First of all, beautiful art, really cool.
Secondly, in my opinion you are absolutely right about the bid bots and other crap that has been going on Steemit. I think it is not worthy of my time to post on it, so I stopped, if I blog about something I use Steempeak, but that almost never happens unless it is about Steemmonsters. Steemit is only getting more and more ridiculous, so why even bother?
That said, I am grateful that I have discovered Steem through Steemit. It made me discover Steemmonsters, which got me into discord and that's funnily enough where the real conversations happen (maybe because there is no monetary incentive?). The monsters community is full of interesting and caring people (of course there are some d*ckheads, just a lot less) and Steemmonsters has shown the full potential of Steem and what I think it should be all about: the backbone to build powerful apps that bring something extra into people's lives. With tribes that could be the same, but you need strong and driven moderators who are willing to be the foundation of the tribe and put a lot of their time into it because they are passionate about it. Thanks to tribes I am now sort of a whale on Splinterlands and I know that's far off from being a whale on Steemit or in terms of any real monetary value, but it is a community I care about and so I am driven to manually curate posts who use the spt tag in the right and wrong way. Besides that almost all of my Steempower is delegated to projects I believe in like actifit (because I support anything that makes people move), steemhunt (I met those guys at Steemfest and they are some of the smartest and driven people I have ever met), steemmonsters (ofcourse) and airclinic. My 'Steem' vote is ridiculously low (0,01 cent) but by choosing to support the communities I fully believe in, my Steem experience is something I really love and am proud of. All the best.
T.
Thank you. I appreciate that.
A lot of people stopped. The bots make it so the worst work can rise to the top, and the best gets buried. There's no way I'm paying a 'toll' either. They made the mess, I'm not paying them to get out of it. That would be much like giving your lunch money to the highschool hallway bully so you can get to class. A lot of folks don't realize, all one has to do is stop paying the toll, the problem goes away. They're not selling 'visibility' because nobody wants to look at the trash rising to the top. They're selling the bullets used to shoot themselves in the foot.
I like this place. I still see a wealth of potential in all of the developments. It's easy to become distracted by the 10% that goes wrong. 90% is still good, or getting better.