RE: The Great Resteeming Dilemma & Other Unwritten Steemiquette Questions
"If you don't want to write it, and you shouldn't. Likewise, if you don't wish you had written it, you shouldn't be resteeming it. I think of my account as my voice, and the things that you should encounter on it are things that I want to say. I care about a certain measure of things, in particular video games, role-playing games, and weird mathematical analysis – and sometimes computer hardware. I'm a specific kind of geek, is what I'm saying. If you follow my posts, I want you to receive the kind of thing that I want to exemplify me."
That's really the simple answer. Do what you want! Like an old gym teacher used to say: Keep it simple, stupid. ;-) I definitely lacked that kind of self-awareness before - often resteeming things because I could appreciate how someone even lower on the totem pole than me clearly put effort into a piece - not because it was a representation of the Steemit identity I want to project.
Definitely will be more conscious as I go forward. I envy your ability to blog within a niche - I have the curse of a liberal arts mind without any expertise (or for lack of a better word, 'passion' ) in any one category.
While it's all relative, I have a huge respect for 'geeks' and feel like that kind of knowledge is a bit more useful and superior and less BS driven. Probably why people in those fields actually make money!
There's no BSing in math lol.
I hope the Steemit Gods eventually implement some of your suggestions for a more friendly interface - otherwise they risk becoming the Myspace of the blogging for crypto space.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to promote the work of people lower on the totem pole. And, in fact, that can be a perfectly reasonable identity to have.
Though if you wanted to do that, I think the current architecture pretty much enforces that you should have two accounts – one to put your personal work on and one to do the resteeming to, allowing readers to choose what kind of content that they want to experience that you provide, original content or curated content.
My gut feeling is that something of that water should have been built into the system from day zero, but I have a lot of criticisms of the way that this platform as a social network has been designed.
The true challenge is not having a passion for just one category, it's having a passion and maintaining it. As long as you are writing and creating content that you care about, that you're passionate about, that you think someone else really needs to see – someone else really needs to see it. If that's not what you're feeling, don't bother. Just go find other stuff that people need to see.
For the record, there is a lot of BSing in math, just as there is a lot of BSing in software design and an immense amount in civil engineering. Pretty much everywhere there's people, there's BS.
If it's any comfort, engineers are jealous of the lotto nature of the arts on occasion. It's all well and good to work day in, day out to build things people want – but once in a while it would be nice to get lucky and sell something for a shit ton of money for what looks, from the outside, like a minimum amount of effort.
We both know that artists be themselves on a regular basis in order to get that lotto payout, but that's the nature of the world.
Remember, there will always be "the next MySpace." It's always something that's currently big. Nature of the beast.
Yeah - maybe I'll eventually do that if I can afford to fund 2 accounts. But to do either well - an 'identity' of your own or an identity as a curator - you're right - 2 accounts is pretty much a necessity.
Shhh...don't ruin the mystique of smart stuff by telling me it can be BSed :-P Thing is, in order to even know that it's possible, you need the kind of mind that understands it first!
I'm not totally ignorant in 'smart stuff'- took (and dropped out of ) a programming course, right after I got my useless BA in Liberal BS - because I wanted to find a career that would pay the bills - and while it was over my head or just not my thing - it was totally worth it. While I couldn't write a line of code (unless html counts haha), I gained a basic but broad conceptual understanding that allows me to at least sort of communicate with programmers and designers, which helps immensely with my freelance work and side gigs.
I now know when I'm getting fleeced on a website project (ie programmer charges an hourly rate for an automated task, but he isn't upfront about it - and acts like he will be working X amount of hours) - or on the flip side - I can communicate expectations without driving the coder/designer/engineer totally insane with vague ideas, as well as appreciate when he/she goes above and beyond to meet a client's expectations. And of course, pay appropriately and not give insulting offers for projects (ie - hey can you create a customized bug-free Airbnb clone for $300? Oh, and I need it by the end of the week)
Those rare people who have both the forward facing extrovert 'idea' qualities - with an engineering mind - (The Elon Musks of the world) - really have it made.
I guess though engineers tend to make more money in terms of salary - they usually have to work to execute another person's idea, and most of their creations end up being owned by the person hiring them or some corporation. But then again, it's really engineers (and science/math/medicine people) who make the humanity changing developments possible.
You can't deny it though - I bet you feel smart knowing stuff most of the population doesn't ;-) Maybe it's tough being a geek in elementary school, maybe even high school - but once you're in the real world - 'you people' are the envy of most of us !