There is a bit of that whole social media vibe here though. I didn't really see it at first, but now that I've started to fall into habits, I do. This isn't like Facebook, (Facebook sucks) this is like Tumblr or LiveJournal or any of those other social blogging services. We do need to make friends and fans. We need followers.
When I got here, I thought I was going to post entirely different things. I thought I was going to possibly do some gaming (which I haven't done in a while) and talk about that, and do posts about programming and science. I definately need to post about science more, but I quickly learned that this is not the place I thought it was, and that I needed to do some experimentation with posts to see what I was going to post.
When I decided to write a bit, and I got an amazing payout from Curie, I thought "You know what? I can do this!" I had almost wanted to cry when I got that. I was so fucking astonished. The next few chapters were put out primarily just because I felt like I had to push myself for the amount that I had gotten from Curie.
But then I realized once again, I was wrong, and people don't reward you for quality content, or effort. Maybe a little. Books don't work well here. People get disinterested. I still want to finish my book though, and actually start another. I'm just a little demotivated right now, because I know I'll probably only get $1 or so. Maybe less.
This place is weird. It's it's own thing. Everyone has their own reasons for upvoting things. Many don't seek out the most amazing content to reward. Hell I can't even get people in chat to link me to any good posts they've seen when my VP is high and I'm worried I don't have the time to curate. I mostly get linked to shit, if anyone links me to anything at all.
I never thought this place was going to be easy, but I never thought it was going to be this hard.
Every time I hear someone complain about Trending here I think about what the Livejournal Top page was like. Is like, I just went and looked at it, because I have no sense of self-preservation. The #1 article on there right now is titled "Tom Hiddleston Takes His Cute Spaniel Puppy, Bobby, For A Walk." I'm not kidding, and it goes downhill from there. I think I'd rather have Haejin.
I don't think it even existed the last time I was there. Or I don't remember it. I'm not even sure if they had communities when I first had an account there. Like almost 20 years ago I think.
They added it a couple years after I started - maybe 2006 or so? Like Trending, everyone who was seriously using the service figured out in about ten seconds that they need never look at it.
We might have just uncovered something we didn't intend to. Steemit is still in beta, and they spent time making a trending page, that has never worked on any platform, rather than building something actually useful to try to find good content. -.-
Meanwhile, LiveJournal took until 2006 to implement a similar feature.
Let's say that you work on your book part time and get a few dollars here or there. perhaps later, you will have a book that has been semi-financed. As far as other content goes, have fun, use it to learn about the platform or whatever you are interested in. I think that the way to engage people is to get them to understand more about the platform. Then they will fight for it.
Semi-financed with a first draft on the blockchain... Means no publisher will likely want to touch it, unless somehow it becomes a super popular series.
But it got me started. That's what I'm most thankful for.
You know, and the money. The money for the first chapter/part was AWESOME.
What I find is that the more I write, the more I can write. I am not saying the writing gets better though :D