Ok folks, newcomer's perspective:
I came here hoping to find lots of thoughtful blog posts, digest some interesting ideas, share a few of my own, and hopefully engage some people in interesting discussion. The discussion is something which I crave at times because I live in an intellectual wasteland.
I've found so far that all of those objective can potentially be satisfied here, if your willing to dredge your way through all of the nonsense to find it. Most of the material on here stinks of desperation and greed. I get the impression that a lot of people came here with the notion that they were going to jump on the professional blogger gravy train and funds their lifestyle by pumping out post after post of mildly interesting (at best) whimsical drivel.
The obvious problem is that said gravy train is largely illusory. While I am not a professional blogger and cannot speak for this demographic, I would bet all my steem dollars (whatever those are worth) that most of them would confirm this to be true. I would place the blame squarely on the focus toward monetization here. It's just too much.
Let's be honest with ourselves right now. To be fair, most of us really aren't as interesting as we think we are and our ideas probably aren't that original. There are certainly some very good bloggers on here whose material I would love to read while I work my way through my morning pot of coffee. In order to do that, I would first need to be able to find them, preferably without having to search through a seemingly endless flood of mindless drivel.
If you've bothered to follow my train of thought this far, you're probably thinking 'why don't you just follow the people whose material you want to read?' Well, I noticed that follow function, very useful, once you've found what you're looking for.
I think this site needs to be cleaned up a bit if it's going to offer any long term value to anyone. Right now it mostly resembles a sort of blogging circle jerk. Equality is a popular topic of discussion these days, but the fact is that all ideas are not equal. It's great for everyone to have an outlet here for their ideas, but it's important that the metaphorical cream rises to the top. I would like to come here, read some great blogs, and the rest of us can engage each other in discussion in the comment section below those blogs.
But that's what the upvotes are for right? Ah, yes, well there's the rub, eh? This brings us full circle, to the excessive focus on monetization. There's a peculiar social dynamic on here regarding this voting behavior. You better always upvote your friends, whatever they post, or you're rude. If you take the time to read something, but don't upvote it, you're rude, or selfish, or whatever. You commented on something, but you didn't upvote it? You asshole. Please please please upvote my post. Why does nobody upvote my post? It's not fair! ... And on, and on, ad nauseum. To make all this worse, this behavior seems to be culminating in a sort of cultural revolt against the bloggers who actually do deliver something of value. Whales. That's what you people call them, yes? Really? Because they write stuff that people want to read? How dare they! And as if the fact that they have been able to amass a crowd of interested followers want bad enough, these greedy bastards also don't spend the rest of their day reading everyone else's endlessly redundant blog posts and upvoting them in return. Despicable!
But seriously, this is the culture that is going to kill steem. Steem was a great idea. I was really excited to come check it out. After looking around, however, my assessment is grim. If something doesn't change, I think that this monetization obsessed culture here is going to drive away all of the talent, all of the value, and any decent people who just wanted something interesting to fill the whitespace in their day. What will be left? Well I guess the rest of you can go on with upvoting each other's sketches, poorly composed photography, and rhetorically painful poetry. At least you'll have chased away all those dastardly whales.
I don't want to end this on such a down note, so...
Let's stop obsessing over this monetization nonsense. Just appreciate what's good, and hopefully engage in some intelligent discussion that might help us grow as human beings. How does that sound?