It is the same problems over and over isn't it? Not enough acting well, too many acting on greed. the game is created by humans and is always flawed so, the game has to continually keep evolving. I feel that at the moment it is devolving though.
Leading by example is really only a nice sentiment, the road is hard and always comes at a cost. Does it make it less valuable or more?
I cared about Steem, and wanted to change the world for the better through info on Steem. I played fair. I tried to live by an example, promoting things that were in the best long term for Steem and the world (moral behavior)... but some didn't like me for those topics because they didn't live up to the standards I was putting forth, and so they disliked me for being successful for talking about things that they saw themselves lacking in. And so the flagging began to shut me up and shut me out. People didn't want to get involved in the issue, and some were losing curation rewards, so poof went a large part of my support. What did all that speaking up... not much in the end... Steem is not a place where doing whats right overcomes the desire for being liked by popular rich power players. Most people just wanted to stay out of the flagging issue, and stick to keeping the rewards coming in. When people don't unite on a problem, nothing happens. So i kept getting flagged for months. People even said I was the problem, or that I was just complaining because I didn't propose solutions, even though I did. And even if I don't propose solutions in each post, people should be aware of the problem regardless. But people don't want to hear about it, and prefer to just ignore the problem.
Living by and setting better standards amounted to not doing much in the end... apart from me getting taken down lol. I wasn't listened to by the majority, only a few appreciated the work. So it's valuable to some, like dan appreciated it, but overall not so much. Trying to do things right and play the game to get rewarded didn't work in my favor, it worked against my overall self-interests.
Yeah, I don't expect much else other than personal value from it overall. It would be nice to be otherwise but, it rarely is.
I wonder if it was also the size of the platform before as everyone was more visible and crossed paths much more often. I don't know how many were active a year ago but I remember it being about 15,000 or so, not even that. maybe there was a bit more cabin fever?
I have resigned myself to a return of mediocrity for the most part. My kind of thing is unlikely to ever get consistent support. But, I will just keep doing my thing anyway as I am terrible at playing games.
Yup, keep doing my thing too haha :)