I knew a guy from gym back in the day, who wanted to bulk up and get huge. While there were plenty of people who gave him some tips and bits of advice to help him on his journey, this guy knew it all. He believed that he had discovered the perfect diet that would give him all the energy he needed to accomplish his goals of hugeness - He mixed protein powder into 4 liters of ice cream a day. He was right - he got huuuuuge.
Hugely Fat.
Imagine two people who are looking to compete in a running race in 2 years from today, with each being responsible for their own preparation and training. Person One researches diet and training techniques and then consistently trains themselves until race day, learning all they can, practicing all they can, developing all they can. Person Two eats 4 litres of ice cream with protein powder and sits on the couch watching TV.
Who do you expect to win come race day?
Not everyone is suited to being a content creator on Steem or anywhere else. Sure, anyone can post something, but whether others see any value in it is open to debate. However, there are plenty of people who could generate great content, but I fee there are many who take the path of the ice cream man above. They know how to get the results they are chasing.
But two years later, what are the race day results?
What I love about Steem is that there is a great deal of freedom in the way an individual operates, but there is also a great deal of game theory going on as each action, interaction and transaction enters into a marketplace of some kind. I personally find it fascinating in firstly, how the ecosystem functions, and secondly, in how people function within it.
For instance, I find it strange how some people can simultaneously complain about the way the system works and their level of reward, yet choose to only provide the type of content that they want to provide. There is nothing wrong with contributing what you want, but one can't have the expectation that what is contributed is what anyone wants to vote on.
While I can admit that a lot of voters are blind and automated, other than those who sell their votes to whatever, most individual voters do not vote on what they do not like. If a creative contributor who wants reward, can't create what is in demand, they are unlikely to get the reward they seek.
I think there are quite a few accounts who have tried for reward and failed, because they have chosen to contribute only what is of interest to themselves. Unless that is also interesting to others, it is unlikely to get much traction. Creating a post doesn't make it consumable and at least for me, complaining about unconsumable posts not getting rewards doesn't exactly make me want to leap to the slider.
In some way, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for these accounts, as they slowly spiral further away from getting support and no matter what they end up contributing, it will get ignored. When it comes to building a following, it isn't one post, or ten or a hundred. Depending on what kind of content it is, it might be thousands of posts.
Personally, I question how many people have the stamina for it on Steem, and I believe that the work level put in here might pale in comparison to what might need to be done to break into a place like YouTube. I think if it was easier on YouTube, wouldn't people be there instead of here?
But as said, there is a lot of game in Steem and there are a near infinite amount of ways to play it. We each make our own decisions on how we act, interact and transact on Steem and each move is going to have an effect on something in the system as it is all interconnected.
I am sure there are people who look at the rewards of others including mine and say, "I could do that" and they are right, but they didn't. Being able to do something and actually doing it are different states and while many people could do many things, when it comes to the harder work and work in uncertainty, generally only a few ever will.
The thing is, no one wants to hear that they are incapable at something that others can do and, no one wants to hear that they could have done more with their resources than they did. And I feel that there are quite a lot of people who are secretly disappointed in themselves for not laying the foundation they could have when they had the opportunity.
This isn't the platform's fault.
There is a condition that many people have when it comes to their time at school, where they blame the lack of skill they have in an area on the teacher that was tasked with teaching them - "I am bad at math because Mr.Johnson was a terrible teacher" kind of thing. The problem with this is that Mr.Johnson successfully taught thousands of people in his career, and many of them learned. Blaming the teacher is a cop-out position.
Sure, the teaching style might not be suited to you, but that is beside the point as it is you who has to survive life with the skill resources you have, and if you think you need to know math, it is your responsibility to learn it. This is the same with all parts of our life, right?
If I really needed money for some reason, is it your responsibility to get it for me? Definitely not. While shit happens to all of us in life, not everyone prepares the same for the arrival of that shit and not everyone handles that shit in the same way. Some people are good at handling shit, others end up covered in it.
We all have our skills and our own interests and as I see it, the clever ones are able to combine them in a way to generate value in life, whether it be monetary, relationship or just personally intrinsic value. From a content perspective, the creative ones are able to combine their resources to deliver consumable content that people enjoy for whatever reason that might be. This is especially important for those who want to earn something on their content.
People talk of investment portfolios, the selection of investments that one holds, with each having a different configuration and outcomes. A model or actor also has a portfolio, a body of past work that shows their range and influences a casting agent as they can trust that the person has some skills. An artist has a portfolio of their art, images, news clippings, references, awards and again, it speaks of the reputation of the artist and can influence for example, a gallery into hanging work.
For me, I have a blog on Steem.
It is my portfolio of work as me an artist, investor, photographer, writer, father, husband and community member. All of the work up until this point including the hits and the many misses, are a collection of all kinds of facets of me that have been put together to build a foundation of me a person and as the owner of this account. On Steem, I own my content and this is my account, a Steem account, and an account of my life.
We all make our decisions here in one way or another, we each have to live with the outcomes we each achieve. I can't say what is right for you, I can only give my perspective. Some may take it, some might eat a lot of ice cream.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
I can picture the ice cream guy sitting on the couch lol. I think you have to make your posts interesting for you and hopefully by being diverse you will catch peoples attention. I couldn't think of anything worse than writing thinking what people may or may not like as it is you at the end of the day that has to write this stuff.
I agree, it makes it a job. But if people are here for earning money - they might have to do the job.
It took the guy months to finally see what was happening in the mirror - he saw what he wanted to see.
! ENGAGE 30
I think there is a Balance each one of us must have to be successful Bloggers/VLoggers. I could sit here all day and go over shot after shot on my disc golf and how I scored -2 on one of the hardest courses in Texas.
And no one would give two flips to hear that.
But if I can find common ground where Iam interested about a subject and others are as well then you have a winning combo ( for instance I did a Vlog post recently about whether or not broken/bad English should get penalized and not rewarded highly. It interested me as well as many others)
I find where you get into trouble is when you're just thinking about what would get eyeballs and NOT pursuing a subject that really interest you.
People will sniff that a mile away that you are being disingenuous
I think so too. I find that I am generally doing well by being genuine. !ENGAGE 10
10 ENGAGEView and trade the tokens on Steem Engine. @robertandrew you have received from @macchiata!
Equivocation; causes a lot of problems.
Physicists and nutritionists both use "Calories" to describe a measure of energy, but nutritionists have shortened "Kilocalories" for brevity.
So when a nutritionist talks about a calorie, they're talking about 1000 more than a physicist is talking about.
This misunderstanding lead to some people crunching the numbers and deducing incorrectly, that heating ingested icecream to body temperature expended more calories than are contained in the icecream.
Perhaps being fat is the least of the problems for anyone who thinks mixing protein powder into a 4 litre tub of chocolate ice cream is the way to getting ripped - Everyone knows the way to getting huge is with Neapolitan. =D
Protein powder in ice cream doesn't sound particularly appetising x_x
It sounds like it would be weirdly dry - but who knows, he definitely ate his way through a lot of it =D
I hope the idea will work. But I am little confuse about the fat percentage in the ice cream because ice cream generally contains 10 percent of fat with is relatively high as per the requirements of the body. I don't want to look like a fatty guy please help me out by knowing the above thing mention about fat