I first realized I was infected by the anthrax of Steemit last week. Upvote Dementia Disease (UDD) has a very sudden onset, typically appearing just after you figure out what everyone is upvoting on Steem, and then it goes straight into a chronic phase where it hijacks your nervous system and tries to make you do stuff against your own interest as Steemian, but in the interest of spreading the disease. Yes, UDD literally turns you into its zombie little helper. It also badly morally disfigures the infected.

Scientists are still scrambling to work out the details, but here is what we already know for certain about this menace:

• Upvote Dementia first shows symptoms when you get a rough feel for what usually gets upvoted by everyone on SteemIt: elation, rubbing hands together, and increased perspiration are not uncommon. People with UDD frequently have hallucinations that make them think they're going to be rich because of SteemIt.
• The infected persons starts frantically upvoting purely based on what they think everyone else always upvotes. This makes upvoting much quicker and more efficient, because you don't need to read what anyone's post is saying & you absolutely don't care about its overall meaning (or lack thereof). Just a quick skim is quite enough to see if a post has that "It" factor, that "upvotability" that will likely make everyone upvote it: is it "positive", "upbeat", and does it feature cute girls with nerd's wet dream aspirations like crypto, programming, or anime fluffy ears? If yes, upvote. Otherwise NEXT.
• These diseased, sickly upvotes that the infected add to that bimbo's last post usually prove quite accurate, and they gather that sweet curation reward of 0.000001 Steem Power like absolute champs. But at what unfathomable cost to their own dignity and mental immune systems?
• Infected persons, especially vulnerable whales, develop tics that make them upvote what they think is upvotable, without the slightest care as to what the real content or message is. And they are right nearly every time, because everyone else is infected with Upvote Dementia just like them. A wild army of zombies emerges, zombifying themselves and everyone else around them.
• Posts with zero original content get upvoted by everyone affected by the debilitating disease, spawning even more psychodelic spores for the affliction. We are stunned to see ourselves upvoting someone simply because she's upvotable. Famous for being famous. Once the chronic phase sets in, the disease blights any kind of hope for realness & meaningful upvoting on the SteemIt platform.

Too bad, so sad. Friend Coyte here to drop some truths in your lap again, do with it what you want. You seen the picture - that's called Elephantitis and it's not entirely dissimilar to what we are infected with, buddy. Tiny nematodes (worms) transmitted by mosquito bites cause it by invading the unsuspecting human host and multiplying like crazy in a mating frenzy, excited to "have some fun" and complete their life cycle. They are busy winning, and they don't care that you're busy dyin' because of them, Steem.

If you're a whale, UDD will at first make you feel like your scrotum is growing nicely in size and heft. Look at those delicious babes, she's verified and "an aspiring coder" too? UPVOTED!!! Alas, the more you upvote this trash, the more the tiny parasites invade and zombify your entire online identy. And you're not the only one, they're attacking everybody. Pretty soon it's not so fun any more, when your goddamn ballsack grows so gruesomely large you can barely even move around, and then the squirming maggoty-like things burst from excruciatingly painful open sores, wriggling away from your well-deserved throne of pus and shame to infect even more unsuspecting unfortunates who follow in your whale wake, hoping for easy profit.

Not to be a downer, but it don't look so good to me, my friend. No good at all... We might not make it, and we certainly will need bigger shoes to fill if this shit keeps going on unchecked. At some point you just run out of extra large clown shoe options to wear. Maybe that's when some of us will involuntarily start re-thinking our vote choices on SteemIt. Shouldn't have upvoted that bimbo, she gave me fucking UDD. FML.

My mamma always said I was a radical, and no matter how much I got beat for it growing up, somehow it stuck with me. Perhaps a little radical medicine is just what the doctor ordered? I don't know, just throwing the seeds out there, seeing what comes up...You do your part, you try. So, how about from now on you & I choose to permanently turn off image rendering in our Steem browser and THEN we look at that bimbo's post again. What the FUCK did you and I just upvote?

How about we learn to do that same trick mentally, and mentally filter out the word "girl" when it's attached to anything posted here? After all, There Are No Girls On the Internet... We might be afflicted, it might be bad, but we ain't dead yet - and all it takes is for the immune system to activate once, develop the right antibody, and community will crush this affliction forever.

#steemit #circlejerk #life #girls #steem