I really do hope I'm wrong here but I sent this response to a friend regarding the direction steemit seems to be going:
It seems like others are popping up that share my sentiments.
If these guys are smart enough to start this, they're smart enough to
know that the vote for tits and duh marketing technique is going to
blow up at some point, first in a good way, building the value of the
currency that 100 of them hold 95% of, then in a terrible way once the
idiots find out that they've been duped and go blathering about it on
all the other sites, at which point the whales cash out, crash the
whole thing, and move on to the next scheme. If they really had the
make the world a better place thing in mind, they would know that
their marketing scheme is a terrible idea. The fact that it's going
on at all leads me to believe that $$$ is their primary goal.
I still have hope, but based on what I'm seeing, not much.
My friend: "Have to wonder if one of your posts making a couple thousand would change your opinion?"
As to not drive myself crazy and to stay true to my ethics, I've
decided that any steem I earn will get used for my burn a million$
act. As soon as my steem is worth a million$ and only then, I'm going
to withdraw it all, convert it to dollars, contact the press, and burn
it publicly, making the statement that money and happiness are not the
same thing....kind of like the modern version of Diogenes asking
Marcus Aurelius to get out of his sun. I think the message that would
spread would be the best thing I could do for the world and to get
attention/build tribe. As to not cause a crash and hurt others, I'll
be leaving the steem power vested in hopes of balancing things out.
I'm still looking for a better model for social networking but if
this is going to be a train wreck like the evidence is suggesting, it
will at least be interesting to watch!
In any case, I think Steem is going to revolutionize social media... If this one fails, another one will take its place. Very, very exciting times.
If they all turn into myspace after making a handful of people rich, which is what the model seems set up to do by using inherently corrupting concepts like capitalism and democracy, we're just spinning our wheels.
We get payouts split in SD and SP... I leave the SP there and cash out the SD. I'm not even keeping Steem as an investment, not a lot of money anyways. This is thing is a mess right now. May be fun to trade, but not safe as a investment.