In order to really understand what was going on in the early days of Steemit, you need to binge watch the Steemicide Hotline videos, a parody series that I created to document the absurd dramas that were taking place on Steemit.
Each video I filmed, acted in, edited, and created all the sound edits too. Each video took me around 15 hours to create.
In it, you will find some really dramatic memories! There are whale wars, stories of Steemians who committed Steem Suicide (Steemicide) and even a user named @asshole who turned Steemit upside down, and into a very mean place for a while. A lot of the dramas were created by powerful whales flagging posts of regular Steemians who didn't deserve to be downvoted (this drama is still ongoing.)
You'll be interested to know that Steemicide Hotline is also featured in the Steem Wikipedia.
Many of you may have not been around when I made my first Steemicide Hotline video:
Vol. 1: Steemicide Hotline: The Cartoonist Part 1
[Dramas: undervalued posts, comic artists who didn't make much money in early days, and the problem of high engagement and low payout. This first drama was based on @mynameisbrian because he wasn't making much money early on, because of the dreaded Steem Guild, which in my opinion was a mistake that went on too long. Brain is actually doing well now, so this drama has been resolved.]
Vol. 2: Steemicide Hotline: The Cartoonist Part 2
[Dramas: trying to save people from quitting Steemit. Other social networks are covered: Akasha.]
Vol. 3: Steemicide Hotline: @a$$hole Part 1
[Dramas: A user by the name of @asshole appears on Steemit and wreaks havoc with the Steemians. This episode goes straight into analyzing the heart (or lack of) of @asshole's disturbed psychology. @asshole doesn't seem to be active on Steemit now.}
Vol. 4: Steemicide Hotline: @klye VS. @a$$hole Part 2
[Dramas: this episode dives deep into @klye's solutions for vanquishing @asshole. The meme, "Fight asshats with asshatery" applies since @klye admits he was once an internet troll.]
Vol. 5: Steemicide Hotline: @mynameiscomic VS. Steem Guild Part 1
[Dramas: The Steem Guild was creating an artificial trending page, with the high-paying posts being picked by a team, instead of individuals. @mynameisbrian and myself were the fiercest critics of the Steem Guild. This goes into Brian's strong feelings about his dislike of the Guilds.]
Vol. 6: Steemicide Hotline: @mynameiscomic Vs. Steem Guild Part 2, The Oracle
[Drama: The Matrix is a big influence in this episode. The Oracle predicts that in the future, a sun will be delivered to Steemit to save it from collapsing. @mynameisbrian is skeptical until a vase hits him on the head.]
Vol. 7: Super Future Steemit Tag Trendolizer
[Drama: people want to know what will trend so they can write about those topics. This episode shows one of @dantheman's newest inventions: a Tag Trendolizer AI machine that will figure out what topics will trend in the future.]
Vol. 8: Steemicide Hotline: The Dollar Vigilante!
[Drama: The Dollar Vigilante is a controversial character in Steemit. There was a time when he used to show up regularly to comment on his followers' posts. When he abandoned Steemit, and stopped commenting, he received a lot of flags by some big whales.]
Vol. 9: STEEMICIDE HOTLINE: Why'd You Have To Flag Karen?
[Drama: Smooth flagged popular Steemian, Karen and creates a lot of bad blood in the process.]
Vol.10: STEEMICIDE HOTLINE: @fidelity Vs. Reality
[Drama: This episode is an origin story of one of the mega whales. Can you guess who it is about? User @fidelity, who is an investor is also involved in this story. It also concerns how Steem was initially distributed to miners when the coin was first launched and how the excessive wealth affected certain mega whales.]
As Steemit has grown, I see that the dramas are less than they were in the early days. However, they will never go away completely, as long as you mix humans with power and greed. Perhaps the next one will include a unicorn......
Cheers,
Stellabelle
This is so relatable. There are a whole host of feelings a regular steemian goes through: Excited about joining Steemit -> Making the first cent in post rewards -> Feeling like quitting job because the introduction post made a good amount of money -> Subsequent posts getting no attention -------- Disappointment stage ---(few months of continuous writing) ---- Posts start doing well.
It's a roller coaster. I am a full blown addict who had to take time off at one point because it was getting to me plus I thought Steemit might just continue going down........
It can be very depressing, especially if someone sees the same people day after day. I am sure people are not happy that my posts do well...........but I cannot do anything about that. I can only suggest ideas to help others.
Thats true. Most people don't have the patience to build something from scratch long enough to see its potential. Users with higher reputation are mostly the ones with high post rewards or else its just a passing celebrity making quick money. And it takes quite a long time to cross 60.
thats exactly what happened to me except I did not introduction post, I was screwed by the hard fork and posts were stuck at zero (i think devs paid me back later it was weird) and then i didnt do an introduction post untill i already had followers etc....and posts got atttention, ok maybe its NOT what i wentthrough but i understand...similar...but yeah i feel like i kept powering through getting little attention by just SEEKING OUT whales i figured out u coould comment on whales posts, find a post similar to mine link to it, not in a spammy way, just to say "hey lcheck my post out, " after leaving a detailed comment abo THEIR post and upvoting a bunch of whales posts, they notice and upvote back, just that their upvotes mean alot more
Yeah! And sometimes you would go check steem whales to see the usual time they come online and post a couple hours before, to make sure your post gets noticed haha
It was vey strategic back then :)
@ingloriousaction - wait, are you saying I shouldn't have quit my job?? uh-oh. haha
As long as you are making enough money on Steemit :p
unicorns fighting off drama ;)
good one!
Hey there @stellabelle been a long time...its frenchfry from the Dash slack. Great stuff here, finally found my way to Steemit. Upvoted and Followed. Hope life is great
hi there! Nice to see you on here!
I stalled to long on signing up here but playing catch up lol. Really awesome community here on Steemit so I am pretty hooked. Wanted to say thank you for all the looking out you did while me and my fiance were over at Dash. I kind of got enticed to do a little work for PIVX there for a little while but struck out now on my own to just invest back in crypto and write about it, seems my hidden talent I wasn't aware of lol. Glad to see your doing well. Keep in touch, wishing you all the best
Hahaha! These are great. Thanks for sharing! :D
This post received a 41% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @stellabelle! For more information, click here!
Just finished reading the post and watching all the videos in between making screens and printing a job. It was very entertaining. The characters were sometimes so endearing especially @mynameiscomic, @cheetah and @sepraf Thank for the laugh :D
you're welcome, i had a blast making them.....some were painful, too....the Karen episode especially
OMG this is GOLD and I'm only on the first Steemicide Hotline vid. You are a funny gal. That puppet a with the jiffy marker eyebrows and mustache, hahaha.
i have an odd remnant from childhood: dolls and puppets feel real to me....their personalities just emerge organically.....this is a sign of either a true artist or an insane person. I like to think I'm the former, but who knows?
well it's refreshing seeing such posts like yours. Entertaining and informative coz It's been a bit overwhelming here. So much, too much to learn. I'm trying to just take it one bite at a time and relax doing it with the 50+ open steemit related tabs on my browser, lol. I think I'm doing well considering I've only been here for 6 days. I'm not stressing about it but it's still overwhelming here to say the least.
ha ha! that cracked me up. you sound like me when i first found steemit. it's so much like a rabbit hole! 50 tabs!!!!!
it's more like a termite nest
have your hallucinations from sleep deprivation kicked in yet?
how did you know? I keep seeing phantom steemit notifications slide out from the top right of my screen and even my vision when I'm going about my regular day. Yikes!!
Hi! Have you heard about @krwhale? It is similiar with @randowhale. For your information please click on.
The first picture looks so awesome :D
The more Unicorns the better ~!
Hilarious!
thanks
Are you coming back stellabelle? maybe as a secret writer?
i am working on Steemgigs at the moment....
Someone else said they're interested in doing the Secret Writer project, which is fine by me.
i posted on steemgigs inchainBB for someone to create the website i bought a domain for etc cuz im too lazy to do it, $100 for whoever can make a cragslist or localbitcoin clone, not withthe escrow, just a place someone can post ads deending on thei city, so people ca buy and sell altcoins liek steem for cash like localbitcoins
all the devs were liek 'Wah this is not enough! $100 for ALL that work?" and i waslike "Sheesh sorry i offered to create work in the world!"
its like their all autistic and they cant create they can only program, and they need us creative types tpp tell em what to do, and a mangement type to organize it all
we should find who fits the character archtypes here! find out who shoul be the CEO who shoul be the writer who should be the doctor or healer who can be teh Mage who can be the builder, etc maybe those are all wrong archetypes but u know what i mean
Yeah, it becomes a pain in the ass to manage all those people working, despite the fact that the work itself might not be that tedious.
Funny but there are a lot of truths to what you are sharing here. Thanks for being entertaining and educational.
you're welcome. I put a lot of work into those videos, and i made a lot of them when the price of Steem was low. Plus, they never got very much exposure.
this was cool to get! thanks
I had no idea you steemers went through all that haha that is really something else. " im gunna do it, im gunna make my last post!" Bahaaa
I'm sure we will have plenty of more up and downs as the world adopts it. lol
I know it wasn't really drama, but it caused a lot of jealousy and stood out in my mind from the early days. How could a makeup tutorial earn $40,000? That seemed to be talked about for a while.
the reason it did was because in the early days of Steemit, it was a nerd sausage party. There were like 3 women on the platform: myself, @gardenlady, and a couple other women who don't even want to say that they are female. It was a male nerdgasm party, and when @guerrint made that first makeup tutorial, all the nerd-men went nuts. There were no makeup tutorials on Steemit, so it marked a turning point in possibly mainstream adoption around the corner. That's why.
And that post about releasing balloons into the sea. More pollution for us!
I just checked and @guerrint, the "makeup girl" has not posted in 5 months. She left Steemit.....
I went and looked at her profile. After the post payouts started to decrease, she just powered down and left. So much for someone who is 'supporting' STEEM haha
Haha so dope
Never forget that. Good time to remind people it can happen again. Nice to know ;-) At least hodlers did not sell at .06 cents or whatever ridiculous low number we hit a few months back.
well, a lot of us sold at that price, to diversify. No one knew what was going to happen
True. I was pissed for a while since I threw in valuable Bitcoins last fall only to watch them evaporate on paper. Now the Steem is worth much more than Bitcoin at $600 from then. Lesson is just don't over invest so if bad situation happens just hodl. Maybe add more at bottom.
exactly, or in my case, I earn crypto. The only thing I lose is time...
Indeed. For people who have the money but not the time works the other way. Steem appeals to both groups well. Steemit is genius and so are many other cryptos.
yes, i agree. Money is just energy and time....whatever you have the most of will be added to Steem.....it's brilliant, huh?
Thanks for these! I'm loving catching up on the history of the platform, since I'm brand new here, and it's great to know what the possibilities are.
oh my god, we've been through so much...
Curiously speaking, is that user who made that huge amount from a make up tutorial video still active? .....i need to do a down-to-earth interview with her🤔
i am not sure, but her name is @guerrint so look her up
Oh thanks dear @stellabelle, happy to get this golden response 😄😄😄😄 from you.
you caught me! I'll be off soon, to finish some more projects!
Ok, be safe....saw you on chainbb and have been enjoying it since i started using it yesterday.😊
no, she has not posted in 5 months.
I hope all is well with her, i was trying to locate her on steemit chat.
I heard she is posting under anon accounts, tried getting her to do an interview for Steemycam
Oh really?What is the account name?
A lot of people just abandoned Steemit. There are lot of dead accounts....
Jeez.....i hope there is a way Steemit can regain all the fallowing Steems in those dead accounts.
This is hilarious. Haha. Looks like there is already Steemit early days nostalgia even though it launched last year. Great article.
There's a lot of that. The Steem Guild was particularly hideous! I couldn't believe such a bad idea went on as long as it did.
Thank goodness for change.
It would be awesome to have some new episodes. I'm still wondering what happened to the doll that came back from the photoshoot. I hope she is OK.
yes, I am working up some ideas for a new episode......still thinking where the feelings are, as I work from them........of course the only drama happening now includes the country of Korea....maybe I'll have some feel good moments of finding Steemigigs...
One alternative might be to use those same characters to do some basic tutorials in a more humorous kind of way.
Amazing work! You put so much work into this :)
This will be all that much bigger in a few years from now when Steemit is several times its size and slowly becomes the future of social media. :)
@stellabelle Love it! It's always greaat to be educated on Steemit! :) If you get the chance, can you upvote my newest post where I teach you how to $20/Day on Steemit? :) Thanks! https://steemit.com/steemit/@parkermorris/how-to-make-usd20-day-on-steemit-with-no-money Love it! :) Those are good posts! If you get the chance, can you upvote my newest post where I teach you how to $20/Day on Steemit? :) Thanks! https://steemit.com/steemit/@parkermorris/how-to-make-usd20-day-on-steemit-with-no-money
it was viewing those early days of blood that turned my off of this platform until last week 😉
$164 in 2 hours...thats over $80 an hour...did you ever think youd be making $80 an hour working from home?
And woah i didnt know about dollar vigilante getting flagged after he abandoned steemit ! yeah i see his youtube videos where him and Trace Mayer talk about steemit, and they ADMIT how much money they made but go "BUT I TAKE EVERYTHING OFF STEEMIT IMMIEDATLY" like we are some sort of HYIP pyramid scheme that u have to get all ur money out of IMMEIDTALY lol far from it!
Anyone smart enough to keep steempower will be vastly rewarded! steempower is KEy to getting a larger share of that new steem mined everyday (for all u noobs out there wondering if u should power up...)
but also yeah dollar vigilante should have kept postin!G NO IDEA why he stopped!
the great $4 down to 20 cent price of steem tragedy hurt alot of people who bought in at $4 but look, u could have earned your way back by now! PLUS I had some idea that steemit was from 2014 lol steemit has only been around since 2016! MARCH 2016! we are barely a year old! and peopel complain about the price of steem going down????
wow just wait once we have over $4 steem everyone who bought in at $4 can relax and everyone on youtube will want to jump in hahah even tho they COULD have gotenin when steem was $1!
I just joined Steemit a week ago. It is nice to have some back story without seeming like gossip. I wish someone would produce something like this for new jobs. When you start a new job, every looks bright and shiny. The official story never includes the drama and the true work experience.That is thought of as being negative. Is it really negative if it is true?
hahaha this is funny!, following on youtube... Still got much videos to watch and catch up!... thanks for the entertainment! :D :D :D
Hey Stellabella, this is a really awesome post you put together with some great videos. That is hilarious haha. You truly are the Queen of steem.