Nobody really talks enough about how draining Hive can be sometimes. From the outside, people usually see only the good parts like the rewards, the engagement, the friendships, and the opportunities that come with being consistent on the platform.
Hive has helped a lot of people, including myself, but there are also times on here that you put effort into writing something and then it feels unseen, and times you become mentally exhausted from trying to stay active on Hive while handling real life at the same time. And sometimes, one experience can happen that completely kills your motivation.
That was what happened to me about a year ago or so. I was so very close to quitting Hive then.
At the time, I was still learning how everything worked on Hive. I used to write my posts myself, then rephrase some of the content using AI tools so that I could have a post that made sense, worth reading, had flow and so on. Then, I already knew that AI generated content was against the policies of Hive, still I was not trying to intentionally break any rule or cheat anybody. To me, it was the same as getting editing help.
In my mind, I felt it was okay because the ideas, experiences and thoughts were still mine. I was not copying articles or allowing AI to completely generate posts for me. I only thought I was getting help with wording and arrangements.
So imagine how shocked I was when I woke up one morning, went straight to chrome and open up Ecency, and saw several downvotes on my posts. I did not even understand what was happening at first. It was when I checked my comments that I found that my posts had been downvoted because there were detected as AI written. Another painful part was losing almost a week's rewards.
I felt so embarrassed, upset, and very discouraged. Because it felt my efforts meant nothing. I kept thinking of the time i spent writing those posts (and yes, giving to AI to work on) only for them to be flagged in the end.
I remember sitting at my place of work that day and asking myself if Hive was even worth it anymore. Because one thing about being downvoted is that it made me feel small, especially because I did not intentionally mean any harm. And I also thought that all my posts would be ignored from then on or even muted, so why go on.
I spoke to my onboarder about it since I did not know what to do anymore. She explained everything to me properly and told me that even if a post is originally written by me, heavy AI rephrasing can still make the content get detected as AI generated. Her explanation helped me calmed down a little, realising that I was indeed at fault, but I was still weak emotionally.
After that, I stopped posting for about a week and I barely opened Hive. I lost motivation whenever I tried writing. I just wanted to leave the platform because I felt embarrassed and tired.
Mistakes are part of learning process. I was still a rookie when it happened and even though there was no ill intentions involved, I still broke a rule. When I came back to writing on Hive, I did everything differently. No more AI rephrasing, or trying to perfect my words with "tools" . What happened even made me more confident in my writing, and expressing myself naturally instead of trying too hard to sound overly polished.
I am glad that I did not quit Hive that period, even though I seriously wanted to.
Thanks for reading...
Inviting 
Image was generated using Gemini
