Steem's utility is the ability to draw more from the reward pool. That said, if someone buy's a bunch of stake and uses it to promote their own posts. Then people like you, the NewSteem Culture are going to teach them a lesson, and that lesson is that they shouldn't have invested.
That the utility of Steem is a lie, and not to buy. Also, I really get a kick out of dumb ass shit like your third tag "show me where it hurt you," the whole idea of using child molestation as a parallel proves that downvotes are not an appropriate thing to normalize.
"The film's title comes from the phrase "Show me on the doll where you were touched", often asked of young children who have been the victims of sexual abuse. The film covers multiple lives of victims and victimizers, sharing the pain of how early childhood traumas can continue throughout adult lives." - Wiki
Maybe the downvote posse needs a new metaphor to poke fun at, something less along the lines of child rape. Oh wait, I think I get it.. so the whales are like twisted adults and those with low stake are like defenseless children... and it's funny to fuck them in the ass?
Nope. Yep, that analogy is shit. Try harder.
"Although a team of psychiatrists predicted that only about one-tenth of 1 percent of the participants in the Milgram obedience research would fully obey the experimenter's commands and administer the highest shock level on the generator, to Milgram's astonishment, 65 percent of the participants (26 out of 40) fully obeyed the experimenter's commands completely, despite the convincing cries of agony from the learner. In addition, all participants who reached 450 volts obeyed the experimenter's command to continue by using the 450-volt switch until the experiment ended. " - source
The experimenter in this scenario are the authors of the hard fork.
The more time I spend on Steem, the more I think it is controlled by a small army of self-congratulating psychopaths who have little understanding of human emotions or behavior.
Nailed it in one sentence. Well done.
What's more, STINC added "reward disputes" to their GUI after the first whale wars. These wars caused people to clamor for a fix and put the company under so much pressure that they lazily added it in as an additional catch-all reason for flags. Essentially, what they did was wash their hands of the problem by adding a new rule because there was no way for them to control how people used the flag tool. I think it was a pretty disgusting move because it allows for aberrant behavior.
After the BTC bubble deflated, they moved from not only allowing it but also trying to normalize it by changing the flag to a downvote button and placing it parallel to the upvote button. They're doing this in a desperate attempt to bolster Steem's market value, but they may as well be shooting themselves in the foot or cutting off their nose to spite their face because they're rapidly souring content curators and stakeholders to the platform.
All the while you have the witnesses who signed onto this mess whispering their siren song into your ears "just let it happen," "it will be over soon," muahahaha, "show us on the doll where the whale touched you." Justine didn't say that, but I'm not going to name drop. Name dropping isn't my goal. I aim to shine a light on this issue and let people know how many of the Untermensch content creators view this new downvote culture.
Just imagine going to the antique roadshow and approaching one of their curators/appraisers with an ancient vase from the Ming Dynasty. The curator says it's in good condition, you know, people will pay you top dollar for this, probably somewhere in the realm of $750,000. But I think it's shit. Then the curator takes the vase and smashes it violently on the floor. You look to the ground at the valueless bits and chunks and listen as they walk away laughing maniacally.
That's just one analogy against content disagreement. Content disagreement automatically falls into the reward dispute category because people naturally feel that content they disagree with is "over-rewarded." If you think about it that way, then everything is fair game, opinion flags and all.
There's another argument for why people should live and let live as opposed to downvote, and this is because all stake has merit. The moment a stakeholder thinks their stake doesn't have merit because their upvotes are thwarted, they dump to the market, and this causes the value of steem to go down unless there are buyers ready and willing to altruistically buy stake solely for the purpose to read content all day and curate as a full-time job.
This hurt my feelings.
@skepticology agreed with you 100%
Show me on the doll where the tag hurt you, PZ.
@r0nd0n It hurts my brain that people ("not Justine") can compare downvotes to child molestation, and then say this behavior needs to be normalized. Some of these people also say that you've got issues if you don't agree with this. Well, shit, call me a fucking outlier. I don't think it's cool, and they're just going to drive people away from the platform by pretending it's cool. (a.) I've always seen downvotes as a bit reward rapey, but when people who promote the normalization of downvotes see them as rapey too, and compare them to the worst kind of rape, then you've got to ask yourself: "Just what in the fuck is going on!?"
Also, if your going to employ game theory, so the game itself can win, then you don't understand game theory. Game theory is so that you can win, not the game itself. But people get confused, especially large stakeholders. They confuse themselves with the game, because if the game wins, then their stake has value and they can dump it like a hot potato. What they fail to realize is when they shed their humanity in an effort to win, and then show with their actions they don't respect the upvote-autonomy of other stakeholders, then nobody is going to want to become a stakeholder and Steem loses.
I mean at this point, with the NewSteem Culture they're promoting, what is the selling point? Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the old Steem. For the most part people just minded their business (save for the special folks) and rewarded content they appreciated with their upvotes. This is very similar to the market, people buy the shit they like and ignore the rest. But now because of some new behavioral modification push we're supposed to buy the stuff we like and go all Gallagher with watermelons on the posts we dislike because reward envy. That's just the stupidest shit I've ever heard of, Jesus Christ. Just imagine if I took that behavior into the real world with me, I'd be triggered by everyone who has a nicer car. Tempted to slash the tires of people with SUVs because "environment".
The author of this post talks about toxic behavior but fails to see the real toxic behavior, and only aims to normalize it. And I know you like to talk about the tragedy of the commons r0n but the truth of the matter is that Steem has always used extra rewards from the pool as a carrot to lure in investors. So, if we don't respect what they do with their upvotes, people will take note, and they won't invest.
Getting back to the tragedy of the commons, as long as their is one witness there will always be Steem and a reward pool that replenishes daily, but without willing stakeholders to steadily prop up the market value by purchasing Steem, then Steem's trade value becomes worthless. Beggers can't be choosy, and you can't have a valuable alt coin without accepting the fact that people who invest in it will either want to make a profit, or a killing.
Thanks for the question r0n, it really made me think. And I think we're really making progress in these sessions, but I see our time is up for today so... We'll see you again next week, same time same place.
o7
P.S. To answer my own question about: "Just what in the fuck is going on?" What's going on is the NewSteem Culture is trying to make an army of people who will fail the Milgram Experiment. The interesting part about this whole phenomenon is that the teachers get confused when the learners shocks back ("revenge downvotes"), and they see it as a travesty or a crime. It's almost laughable TBH. It's like when the U.S. runs a bombing campaign on a foreign country thousands of miles away and then complains about the "cowardly terrorist" who claps back in the form of an IED after having seen their whole family slaughtered.
If downvotes don't hurt (or cause physical harm), which technically they don't, then the same thing applies to revenge downvotes. You can't have it both ways without being a god damned hypocrite. The harms that downvotes cause are psychological, emotional, and potentially financial depending on how you perceive it. It's closest parallel in the real world are economic sanctions, and most of us know that economic sanctions are tantamount to an act of war.
Steem’s utility is the ability to pool from an inflation pool? How is that a utility? And how is that something sustainable that people would want to invest in? Hard to take you seriously after that.
The rest of your comment is just a bit over the top and therefore I’m not really sure how to respond.
So I’ll go with - I’m not a part of any posse, and I’ve been downvoting long before “new Steem” and I don’t think I mentioned small or large accounts here.. so again, I think your comment is quite disgusting for many reasons.
If you find downvotes something so violent as to point a harmless tag and then bring of child molestation and rape.. and somehow compare them to downvotes and why downvotes shouldn’t be normalized.. then maybe you should go check out whaleshares .. or relax a bit and do some research on what downvotes are and how the rewards pool works.
Or keep getting up in arms over a tag.. cause that makes a ton of sense. I’m sure someone will come along to leave you a comment, as you seem like their type of recruit.
Have a wonderful day.
If you don't like it, fork it out of the code. Make it so that all votes are equal regardless of your investment.
I'm not saying it is sustainable, but this is what Steem is, it's how they coded it. In order to give their token a market value, they had to give it a utility and that utility was you can draw more rewards if you own more Steem.
Well you used the tag "showmewhereithurtyou", it's not just a meme it has a meaning and it stems from how child psychiatrists talk to children who have been molested. Maybe you didn't know what it meant, maybe I jumped the gun assuming that you did. I think the parallel is quite disgusting too, which is why I pointed it out. Did you not know what that combination of words meant?
Well “show me where it hurt you” sure as fuck isn’t the same as “show me on the doll where they touched you”.. that’s quite a stretch, don’t you think?
“Show me where it hurt you” is often asked when someone acts as if something physically caused them pain and they are being asked where the pain is - “Show me where it hurt you.” It’s also used to sarcastically point out that whatever the individual is complaining about is silly and obviously didn’t actually harm them.
So while I can understand how someone could jump to that conclusion based on some words in common, the phrase you mentioned is not even what I used or was referring to and quite frankly, wouldn’t.
Well, I'm glad to know you wouldn't go there. Some whales who also enjoy downvoting, float the doll meme a lot in the various channels. If I misinterpreted what you said, then I sincerely apologize. If you look at the link below, even the internet jumps to that conclusion, so I'm glad you could understand how I did.
http://images.google.com/images?q=show+me+where+it+hurt+you
I'll shuffle on now, but I do think if we don't want people to engage in shameless self-voting with massive stake. Then Steem ought not offer massive votes as a reward for large stakeholders. Either that or mod out self voting entirely, but keep in mind there is a cause and effect to everything. When or if you are able to successfully eliminate "abuse," you might also find that nobody is willing to invest. Without the investors, bad actors or good, the rewards in the reward pool would be meaningless because there are no buyers to prop up the market value of Steem.
Have a good day Justine,
sorry if I read you wrong there.
Nah it’s fine and I understand how it could be taken that way. Maybe it’s a regional phrase used here or something, as it’s pretty common here and don’t believe it’s stemmed from the one you referenced, but hey I could be wrong.
I also think there are whales who enjoy them and use them for revenge, it’s why I mentioned the importance of countering those sorts of downvotes and offered my help in doing so.
I think we have along way to go for Steem to be successful and I agree we have to find a balance. The shared inflation pool always seems to add additional difficulties.
Thanks for your comment and for pointing out some important concerns.
Have a good day.
I'm not sure you know what my grasp of work is, weren't you the one trying to sell me on UBI the other month. Is that what work is?
No, that is not a stretch, that is exactly what it seems to be suggesting. @thoughts-in-time is perceiving the point of the tag exactly how I imagine it should be perceived. It certainly comes off as if it was rooted from that phrase used in criminal cases.
You appear to me, from your content, to be a brash individual that enjoys poking at people where you can. So, I imagine the tag was accurately conveying the joke that seems to be intended.
Well I cannot control how someone perceived a tag, only explain how it was intended.. which I already explained.
Care to show me examples of where I’m poking at people to somehow back up your incorrect perception? As this post was about not making excuses for toxic behavior, as well as offering support to anyone receiving malicious downvotes.. how absolutely horrid of me.
Or was it my last post about the importance of free speech that could be protected on the platform.. or that post I wrote about how amazing the community is.. or was it the cows? Did the cows set you off?
I’m blunt, and honest and after so long of being harassed.. I also don’t take any shit. If you perceive that as me being a brash individual who likes to poke at people.. fair enough, but I’d say you need to work on your perception skills personally, as my actions show nothing of the sort.
Simply saying your actions don't convey it does not make it true. If your behavior signaled to my mind that you are unnecessarily aggressive and insulting then that is what happened. Now, I recognize that some people can be overly sensitive, and hey, that kind of stuff bugs me too.
However, I find your way of speaking "toxic" in the youthful way where young people don't recognize that the world is not black and white and that your words are not imbued with righteousness that can correct wrongs. I was the same, I recognize it in people because I was just like that. Then I read How To Win Friends & Influence People and got over that stage.
Don't misunderstand me, I still rip people a new one from time to time, but still, I try to attack the action, not the person. Your post here derided the human experience of those that differ on the subject of votes than you. If you wanted to be effective, you would have performed better by having a respectful tone, addressing those people's concerns, and suggesting your rationale for having downvotes.
Economics, for the most part, is about * want* with occasional need thrown in. Since Steem is hyper-capitalism tethered to a social network it is likely wise to keep in mind how successful business people tend to approach things. Human experience is deeply respected by the business person. People born with a silver spoon tend to not understand this, but success depends on it.
The entrepreneur keeps a fussy, critical, sensitive mentality when assessing whether to invest in a product or not. This is because they are looking for any possible inconvenience or frustration the customer/buyer might experience that could hinder sales. User experience is king.
Now, why did I say that? You lack that mentality, and it hurts Steem as a product. Steem is a product, plain and simple, and if its user experience sucks it will fail. Your argument is that a good user experience requires a bold flag culture, I can respect you having this opinion, however, it does no good to deride other users that express the flag culture as a negative experience.
What you believe is best for Steem might be true and it might not be. However, disregarding the user experience of others and belittling them is not good for business. Steem is about 11,000+ real users when you discount all the accounts below 500 SP, which means that it is pathetically small. And you wish to alienate users? I encourage you to think that out a bit more.
Maybe you shoulda read the post again, as actually I’m talking about normalizing downvotes and countering (supporting) those that receive them out of malice. Clearly you don’t know what I’m speaking of when I say those who lose it over a downvote are not excusable, unless you think threatening someone’s life is a good user experience?
Again, I think my actions and how I support small accounts as well as how I try to help develop a better user experience are a better factor in determining my goals then your quick judgement. Just because you feel I’m toxic because you read some tone you didn’t like doesn’t really mean much to what the reality of the circumstance is.
You seem to be preaching to me about how I need to accept how others may not feel the same way as me, while also telling me I need to see things your way. Seems we can just agree to disagree.
I think properly used downvotes are vital, I also said I don’t like the way they are abused. If you disagree, write a post about it.
Also, I’m not that young.
Spend some time with trauma victims and you will understand how your words are harmful.
I’ll talk to myself and let you know how it goes. Thanks.
Good point. A utility is a state or quality of being useful. The only reason I can think of for investing in Steem is the bigger upvote, that would be it's utility to me. A bigger upvote allows you to reward yourself more. It used to be right next to the publish button, there was an upvote post button to save you the extra step of upvoting it after you published.
True, but yeah powering-up is the next logical step to get there. Powered-up Steem has merit because it takes longer for it to go back to the market. Now if you show someone with powered up Steem that you won't respect the merit of their upvotes, it gives them good reason to dump their stake to the market which drives prices down.
Yeah, I've seen you tell large stakeholders to fuck off in more or less words, and you've got very little invested here. So, I'm sure you don't care whether they dump to the market or not. In the end when it's downvote happy whales holding the bag and nobody else cares to buy in because they've soured people to the experience, than I guess it's tough titties for them when the musics over.
Point is the first interface added reward disputes after they realized their wasn't shit they could do to get people from abusing the flag tool. Since then, they've slowly been trying to manipulate the behavior of users into one of your communist dystopias. People going to hate it, nobody's going to buy Steem now. Sell me on a reason to buy Steem.