I'm Thinking About Leaving Steemit

Just to give a little insight on me, I am 35 years old and have 21 year old twin daughters who are about to graduate from Syracuse University. I am married to a wonderful woman who is a Navy Veteran that served in Operation Iraqi Freedom. She was a Corpsman who was stationed on the closest medical facility to the war during the Shock and Awe campaign. They helped anyone who was injured, friend or foe it didn't matter. I have so much respect for her .

For the past 3 years I have been lucky enough to serve as the Marketing Director for a multi brand auto group. My previous experience includes 10 years in the restaurant business, over 10 years in the music industry as a producer and engineer, a few years doing graphic design and a couple years doing reputation management and branding.

I am for the most part self taught. I have never really been good at school, I dropped out at 14, got my GED when I was incarcerated at age 16, funny thing about that is I didn't take any of the GED classes and I finished 2 hours early and scored in the 98th percentile, I tried college for a couple weeks and found it was not for me. I love to learn but I do it at a very accelerated pace. I have never really put much thought into the things I do, I just look at things in very simplistic way, you either can or can't and most things you can as long as you don't over complicate it.

When you truly analyze most things you can simplify the pieces and easily understand them and because of this I truly believe anything is possible. I have a hard time understanding the concept of limitations. I also have a hard time believing in certain types of scientific facts, as our technology advances and we evolve intellectually we disprove what was once known to us as facts, so if a fact is no longer a fact was it ever really the truth?

The whole point of all that background is to say that I figured I could add some unique content to Steemit hoping to be able to make a few bucks so I could go back to pursuing my passion of music and I did a couple of test posts just to see how they would do. I posted a tutorial about how to roll a joint with a filter tip, I posted some up close and under the hood shots of the brand new NSX and also did a mock up design on one of the pics for a Steemit wrapped NSX, that one actually got down voted.

The down vote is what got me thinking I might not continue with Steemit, only getting two votes stung but the down vote actually hurt my feelings a little bit. It's awesome to see how Steemit has changed some peoples lives, allowed them to share their stories, pursue their passions and live their dreams. I don't think this will be the case for me. I can say that this site has inspired me to get back to pursuing my love of music. I made the decision to leave the music for a more financially secure career when my daughters entered high school. Now that they are about to graduate college I feel that I can get back chasing my dreams.

I've been broke more times than I've had money, I have had a little successes here and there along the way, the biggest of which are my kids. I have smoked a joint with Snoop and shaken hands with the President. I have taken over 100 hits of LSD in my lifetime. I was raised by a single father who passed away when I was 19 and had a mother who was a homeless heroin addict, when I was in high school I would visit her at the metro where she panhandled, some times I would get her a hotel and food for a couple of days.

Anyway I haven't decided what I am going to do yet when it comes to Steemit but it's late and I'm tired so I think I am going to bed for the night. To those who read this thanks for listening.

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Sorry you're experiencing this :(

This isn't just you and your writing, this is a much larger issue impacting the entire community. Good content is just falling through the cracks. I've seen a lot of people recently that have written great posts and get very little attention. They will get 5-20 votes, but all of inconsequential weight (meaning they get no visibility). Sometimes bots even end up downvoting people and killing any positive weight they had gathered from real users.

It's not a simple problem to solve and I think we're seeing improvements already (with the change to the homepage and with reputation), but it's still got a ways to go. I'm sure over the next week as I browse through the new posts, I'm going to find even more that will just slip through and not get the attention that they deserve.

Hopefully with...

  • Better browsing of posts tagged
  • Following + feed of following posts
  • A more even distribution of voting weight that's happening over time (slowly)

All of these problems will get better.

I'd say that if you're going to leave, make sure to come back in a few months to see how the sites evolved. It's got potential... it's just very much in beta right now.

Well, I have recently posted my sharing of my holiday trip with genuine content. Yes, it may not be good content, but at least I think it is interesting to share your experiences and may be helpful to some. I have to agree that it may not only just fall through the cracks, but we, usually the newcomers may easily get destroyed by those in power, the whales solely to stop you from even starting, thus gaining any visibility. Yes, can be bots like you mentioned.

The current system is flawed, unfair and easily abused, whereby those in power can simply click a button without any restrictions and able to condemn you, stopping you from getting any attention and rewards.

To be honest, this is how social media works, content do fall through the cracks and got buried, everything is about popularity. But with money involved, you will see many evils that try to bring you down.

Yes hopefully there are improvements for better exposure.

It does feel good to share stories, engage in conversation and experience adventures through other peoples lives, part of the interest in coming here was monetary but I think a bigger part was just being involved in something new and different. The engagement that this post has created is truly amazing, not so much the votes but the actually conversation. It is truly humbling.

Very well said...tried to explain both sides of the coin :)

They need to just make a flatter voting system now. And I mean A LOT flatter. I also don't think flagging/downvoting should affect the payout, just hide it for you.

I think a bigger issue is to reward people voting good past content/posts. Once the 30 minute mark is gone, any great post falls into oblivion and only a whale could dig it up days after that and give it prominence (and there are very few whales with that power).

My last post got 7 downvotes (so far). Don't sweat it.

The meaning of downvote has to change to "I don't want to read content and ensuring discussion like this". It needs to be a personal relevance tool, not a globalized ranking. I am working on this change.

Dude, my best post so far got like 30 downvotes... and knocked close to $3k off the reward minutes before payout. Am I still here? Yep. Am I going anywhere? Nope.

You know what I did right after payout? I gave away two or three hundred steemdollars one at a time to fellow Steemians. Check my blog. That's how we roll.

I will definitely check your blog, I think that's really cool, I will defiantly make sure to put some of the post earnings back into the community.

Awesome! It's great to give back, and the people here are so much fun to hang out with it was like buying a round for the whole bar. Highly recommended! Hope you decide to stick around, and good luck!

bro, i need to read more about you, don't quit, it seems to be that depressed people like me need to read about you. i mean you 35, and your kids are 21.

To see that there is someone who wants to hear more is really awesome, thank you for that. My kids were born when I was 15 and I started taking care of them full time when I was 17. Their mom signed up for the Navy and dropped them off with me two days before she left for bootcamp ( she had a pretty tough upbringing so I don't blame her). When my father passed 2 years later it was just me and my girls.

Wow.

uh all you guys upvoting, maybe hit the flagged post too.... a couple more votes will at least bring it back

Your post got voted down by 2 very low power bots and one level 7 plagarist spammer called vato. the bots were dealt with by the rep system, I am posting about vato in the steemit abuse chat channel

wellcome

You got more than 300 USD for taking pictures of a car. Seriously, that's totally insane and you complain about steemit.

Don't give up!

I am not even trying to make money after a while of being here. I'm just happy to be a part of this. Nothing like this has been done before, I want to see how it turns out.

What needs to happen is a change in the culture. Good posts fall through the cracks in reddit and also other social media, but with reddit things voted to the top of subreddits you're interested in are usually posts you will find interesting. Imo steemit should be working exactly like reddit except that you get paid when you get upvotes. But this is still the wild wild west phase so we'll see what happens.