Anyone who has been around Steemit for awhile may have noticed a certain "veneer of fakeness" that goes around, particularly in the comments of posts. Sycophancy is a good word for it. You get the distinct impression that many users are walking on eggshells to avoid saying anything that might rock the boat.
It's just the way humans are wired. Nobody hears a bunch of criticism about themselves and then thinks "yeah, I'd like to help that person." Steemit, however, takes this phenomenon even further.
Unfortunately, this is a natural consequence of tying people's economic interests into their ability to express their opinions. Unlike Reddit, where an unpopular opinion can only cost you meaningless karma, on Steemit you can make an enemy who will follow you around and damage you financially for as long as you are using your account.
If you are a witness, you can lose critical support necessary to maintain your ranking, leaving you in an even more severe variant of the prisoner's dilemma.
This makes both real criticism and unpopular opinions rarely worth expressing, unless you don't care about your potential earnings. Why write a post or comment that could get you flagged, when you can simply do nothing?
Authors are often placed in the middle of confrontations between two whales, receiving flags over disagreements about rewards allocations they had nothing to do with.
I often find myself placed in the position of either having to remain silent on the many culture (flag) wars happening at Steemit, or risk drawing the kind of attention that nobody wants to their blog. Given the time and stress involved in wading into these issues, it's simply easier to ignore them.
I fear such silence may set a grim precedent, but hey - they haven't come for me yet, right? (Well, at least not recently.)
We also have a Radio Station! (click me)
...and a 5000+ active user Discord Chat Server! (click me)
Sources: Niemoller
Copyright: Chappelle's Show, Flickr