Are you among those who got goosebumps from quadrupling the value of your vote? I was. Finally the meaning of the slider made sense. Power drunk, senseless, handing out cash.
When I started out in march, all steemit was a blur. Some things I did payed better than I thought. And some things nothing at all. My vote was a joke. "Curation is important", they said. So I voted and voted, knowing nothing about the degradation of my vote power. I could notice though that it payed very little. All that mouse sickness for nothing. My posts, in the other hand payed surprisingly well sometimes.
Time passed by and I started to continuously produce a one-cent vote. A revolution! I could actually reward someone spontaneously! I was thrilled! I got a slider that I didn't understand much of. Why would I pulverize the one-cent vote? It didn't make sense. I was on a roll. June was a very good month and I got shit done!
Things get crazy! My one-cent vote was suddenly 20 cent! What! Crazy! Yes, I even think it reached 24 at some point when the reward pool got flooded. Any idiot would be thrilled. Myself included. But something was not adding up. Here is the naked truth about HF 19 in retrospect:
Graph courtesy of 
You see that spike? It's actually my birthday. Which coincided with HF19. The earnings nose-dived!
Have I changed much? No! Do I shower less? No!
Yes! And no! It's partially right. June was an excellent month. For a particular reason which is unrelated to HF 19. But boy was the return to earning next to nothing hard. Things had to be done or abandon ship. And I do reasonably well at the moment. Thanks to some proactive measures.
I don't have a definitive answer to it, but there is something I have noticed. The community spirit is almost gone. The people that once stopped to chat and throw some votes, they are gone. They have been replaced by scavengers begging for votes, follow and to read copy-paste recepies for curing ear infection using garlic (true!).
I'm more cynical than before the fork. I have to be. Otherwise I would have scavengers to deal with 24/7.
I plan on writing a row of critical articles covering the steemit society. We are not at the end yet. But we can soon be there. The steemit that I once knew is no playground to excel. It is a cynical space where the the amount of dollars you can squeeze from your mouse defines who you are.
So sorry, 
Steemit is a good idea, but it is about to grind to a halt in its disconnect from reality. The reality you can see in
This is in part inspired by 
