Familiar scenarios on Steemit:
Scene one: A user comments "nice post" on a bunch of posts and upvotes themselves $1.00 each till their voting power is down to 80%. Lather, rinse, repeat the next day.
Scene two: A user writes a good enough posts, upvotes reader comments to the tune of about 5 cents and then upvotes their own "thanks for commenting" replies to the tune if 75c each. I actually encountered that precise thing, a few days ago.
Scene three: A user spends 300 SBD on bidbots to upvote their fairly nondescript post to $750 and a trip to the "Trending" feed.
These are all things we see around here, on a daily basis.
What's Your Perspective?
Whatever we might think of the above actions is largely a matter of perspective.
Purple irises
Nobody's engaged in doing anything illegal; all three of these actions are within the boundaries of what the system allows people to do.
Some might say this is completely mercenary reward pool rape; some might say it's simple self-serving behavior and some might argue that it's simply someone acting wisely in service of maximizing the ROI on their investment.
The point of writing the above isn't for me to philosophize about what's "right" or "wrong," but primarily to point out that people have very different perspectives on the same thing.
On a personal level, I'm increasingly taking a similar stance to fellow writer @whatsup: we need to focus more on our own stuff, not so much on other people's. What I mean by that is focus on creating your own content according to your philosophical value set rather than spending so much time taking cues from others.
Stay true to yourself and lead by example. And remember to ENJOY yourself — because isn't that really what the point of life is? even the "working" point of life?
We're ALL "Self-serving"
I believe the essence of the human condition is that we tend to act in our own self-interest.
Mountain view
In a sense, you could argue that right now I am being "self-serving" by writing about these ongoing controversies on Steemit, rather than simply ignoring them and writing about flower arranging or dog grooming, instead.
I am being "self-serving" because I am trying to build my Steem Power balance to a point where I feel like I can give a "decent" upvote to what I perceive to be content that adds value and relevance to the platform.
By extension, I am "self-serving" because I am adhering to a strategy I believe will help Steemit grow and thrive in the long run, because I still want to be here, getting rewarded for blogging, three, five and ten years from now. I don't want this to just be a quick "flash in the pan" we milk a few dollars from and then move on to... or move BACK to... Facebook or Blogger. Oh, the horror!
Are you beginning to see how accusing people of being "self-serving" is ultimately a pretty slippery beast?
Our self-servingness just serves different objectives. And there's really nothing wrong with that, as long we're not serving complete self-destruction by being excessively short-sighted.
How about YOU? Are you "self-serving?" Even if your immediate inclination is to say no, do you see how it's a difficult concept to define? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!
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(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 180522 23:48 PDT
Nice post.
No, really, I mean it. Nice post! :-)
As GI Gurdjieff states, “In order to be able to help people one must first learn to help oneself. A great number of people become absorbed in thoughts and feelings about helping others simply out of laziness. They are too lazy to work on themselves; and at the same time it is very pleasant for them to think that they are able to help others. This is being false and insincere with oneself. If a man looks at himself as he really is, he will not begin to think of helping other people: he will be shamed to think about it. Love of mankind, altruism, are all very fine words, but they only have meaning when a man is able, of his own choice and of his own decision, to love or not to love, to be an altruist or an egoist. Then his choice has a value.”
http://musetude.com/brain-r-d/altruism/
I have often enjoyed the teachings of Gurdjieff, although I'm told he could occasionally turn into a screaming lunatic whose verbal abuse would cause his followers to leave in disgust. Then again, maybe they needed to...
Perhaps when we are at our best, we practice a form of "benevolent selfishness;" in which we consciously recognize that by giving help to others we are also helping ourselves; even at "base" levels that might hold true: When I give time and money to the homeless shelter, people are off the street and (ultimately) less likely to break into my house and steal something (the self-serving angle).
Thanks for the link; bookmarked the web site... looks like a lot of interesting information there.
Another point of view was that Gurdjieff was extremely efficient at driving off any student who became too "dependent" on him, sometimes at significant cost to himself. Having been born the year he died, I guess I'll never know which version to believe :-)
I have, in my time, come across teachers who reveled in having a flock of "dependent" followers. So who knows.
If you don't see yourself as self serving, you are - quite literally - delusional.
Not matter how you cut it.
Mother Theresa was a self serving as...Hitler.... how weird.
The strategies you employ t o satisfy your self serving agenda, are a very different matter of course.
Altruism is just self serving, in fancy dress.
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Altruism is, indeed, self-serving in fancy dress.
Humans are pretty much programmed to serve their self-interest in some way; we do things because we get a little shot of dopamine. A reward. Maybe the reward for altruism is merely "feeling good," but we're still doing it for a reward.
Some weeks back, Luke Stokes wrote a pretty good piece on Psychological Egoism... or how we can selfishly improve the world. Helping build a better/safer world for all means a better/safer world for ME.
I am self-serving because otherwise I wouldn’t be here but still be posting to self-hosted sites. Yet, Steem has shown me there’s a better path to explore, a path which mid- to long term can be more rewarding.
I haven’t found it yet but I’m still exploring it and working at things. It’s a long term effort.
Definitely is a long term proposition... but then all "building" is. I have a blog elsewhere that often gets 2000 views per post. Why? Because it has been active since 2002, and has built a solid following.
My "objective" is to do my part to help make sure Steemit is around in... what is that? Oh yeah, 16 years. That is a definite "community effort" but it's also self-serving.
This is what people forget. End last decade/earlier this decade I managed an indie blog network (medium sized) and we had some sites with awesome traffic, and in solid aggregators. We could pay decent bucks on those sites because they were started years before and all had founders who built out a solid network, often by working 16 hours and more on their site.
We met jealousy because we even were in Techmeme. That didn’t happen just like that but took years to be among the professional sites and also among the top tech blogs.
Other sites we started, with unknown authors, we invested thousands in to promote them and take them to 20k views/day. That didn’t happen over night either. Fly-by-traffic is fly-by-traffic, or sidedoor traffic. Only quality and consistency, as well as being outgoing as an author, makes people return.
Not ads. Not money. Longevity do.
Addendum: Sorry for the phat pingers incident. Busy in split view mode on a 10” iPad. Small up/downvoting thumb icons.
Very well articulated and definitely food for thought! I agree with and especially like the point you make that there's nothing wrong with being self-serving, "as long we're not serving complete self-destruction by being excessively short-sighted."
I think the main thing here is not to get blinded by your selfishness.
Good observation. And it is true that you are really doing well. Your impressive writing will help us who are new at steemit. The term"self-serving" has touched my mind.Thanks for sharing such kind of writing with all.
Money is one of those things once you earn it you deal with consequences of having it. You can only spend rest of your life trying to make amends or dealing with your conscience from how it was acquired.
Sure there are a few out there with 80%+ self-votes and they will come up with all kinds of excuses of why it’s ok. Same goes for the people who are at 0% self-voting week after week. At the end of the day it’s not the people you need to convince of why you do what you did but yourself that needs to accept that.
I’ve known people who have drank themselves to sleep overnight and eventually death due to the means they earned an income. The thing they desired so badly at any cost is also what took it away. Harsh but rather poetic in the grand scheme of money.
Will those who claim to be self-voting themselves so they can have the voting power they desire really give it to the people and if so will they do it for rest of their lives to make up for the fact in how they earned in? The funny thing about voting power every week the amount of SP total grows so you either need to beat the inflation or see a rise in price where less of it is still worth more than before.
garet post....
Haven't actually met this fellow "garet" but I'm sure he's a great guy...
wow very excellent this post .
Part of the whole "Decentralized" crypto influenced movement is self responsibility. People should not be judged or labeled for their non injurious actions, for the most part those that easily and quickly label, are just jealous they did not think of it.
This is why I don't bother with whether I think this or that is 'right or wrong' on Steemit. I really love it here and I'm so focused on my own posts and reading the ones I enjoy, that I don't even bother to consider what others are doing rightly or wrongly.
I didn't really understand bots so I tried a couple for a few posts and then made a post about my experience and what other's thought or did. Boy are people passionate one way or the other, which is really just the human condition. I came away none the 'wiser' on what is best, but just returned to my own self involved world of writing what I want, sharing my art and things I like to share and happily reading the posts I like and finding new people when I can. I just am very selfish of my 'me time' so I hate to have it taken up with my worrying about what others are doing I guess. :)
I feel when you do good things for others and don't advertise it , you are probably on the right trail. On a different note, most Buffet's are self serving!
Can I say " Nice Post" now?
excellent post ..loving to your blog.thanks for sharing..
I just downvoted the comment by @faisal79
20 times before so I just gave your comment a 20% downvote*.@faisal79 - You clearly realize that "excellent post","thanks for sharing" is considered to be spam since I've replied to you
remove this comment and everyone can whitelist me from appearing in future posts.@denmarkguy - You can
*If you continue posting in this way, I will continue flagging and the weight of my downvote will increase each time I reply until you stop. Please reply if my algorithm is mistaken.
Hello @cuddlekitten, always nice to see your cuteness around Steemit! PROOF that not all bots are evil or annoying.