Is Steemit doomed because people are in it for the coin and not the content?
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, The man who never reads lives only one.” Jojen
As a digital marketing consultant it is my job to train business owners and marketing people how to get people to actually read, slow down the pace of life to really take in what you are saying.
People are reading less and less each day to the dismay of our parents who knew the magic and meditation in reading. My own mother would take a book to bed and read till the early hours, I asked her once and she told me she is totally lost in the pages and feels wonderful after any period of reading like a kind of meditation. Something she feels is lost on most of our generation.
There are still good writers out there I am sure, sorry I don't include J.K. Rowling in the genre up there with Twain and Dickens, however much I admire her entrepreneurial spirit. I am talking about writers who can without any effort make you sit for the time needed to be drawn into a book and absorb the story as pure enjoyment, and not make you fall asleep or see it as any kind of a job.
Most of us blog every day because we are told if we want to keep our business effective online, and for those of us who earn a living online to keep earning and maintain a brand. Yet experts are telling us to break it down into smaller paragraphs, have bullet points, lots of images, highlight the words, have a take away because alas what you are saying is not really going to interest anyone these days.
Which brings me to my concern about Steemit and any site that pays you to read and comment, how many people are up-voting, replying to blogs with the blandest of replies, and following people to get paid in their crypto currency only?
Everyone wants to earn a living online, a tiny percentage are doing it, it took me 8 years of hardship to earn a salary which is decent for Thailand, so with this in mind I fear many will be just playing the game and not really blogging only to impart good advice or just get something off your chest which is the real crux of why some make it as bloggers and most don't make it and are back on the bus to their old jobs with the tail between their legs.
You have to stick to your passion as it is only your passion, your legacy you want to leave to the world which will see you through.
IF, the majority of Steemians are just playing the game for cash only and are scanning articles for the meat and get out as fast as they can, then as much as it hurts me to say it the site will rise and fall, when there will only be a few top pioneers who saw it before anyone else are making the most and the rest try for a few months and disappear in a capitalist catastrophe.
“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
― C.S. Lewis
I hope not, but someone had to say it....
Alan
"There are no guarantees in this earthly journey". "I is better to have loved than not at all", same apply s to Steemit. I love the concept of Steemit and believe it will survive, but not without growing pains.
You are right, even steemit home page does not help. Look at the quality of posts making home page. Many dedicated writers are not getting views even though they are determine, they can only be for so long. Steemit too have to make adjustment as more and more people join, if not its quality would suffer.
Well, I for starters read your post. So we can conclude, that some do.
I will try and answer your post with this question. I hope it will make sense to do it this way.
Are Steemit users only in for the currency they can accumulate?
Many probably are, but don't forget that the same is true for every other big social media. If you take a look at Facebook, you will see no end of pages copy-pasting "funny memes" and "fail videos" on the off chance of becoming the next 9GAG type of page, and some day earning some ad-money.
Under each funny post, you will see a "funny" comment by a public user account trying to harvest extra likes. Oftentimes it is barely related to the original post. It will be the most upvoted, even if it is blatantly stolen from somewhere else, simply because the person have been doing this for so long, that he have accumulated likes.
On YouTube people copy-paste videos or upload zero-effort reactions to get some cheap likes. Commentators post the same nonsense on every popular video in hopes of getting likes and sometimes views for their own channel. On social media like these you even see the classic: "If you follow me; I follow you", it provides an insignificant amount of value compared to a follower who like your content, but people do it everywhere anyway.
Some people even try to post upvote-bait on Reddit because they love the virtual recognition they feel.
Facebook and YouTube sure hasn't fallen anywhere. That is because they also provide value to many. Steemit provides value to me reading your post and maybe to you reading my comment or someone else's post.
On a slightly other note, I don't see how you can discount J.K. Rowling, since she has spellbinded a generation of readers and now mainstream popularized the idea of a protagonist growing with "his" audience. Growing with its audience is something Steemit will most likely do as well. It has only been slightly more than a year, so we cannot discount it just yet.
Even if Steemit somehow fails, someone else will pick up the torch, like Facebook after Myspace and Google after Altavista. However, I don't think it will fail only on people just "playing the game for cash", as people do that everywhere. The only difference is that Steemit, at least currently, takes away the middleman and the constant Facebook style overflow of sponsored messages.