I've joined STEEMIT because it felt rebellious. It felt revolutionary to have a platform taking all the power and money away from the big corporations and redirecting it towards the most important element of social media: the people.
But now I am also scared.
The fact that everything you do suddenly has a value (namely a financial one) you can see and other people can influence, makes it hard to even do something at all. This took away a lot of the initial anticipation.
Money has been and always will be one of the most powerful means to manipulation and the mix of social media and a money based reward system, might therefore be an explosive one.
Contrary to what I believed, simply adding a value to what you are about to say, is not going to add actual value to what you will be saying. The moment, your fingers hit the keys, your mind set can shift.
"What would be a meaningful/helpful/interesting comment?" suddenly becomes "What would be meaningful enough to bring MONEY?" until the inevitable "Am I worthless if my comments are?"
So I find myself back in the shallow waters of social media. Sure I'm taking more time to write a comment or post but I just can't seem to shake off the thought that it's somehow like an assignment at school where my words are only worth the grade they got. The more I try to get good grades, the less I resemble the person I actually am.
Do you find it hard to just write a comment like you would do on other platforms? Or do you actually notice a difference in behaviour? Is it necessary to just blind out the system or is it maybe even creating a better version of ourselves?
Because, even if it's in a different way - We learn again that what we say has value and power and therefore impact. With our impact we can lift people up but we can also bring them down by the sheer weight of our words.
So as Benjamin Parker once said:
"With great power comes great responsibility."
image from https://www.pexels.com/photo/comic-spiderman-614363/
