Thanks for this post, @abh12345.
I had read the post and comment section you mention yesterday and I must admit I was all confused afterwards.
Because I inderstand what the guy says. And sometimes I start doubting too. And then I write a post, spend 6 sbd on upvote bots and then I feel guilty about doing so for two days...
Earlier this week someone called me stupid because I did not selfvote.
And he was probably right.
I took away all my delegations to bidbots, and I’m not selling my votes anymore.
I have delegated a lot of my sp, but the only returns I have are the small delegation profits from Trufflepig, and some small upvotes from for example sbi.
i’m hurting myself here financially. I could be earning good money by making different choices. And sometimes I wonder why I don’t just play along and think of myself first.
I’m glad to know I’m not the only fool around here..
And maybe I’m in denial, or just plain naive, by believing that the ‘pay it forward’ mentality will continue to raise a new generation of Steemians with a different mindset. I only hope the platform will survive long enough to make sure these people have a chance to grow their accounts an get a little influence
Yes you perfectly sum of the experience of people with actual moral principles. I keep seeing this problem framed in terms of money you "lose" by not being selfish. But that assumes you actually have, could have, or should have that money. As you point out, it doesn't work that way for people who see the truth.
There is a lot of money in prostitution, so I hear, and few barriers to entry. I have some idea of the caliber of prostitutes in my area, so I know its not necessary to be young or beautiful. But it doesn't fit with the truth of who I am and what I want for my family, so I never think about the prostitution income I am losing. I was never going to have it anyway.
Good point, @wholeself-in.
Your comment was perfectly timed, as I was just starting to doubt my decision to not use the bidbots anymore. :0)
You’vr pulled me
haha :) That was me towards the end of my bot activities - oh the shame! I actually consider myself using them worse than self-voting these days, but each to their own of course!
I think you are at a point where you can still choose which road you want to take, it's not too late to try another way and probably not crash STEEM too much :) You need to do what makes you feel most comfortable, or the fun will fade very quickly.
With the witness thing going (and death threats from @paulag) if I 'turned rogue', I wont be testing the waters unless there is a major swing in feeling from the guys I mention above.
re: the last paragraph, I have the same hopes as you. Which is why I'm still here, doing what I do.
Cheers.
One of the things that keeps running around in my mind is the comment in which was said that there were a bunch of people that maybe wanted to change, but they couldn’t trust each other. I understand, because if some give up, and the other simple keep on doing what they are doing, there is no solution, only loss for the ‘good guys’.
I see this message mainly as a good sign, maybe mindsets are shifting. I hope so, because I can not understand how you can keep on doing things of which even a newcomer can see that those are eventually going to kill the platform, and simply don’t care.
If the platform dies, so is the flood of money these people are taking...
Earlier today, I made my final decision: no more bid bots. Be the change you wanna see - lol
Leaves me with the next issue: community bots and community upvoting ‘requirements’. These last ones are no different than the so called ‘circle-jerks’ everybody is accusing the whales of...
OMG, there are so many things wrong with this platform... it’s sad, really...
It’s a shame so many awesome people hang around here, or I would probably be long gone. ;0)
I wonder if the creators were really so naive, thinking that the peer-to-peer quality reward system would actually work, and that there would be no people who would try to game the system out of greed. I can hardly believe that...
And you see, I've had the exact opposite thought, which might be assigning them more credit than any one really deserves.
What if this was all set up to see exactly what people would do with it? Aside from the code, there really is no governance. There are pages of etiquette, and plenty of users who buy into one philosophy or another, but really, the only tools that we ever get to do much of anything with seems to always put the rewards in the hands of those who all already have it.
So, it's either a grand experiment to see how people, in a rather benign way, rise up against the nameless, faceless oppressors and overcome, or it's just a means by which unassuming patsies can come in and do grunt work so that those with control of the rewards can continue to make money.
In the second scenario, the rats have already abandoned the ship, but they're trying to take as much of it as they can with them. In the former, there's still hope. The selfless still have a fighting chance, we're just never going to know.
Either way, it's assigning an actual formulated plan to what goes on here that someone behind the scenes masterminded. Would I rather believe that there's actual purpose to what happens here and that someone actually does know what they're doing? Yes. But that means either way, we're hamsters on the exercise wheel running as fast as our little feet can fly.
I completely agree. It’s like I said hard to believe someone sets up somthing like this without purpose.
As things are looking now, I tend to say they could have spared themselves the trouble and just could have come over and I would have told them. But of course I wouldn’t have given them such a fat paycheck as they’ve given themselves - lol
But I also believe there is hope -maybe not for the platform or the main goal of the social experiment, but the selfless have a chance to fight every day. If I look around me and I see how many people adapt to the ‘pay-it-forward’-mentality, which is ‘taught’ by the selfless, it gives me hope for the future. Not on steemit, but I like to believe people take that mindset home, teach it to their children, pass it on to others, which will - in the very long run - maybe make the world a better place one day.
Now why didn’t I think of setting up this social experiment myself. I love social experiments. I would love to be the one looking into our hamster cage and watch all those running hamsters ;0)
Too much drama for me. Hamsters don't seem to play well together. :)
Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one with the conspiracy theory going on. The alternative, that no one knows what the heck they're doing and we're just on a runaway freight train or rudder less titanic doesn't give me any comfort at all. I'd rather be a part of someone's evil plan, and know it, then be a part of a meaningless series of unfortunate events.
Okay, I'd rather not be either, but... :)
I get ya :0)
I've been wondering the very same thing myself. Is this a social experiment to see how we actually behave given no governance?
It's super easy to draw that conclusion. It's also much easier on the ego to think there's an actual purpose to it all, rather than we've all been duped for the personal gain of some scam artists with computer engineering degrees. :)
I like to believe there's rhyme or reason to the randomness or the contrariness. Things that are supposed to do one thing either not doing it or causing something else to get out of whack. I'd rather believe they're trying to come up with difficult, near impossible scenarios to see what we'll do to prevail. Will we give in to destructive behavior, just quit, or find the sustainable and fair way forward.
As I said, it gives a massive amount of credit and brain power to a pretty select, fairly unreachable few, but when things don't work the way they're supposed to work, there aren't many more options to consider. And none of them are going to be any better than they're doing it on purpose. :)
Never say never, but I'm with you on this one right now.
Honest and correct - sbi, qurator, makeawhale, etc. Whales and obvious larger 'CJs' could point to these and state they are no different.
I'm a fan of all the above, and I don't complain too much about CJs - it's their stake, mostly.
Keep on going though - got to be in it to win it, or place somewhere mid-table :)
One small glimpse of hope: Dinosaurs did go extinct...
The selfish gene is what makes this platform it seems.
And I think it is eventually the gene that will break it as well then the selfless leave and the selfish turn to sockpuppet wars and phishing.
This platform is build by oppertunity hunters, not by humanitarians? Could that be the issue here?
It’s indeed the selfnishness that will eventually cause the death of this platform.
But then a new one will rise, created by people who wan to earn big bucks. As soon as they’ve completed their mission, they’ll abandon the project and more greed will take over.
Unfortunately, that's human nature,
And about the dinosaures: it took them quite some time to get. I don’t think I have enough time in
My life left to see that happen. Maybe my grand-grand children will
in a way i like to think that we 'disobedient steemians' have formed a kind of virtual group in cyberspace. that does not need a discord manipulation channel to think for us what we should be thinking.
The group of people who really think for themselves are just stronger by logic, ethics and the sharing of idea's.
I have experienced the internet before it became 'www' that normal level of communicating is what is missing these days. Not really missing i see likeminded people like us who find eachother. Yet the greedy basterds that have a 'corporate' mindset they really don't see what we see. We cannot blame a blind man for being blind. So we need to let go. Let them be.... We need to form our own steemit somehow. So that they can become circle bottomfeeders (?) I mean, i hope not, but once there are no more minnows to feed on then all they can eat is ... shit...? Not sure...
Once this kind of split happens, then we are no longer an annoyance to them and they nolonger are shitting in our water.
HOW? hehehe... OK i'll admit it. I DON'T HAVE A CLUE. :-D
Maybe the roots of your dreads have and idea stored?
To me it looks like we don't need to abandon as such, we merely need to agree to disagree and lead separate lifes? Sounds just as bad LOL...
Choice is up to them i guess, offer a REAL solution and keep us on board, or loose the very group of people that could have made it work.