"Wouldn't you like to get away?
Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name..."
- Cheers Theme Song -
Have you ever seen these comments?:
"follow me bro :D"
"upvoted and followed you if you like hal please follow me"
"amazing follow me @hain"
"Excente! Te invito a visitar mis artículos! UN CAMBIO DE CORAZÓN"
That was a rhetorical question...
If you've been on Steemit for more than five minutes, of course you've seen comments like those!
Please Leave a Comment
Image courtesy of Kelly Sikkema and http://unsplash.com
Why do we hate them?
Generally speaking, I love comments.
I appreciate it when people notice my writing and engage with me. In fact, I will vote for most comments as an indication of my respect and appreciation.
But when I see comments that are meaningless, I want to ignore them. I feel disgusted. I think "go away."
Once in a while, if I'm feeling charitable, or if there is even a glimmer of engagement, I'll respond and encourage the commenter to change their ways... Sometimes I've had good responses to my appeals, but other times not so much.
But why do we hate those comments?
I think it is because we want to be valued.
When we look at a comment like "hey, bro, follow me," it is so blatantly obvious that the person who wrote it is just a leech. They do not value us. They just want to suck the life out of us, use us. They really could care less about what we wrote.
Sometimes these comments appear only seconds after we hit the "Post" button.
Could they have even read our post?
Unless they are a world-champion speed reader, uh-uh, no way.
It takes time, thought, and energy to interact with others, whether here on Steemit or anywhere in life. We all have limited time. We all have to allocate our minutes, our hours, our days wisely.
Comments like these are revealing.
They shout "I just heard about Steemit, and I'm here for everything I can get."
A lot of newcomers just want to game the system. Unfortunately, some of the incentives and algorithms make that possible to a greater or lesser extent. These are things that will hopefully become better adjusted over time.
But meanwhile, let's be mindful.
At times we tend to think of the Golden Rule as "all for the other guy." It is actually for our own good. If we stop and give some thought to how the other guy is feeling, then "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" begins to make more sense. We begin to have a little empathy. We begin to imagine what it feels like to be in someone else's shoes.
Next time you leave a comment, think about this:
We don't want simple rubber stamps.
We don't want to be used.
Thoughtless, insincere "cheers" are hollow.
We don't want to "trade votes," or follows.
What do we really want as writers?
We want people to value us.
We want to be appreciated.
We want people to read what we write.
We want others to care about our ideas.
We want to be liked for who we are.
We want to hear what others think about our writing.
We'd like you to get to know us.
We want to get to know you.
FIN
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You are why I'm here on Steemit!
I have very eclectic interests and hope, over time, to write about them all.
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