Sometimes blogging turns suddenly from a free-flowing stream of ideas into a slog, an interminable fight with what feels like gravity, a task to rival that of Sisyphus.
This is not just an artefact of the Steemit blogging experience. It's always been there. This brings some relief. It's not about me, it's not about today, it's not going to last forever, this too shall pass.
The big question we're answering here, every time we write, upvote, flag, comment (or don't do any of these) is "what happens when you add a financial incentive to a blogging platform?" - it's the big question of Steem and it will never definitively be answered, no matter how many clues pop out right in front of our eyes. That's what makes it endlessly fascinating to me.
Take the flag wars, or, as I like to call it, the fight against the hydra - every time you flag one reward-pool-raping donkey another seven spring up in its place - or something like that. Well, some of the consequences of our incentivization are: people get greedy, people get cross with people who get greedy, people feel like something's being taken away from them, people fight to defend what they think is theirs. All that gets played out. And we learn a little bit more. I mean I don't feel like I see that in my everyday life, all the squabbles over stretched resources have been ironed out and I've become distanced from them because I have enough, I have a house, food in the fridge, utilities that just work. If someones filching my wifi, I'm not really bothered. Is anyone filching my electricity supply? Probably not, given the practical difficulties and the general standard of living in this country.
But playing this Steemit game gives me access to skirmishes happening on my doorstep, I get the thrill of watching without necessarily taking part. I get to observe from afar. I think I've flagged a post once. I'm not sure what my rules are about it. You have to be acting pretty shittily to get flagged by me. But when people ask me "that Steemit, does it work?" I marvel at how complex a full answer would be.
One small part of it is "do you actually earn money?" and of course the answer is "yes, and...".
How do you earn more money? Well, today I'm just pushing this rock up this hill. And I expect tomorrow will be much the same.
