I want to preface this with an apology for the longwinded rant. It's just that this has been on my mind from the befinning and I think it's relevant and worth saying/listening to. I hope you check it out and throw back at me what you think. Arguments and all. PLEASE, don't be polite and vanilla in your responses. Let's have some real conversation here!
Okay, so I first signed ~6 months ago and quickly went back to reddit. I found this place to be riddin with e-beggars and shallow content. It didn't feel like a community, more like a sales convention promoting a pyramid sceme.
I came back a coupe weeks ago to give it another try and it seems to have gotten somewhat better. There' some pretty good content here and there. And a quite a few engaging people who actually have well thought out and interesting comments/replies. But there's still so much e-begging and a relentless, obnoxious focus on getting Steem, to the exclusion of everything else. That seems to outweigh the good.
And don't get me started on the bots, the convoluted gambling with Steem/Sbd schemes, and the increasing drama, and vote sharing between cliques of whales, and the little people who desperately want to swim with them in hopes of getting some of their Steem crumbs and maybe getting invited in with the cool kids.
And, oh God, the lack of sincerity. I mean, just look at the masses of posts and generic comments all of over the place that have no depth or concern with any real community engagement. It's all so...soooo shallow and boring!
Though, posts like this one seem to have more depth, and the comments here have something to say that doesn't just look like it was copy/pasted from generic, embarrassingly FB-like-quality image macros and poorly reflected thoughts and opinions.
And oh, so so many of the posts/comments are as shallow as a puddle in the dessert. Just look at all the posts that write a whole lot of nothing, and the few comments on those posts that are nothing more than a ten word, painfully insincere set of platitudes and two or three word token responses like "Great work!" or "You're so talented!' that obviously took 2 seconds to write and even less time to consider. AND that, somehow, they have more Steem rewards from just that one pitifully small group of interactions than we small guys have accrued on Steemit during the weeks, and even months of being here.
I hope that the small, truly interested members here focus heavily on a community of mutual interest and authentic engagement that concerns itself with the deeper reasons for having an online community. People who stop laying on the fake, generic comments and actually join in, regardless of how much Steem they might get. Oh, and ACTUALLY UPVOTE what they like, not just what has the best potential for Steem rewards!
I just want a community where we follow each other, post content that comes from who we are, and not just what we hope will rake in Steem from popular tags and whatnot. To engage with each other with something meaningful. And just be happy with whatever Steem rewards we get. Eventually the Steem will come anyway, once the traffic gravitates toward more things of substance and not just the cabal of whales and their cliques funneling it all to their wallets.
And please, please can we stop being so fake. No need to be rude, but this overly polite thing makes Steemit seem like a Mormon reddit. All vanilla, no spice, and increasing unchallenging.