Steem is a strange thing. The more time I spend on this platform, the more often I experience a kind of physical sensations, caused by acute discomfort. A sense of unease. Something's wrong here? The feeling started when I realized that more than half of my followers are probably bots (man, I was so naive). you can imagine how demotivating this felt. You become skeptical. You see hundreds of posts coming back with the same message: how do you become successful on Steemit? Give me 1 SBD and I will resteem your post. How do you increase your visibility? Etc. Everything centered around one specific word: money. Money is what brings people together here.

How did I present this platform to friends? I didn’t say: “Do you know Steemit? It is an amazing platform where you can share your life.” Often it was more something like: “you can make money by blogging.” 90% of the people came here for that particular reason (including me). I have always blogged and if we are honest, there are many better platforms to do this. Sites that are more user-friendly, with a nicer layout and with an amazing community. Money does strange things with people. You can clearly see this here.

I sometimes wonder if this was the original intention of the developers. Facebook also started with good intentions. They wanted to connect people. They probably didn’t realize that, so many years later, young people become addicted to their daily portion of dopamine. They couldn’t know that people get a false picture of society. Young people, in particular, are faced with fear, depression or loneliness. And their self-image goes down too (Instagram scores even worse in this area).

And then I ask myself the question: aren’t we creating the devil himself? Innocent looking 'likes' already have such a huge impact on society. Replace those 'likes' with the word 'money' and you get a very dangerous combination...

In short, I wonder if the world is waiting for an initiative like this. Is there still room for a new kind of medium where dopamine kicks just make you happy for a second? Should we not learn from the past and realize that we are making the same mistakes again. Are you happy here? Is it really necessary to reward people with money? Would those million users still be here?

Of course, it goes without saying that great things happen here. If you only look at the many applications that are being developed here, Steemit can be a jaw-dropping experience. And that is the mysterious attraction of Steemit. It’s has a kind of magnetic power. Why am I coming back here? I still do not know for sure. Probably because I am like everyone else. Looking for 'success'. Looking for confirmation. Looking for something that I think will make me happy.