Today I've been working on a denim backpack, which will be my first one. Kind of a big deal for me as I'm a beginner and have never done this before. While sewing, I was thinking of how certain people can influence you, make of break your career so to speak.
Finding The Right Influence
To make a long story short, my sister in law has asked me last week to make her a denim backpack. I didn't say no, although I haven't made any backpack so far. I thought it's a good occasion to learn something new and evolve. Sometimes we need a push or a little encouragement to make a step forward.
In order to make a backpack, I needed some guidance, or if I'm honest, I needed someone to show me how as I've never frequented any sewing courses, no one has taught me, all I know have learned from YouTube videos. After browsing for a good few hours for a good tutorial on YouTube, I found one that looked ok and started working on the rucksack, just to learn that my video tutorial is far from ok. The woman on the video was working hastily, sometimes without even measuring the distances, not to mention never ironing any of the pieces.
At that point I had to look up my favorite user and check if she has some tutorials. Obviously she had a few as her portfolio is impressive. Lucky me, I was able to find what I needed and could carry on with my work.
Why working on the backpack, I was thinking if I wouldn't have found my favorite user with tutorials on YouTube, most likely would have never started sewing. I remember the first wallet tutorial I fell in love with. It looked simple, explicit and clean. That's the reason I had the courage to start sewing.
You can find a bunch of videos, the offer is endless but unfortunately not all of them know what they are doing, some of them are there to earn revenue and that's their only concern. Anyone can make a video, upload it to any platform but that doesn't mean the video is good. My mentor is a phenomenon, her videos are just perfect for anyone. I owe her a lot and she doesn't even know. Maybe I should contact her and let her know what an influence her work has on people.
Influence On Hive
When I first registered on the old blockchain, it was in August 2016. Back then I had no idea what blockchain is or how this platform works. I remember I saw a post, a guy was detailing how he took a huge risk by using his Steem to boost his post, instead of powering up. As I said, it was the first day on the chain, had no idea how things worked but I thought wow, he's a brave and smart guy. Little had I know about what was really going on. He used a bidbot to boost your post. We all know what that means.
After a few posts I got busy with other things and neglected the blockchain totally. Then in January 2018 I thought it's time to have a look, see what it is about but I could not find my password and had to create another account. When I finally was able to log into the new account, the first thing I did was to find as many of my friends from an old platform I could. Lucky me, I could find 18 in 5 minutes and they all helped me. I have learned a lot and was able to stay out of trouble and do the right thing. I've never used bidbots and have no intention to do so in the future.
I've seen what effect has had on certain people years after it happened. I remember those contests that you could enter only if you haven't used bidbots. How many were whining and complaining because they were excluded due to bidbot use. Where there's money, there's greed and greedy people are capable of anything.
New Influence On Hive
Communities have become important recently as curation accounts are working on supporting users posting in communities based on different genre. I see this as a very good thing not only because of curation but because topics are more organized this way, easier to find what you need and this comes in handy when onboarding new users.
However, not everyone is willing to sacrifice their luck. There are communities where you can post about everything, they reward whoever they want and curation has nothing to do with quality. Hive is not a centralized chain, you can do whatever you want (almost), you can choose the community you want to use and post what you want. However, there should be some responsibility here, some respect for the place and users. Posting three or four shitposts daily, hoping one may get a big upvote is not the way to be successful.
There are many smart people on Hive, you just have to identify them. You can learn from them if you think there's something to be learnt. You can choose to do the right thing and maybe earn less or care more about a few cents and regret later.
I was lucky to find this YouTube channel with sewing tutorials and learn how to do things right, start creating bags. Otherwise I wouldn't have done any sewing at all as I hate sloppy, crappy work. Hive is not any different in my opinion. I prefer to earn less and follow my guidelines, do the right thing, rather than sell myself for a few cents. After you've ruined your reputation, there's little you can do.