No, this is not a post about the mysterious whale account on our platform, although come to think about it he has had some rather interesting activity on his account lately. I'm sure many of you out there have noticed and maybe decided to copy his actions. ;)
I recently started watching "It's always sunny in Philadelphia" and this one episode was about the freedom to do whatever you wanted and how laws and states have restricted people's freedom way too much lately. In this episode they decided to remove all these restrictions and let anyone coming to their bar do whatever they wanted to, in many ways this episode reminded me of our blockchain.
It didn't take a long time and people were smoking inside the bar, all sorts of people were showing up doing and selling all kinds of drugs and there was even illegal gambling going on at the other side of the bar which was conflicting with the interests of the bar owners as their main motive was to shoot a sort of "girl's gone wild" videos. They quickly realized that the mix of people were ruining their main idea so they decided to "hide it under the rug" by relocating the hardcore gamblers to the basement and everything seemed so much better again - for a short while.
This is where it started reminding me of Steem and how the freedom of expression and everyone being able to chime in anywhere can bring in all sorts of people. It's beautiful in many ways but in some ways it can also get a bit much and it is something you have to keep in mind almost daily. With so many different people from different places in the world and with different experiences of it there can be many different kinds of motives they can have for saying or doing the things they do. This is why Steem is so experimental cause in most centralized social platforms nowadays you have your inner circle of friends and followers and they may be much alike you so you seldom have any problems understanding them or getting your point across. With Steem everything is so much different and while the positives clearly outweigh the negatives we are still in the early phases of compared to Bitcoin much of the activity here may not be for the best sake of the platform/currency.
I often like to think back of the usecase of Bitcoin in the early stages and how everyone used that as a way to portray the currency of being something that only criminals and terrorists use. With any new technology though that's the kind of usecases you find being exploited first. I think Steem was created at an appropriate time in the innovation of blockchain technologies timeline, a little earlier and we may only have people here trying to use the platform for even more illegal things and trying to leech as much value out of it as possible, a little later and we would have a lot more competition which all may have started around the same time. The important thing to remember is that the incentives of the blockchain by itself thrive on positive actions and thinking. I'm not saying we shouldn't reward constructive criticism as that can often help the evolution of the platform but if there are people out there just trolling or being difficult for no apparent reason they may quickly find themselves being left alone from the rest as they either move on or have better things to do.
In the end although all this freedom is nice to have there will always be some need of governance and I'm looking forward to how communities (hivemind) and other front-ends and UI's will tackle this so not everything turns into that episode of "It's always sunny" where they later go down to the basement and find out that the illegal gambling has turned into russian roulette.
[Image Source Pexels.com]
"Freedom" is a very interesting ideal, but it can be a slippery slope, too.
A friend of a friend is all about "freedom" and "alternative living," but a story he told when he visited last summer points to some of the issues (a bit like your episode of "It's Always Sunny") that surround freedom... and how those who clamor in favor of unimpeded "freedom" so often seem to create an undesirable outcome.
Our friend-of-a-friend — who's always part of things like the Rainbow Gathering and Burning Man and such decided to go in search of a truly "free" place to live (in the US, in this case). His travels eventually took him to Slab City, a strange outpost in the California desert. It has complete freedom: no government, no laws, no services, no electricity, no organization. Although Ben spent almost two years in and around Slab City, he eventually left because — in his words — "it was pretty much an outdoor insane asylum, populated by nutballs, criminals, drug addicts and zombies." And this guy is a hardcore couch surfer, bin-diver and transhumanist.
Takeaway, here: Freedom disappears the moment you say "We don't want that here," and absent some form of rule system, the lowest common denominator seems to take over.
Many of us like freedom, or the idea of freedom but we don't want to live in a "Slab City."
Related to Steem/Steemit? We see "good" people leave because they feel like some group labeled "they" are ruining the platform, so they no longer want to be part of it. It was the great challenge from the beginning; it remains the great challenge. There are cultures in which "scamming and deception" are NOT seen as making you a "bad actor" (for example)... in fact, you are lauded as "clever" or "shrewd" if you can carry it off.
How do we get all these things to coexist?
Good thoughts!
=^..^=
Great comment!
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This is definitely something I've thought a lot about. Right now the community is small, tight knit(for the most part), and while everyone is from all around the world with different values, for better or worse there is the emergence of a Steem culture.
But as mass adoption takes place and communities get implemented, our little village will turn into a set of separate villages, then probably interconnected cities that have their own laws and cultures.
At that point and possibly before then I think we'll be confronted with actions or behaviors or well...something that the vast majority of us don't want, and that may ultimately be bad for the "world". It will be interesting to see how these things get addressed and how the experiment turns out in the future. Whether the governance structures that we have in place now will be enough, or if things will have to evolve for...(dun, dun, duuuuuun) the greater good <:O
lol. high stake players.
I think that a lot of the early users in were from crypto markets and at that point of crypto, community was meaningless, it was all about your own wallet. A lot of them never shook that mentality.
However, like you said about timing, there were others also and they are part of the community or are at least, trying to create a community and often it is out of their 'own wallet' so to speak.
It is always difficult to govern in a decentralized environment because of the variation in understanding, expectation and desires but, I think we are slowly, slowly creeping toward working out how to do it.
The thing is that most of us still run on the programs we have come from, authority and maximisation and we need a paradigm shift in what community, value and responsibility is before we can really see how fast we can move. This takes time and personal investment from everyone as the psychology of scarcity is hard to shake and replace with one of abundance.
I think what people fail to realize, is that communities emerge from economies, not the other way around.
...the psychology of scarcity is based in the real world. It's a psychology based in common sense.
and 'abundance'? - is a utopian concept.
See the scarcity of the rewards pool ?- that's real - as opposed to it' s abundance....?
You do realize it is engineered?
fair point..oops ..it was the first thing that came to mind in context of here.
ok. coal. lol
That is a great episode of Sunny in Philly, and I agree Blockchain is similar, though i think that. Modern society needs order so we can in some small way know what will happen when we do things. Like in that episode of Sunny in Philly, it all went whacky by the end.
Hey @acidyo -
Hopefully you'll see this - Is there any chance you can share the name of the new Steemit Whale - or if not exactly as used give a clue ? I'm totally out of the Steemit loop as I was without internet for the past few months most days while I traveled..
Thanks Man!!
Not sure what you're talking about.
@acidyo I am so Grateful for Steemit and I have more Fun and Enjoy so many aspects of what Steem and Dapps and interesting People have to Offer on Our Platform. Well time to get Back to some SteemMonster Battling...............
Good luck with that, I'm taking a break from battling and been selling most of my collection cause Steem is so cheap right now. :)
if you have dark lord, dragons, selenia, hydra i need them :)
I've placed pretty much everything on the market for the lowest price. Not sure if those are still available. :P
I know what you mean I am going to be adding to my Steem Power at a Quicker Pace now......
dood, why are you everywhere? LOL i love me some stock!!
!gif jockey
Nice post dude!
I really think steem, and the steemit Dapp have a great future, and alongside with other coins like BTC will help to improve the world and people life
There is always room for corruption in any system. Let's hope this platform and its rules and regulations keep serving with a people-oriented approach and it will keep working smoothly.
Were they able to film a girls go wild video in the end?
They got some good shots but the filipinos that were doing hardcore gambling kept showing up and making the girls uncomfortable.
Indeed just like Steem xD
I don't know of any website on the internet where the #nsfw tag is less used. :(
this would have been a great post for my #freedomfriday tag ... hilarious that everyone is rippling the "whale named freedom!" you caught my attention ....
I am not an old user of steemit but I have been using Facebook for a long time. I never made so many comments in facebook as I make in steemit.
Yes, we know people on Facebook and it is limited to our known circle. Steemit has no such boundaries, it is a community. It is real freedom to know whole bunch of people and I don't think there is any negative impact. If there please let me know.
Investors are in the core of Steem blockchain. If Steem has to be popular then we need to appreciate a good content as soon as possible. We can't loose a good content creator. It is responsibility of high Steem powered users to curate content regularly and with utmost honesty.
Yes, the future of Steem depends on how our community welcome new users because mass adoption will occur for sure. How we push people to put their fiat and buy Steem. The reason to buy Steem can be any, whether investment, buy Steem to pay for Steem based services or intention to curate people with high rewards. But our community has to bring more people those who can invest their fiat in Steem.
In the last, I think Steem will overtake other social media sites because these sites can't compete with the DApps based on this blockchain or the other . It is complete freedom of expression and freedom to earn at the same time. It is a Win- Win Ecosystem.
Thanks for coming up with this article. I just kept on writing whatever I felt and now , it's bit lengthy. ^_^
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This is definitely the root of the problem I think. A collection of individuals can only evolve at the rate of the individuals involved. Or can it?
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Hi @acidyo!
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It had turned into russian roulette AND they were arguing about who had nexts. The first guy wasn't even dead yet. How do you even upvote in that situation? Social media is very complex.