I just came here to post somewhere “not Facebook” and “not my blog with $0.01 of Adsense revenue a month”. I’m happy with very little.
The thinking trap comes just like everywhere else in life - when you start to look over the fence at your neighbor and see how green his grass is, or how nice his car is, or how much his post made vs yours... it’s particularly hard to tune this out on Steemit, because payouts are plastered around everywhere like this was a giant endowment measuring contest. It’s just like that neighbor who pulls up in a Maserati every evening... it just grinds on you.
Personally, I just choose to make a conscious decision each day that I really don’t care how much I earn here. I can usually convince myself of this, but I do empathize with people who came here to make actual money (unlike me, who just came here for the experience and the outlet). It’s a lot harder than the landing page and trending tab makes it look.
Good pep talk though. It’s helpful to be reminded of this. What did you mean in your very last line of the post? Looks like a word might have dropped.
I don't think the trending page looks any worse than it did before the voting bots, and at the same time I fully acknowledge we are not creating a lot of motive for Authors to really pull out their best work. I guess I hope that will improve with time.