also seems to be a major lack of upvoting.(not self voting..plenty of that). People making comments without upvoting a post. There is also the aspect of engaging in comments without upvoting comments. The reason for this isn't clear to me. The reward pool is to encourage quality. If someone comments anything more that nice post I will probably upvote them.
SO WHAT NOW
For me this is a challenge. There seems to be less upvoting and commenting on my own posts. There seems to be less uovoting among other posts comments also. Each day I hope to make my experience here better....better than the day before. My vlogs are coming as a challenge from my wife to commit to the cause. Each day I will continue to read, upvote and comment. Though the price of Steem has decreased the number of posts, I know the ones that are here are always worth the effort.
I hope you all enjoyed this little bit of perspective. Each day presents something different to us, and it is what we do with it is what it becomes. Be well!🙃
Looking at where I am headed!
