RE: How Can We POSSIBLY Hope to Make Progress as a Species When...
Hello @denmarkguy,
If the media tells us something about Kim Kardashian's ass each day and all our friends are often talking about KK's ass, we go to work and everyone is talking about KK's ass. Now, you and I are even talking about KK's ass. :) It is built into our culture at this point. So, we are rewarded in social points if we know what KK's ass is and why it is talked about.
Regarding the current state of SteemIt. There was not a concerted effort to build a culture. So, the most rewarded behavior is what sets the culture. When you are shaping a business, a child, a student or employees you reward behavior you want to see repeated and ignore or punish behavior you want to remove. It is that simple and it works. That is all we have here. The state of the platform is the result of what is being rewarded, ignored and punished.
Regarding the current state of SteemIt, I've been here since Aug 2016, and I spent the vast majority of that time acting like this might be a sustainable business and treating it as such. Each day and rarely missing a single day, I manually curated, left comments, got a little better at writing and found out it just doesn't matter it is in fact self defeating behavior in this environment. There are about 20 of us that do that and you likely know who they are as well as I do. SteemIt the platform was not valued from the top. They paid their curators with votes, supported curation guilds that were really vote selling operations before it was "A thing". Which is like me saying I am going to hire some labor out of somewhere with a low hourly wage, but instead of paying them, I will have them post a timecard and I will upvote it. Except they openly justified the amount of rewards they were "paying" these people saying they lived in expensive geographic locations.
I'm not overly upset because I think communities if we ever get them will fix this problem as people can form, shape and set the culture with in their community.
They way I am hearing SteemIt being described is as a "Fire Hose". Basically all of the front ends will "dump" into SteemIt and the real interaction will happen in communities. This is good news.
As odd as it sounds I think this stage although ugly is beneficial for the future as the voting bots at least give some different people a chance to snag some of the steem creating a better distribution as we move from this stage in to a bunch of different villages.
I've spend my entire working life in Start ups and they often get ugly in the process of growing. Some of this is also a size and transparency issue. In this case the bad behavior gets more attention then good behavior so it shapes the culture.
That is my perspective. Shoot, I rambled on. I may have to make this a post. And I am no longer engaging in self defeating behavior. I do not have enough stake or influence to shape this community. I am not quitting I am changing my path.
PS. You are a talented blogger and one of my most respected Steemians.
Thanks @whatsup, this is certainly a blog-worthy comment; I know what it's like to get going and suddenly it's 500 words later. And also thanks for the @appreciator tip. Double gratitude because "thanks" for the recognition but also "thanks" for what I consider appropriate use of an upvote bot.
You're right about Steemit not having had a concerted effort to build a culture; my year here tells me that because this place is heavily "developer driven" more effort was placed on building apps and technological stuff than on creating features that are directly supportive of social content.
I continue to treat Steemit as a sustainable long term venture... because if I cannot stand by what I say I believe in, how can I even take myself seriously. And so, I write every day, and I curate manually every day... because I still inhabit the mindspace in which that represents the sort of world I want to be part of creating.
And then there are the infamous "communties" which I have been holding out for for a long time, in hopes they might change the landscape around here a bit. In the meantime, I find it interesting that people seem to "self-organize" into communities, anyway... and maybe that is really the best that can happen. We end up with our circles that enjoy each other's content and commentary, and by some version of "circular reciprocity" we support each other enough that the Steemit experience remains a degree of fun and rewarding.
I have done a lot of time (mostly as a contractor) with startups as well, and I know there are growing pains. And no matter HOW well people (the "founders") seem to plan, the truth always reveals itself the same way: Those of an idealistic bent tend to vastly underestimate the level of greed and selfishness that's part of human nature.
Thanks for the supportive words!
You inspired 2 response blogs that I've seen, and several comments worthy of one! That is something we used to do in the early days, I am glad to see it coming back!
Thank you!
Well, in that case I shall consider today a successful day!
It took me a while to figure it out, but my "mission" here (to the degree anyone might have such a thing) is to stimulate engagement. Which is a return to my blogging roots: I am a "cage rattler," but not in the angry aggressive sense, but in the "can I make people THINK" sense.
So yeah, "Let's Make Thinking Great Again!"
I'm not interested in kardashians or that kind of shit because... i'm not living in usa but here in spain there are the same shit and still not following that... lucky me i'm not a brain dead XD
Do Americans really talk about her "ass" at work? - What sort of work is that? LOL...
Make this a post!