Definitely a tricky subject to talk about. I've been on Steemit for over a year and just started using bots like 4 days ago, just out of curiosity more than anything.
Unfortunately, everything good will be squeezed of it's goodness until it starts to dry out. Steemit has become no different. That's not to say that I don't still love the platform, but I find myself relying on 'who' and 'what' I know within the platform, the same way I do in the real world. It used to be more focused on content.
I do miss the days where a quality post could get $40-50 just because it's good. Now it requires knowledge of the inner workings of bots and communities - not to say that's a bad thing, but it makes it very difficult for newcomers that would have no way of knowing that out of the gate.
I love to see newcomers creating great content and succeeding, because to me that's what this platform is all about. It shouldn't matter how much SP you have, but just what you have to bring in.
As you said, it is what it is. I agree with you wholeheartedly, but like any social construct, status and power will develop inevitably one way or another. To an extent it's important to fight for this idea of quality over status, but also, the community is built by it's own.
Just keep doing what you're doing!
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. It may be that someday I may "need" to use paid upvote bot's, but until that day I'll prob grumble and complain about the abuses of them. I do hope that someone would create the sort of human curated upvote system that wasn't guaranteed. But I know that there isn't big money in it so it may never happen. But I can dream can't I? lol thank you so much for your support. It really does seem to be a lot of who you know, and quality work certainly doesn't hurt. I think I'm going to try to just have fun for a while, and not put my heart fully into it. Perhaps once I know enough of the right people then I can go back to what I love.
Totally would like to do some music stuff though. If you have an old piece lying around and would like. I may be able to come up with some lyrics and lay a vocal track down for it, all depends on if it the inspiration comes. If you would be interested in something like that possibly let me know and we could meet up of discord. Sadly I have no musician friends in New Zealand, so it's hard to do anything like that here.
Totally hear you - I'm never going to put an abundant amount of energy into bots, but it never hurts to know how they work. I've gotten this far without them and I've been just fine. Success is relative - I don't need to be a whale to be a part of a great community.
And of course man, you should join our 'Steemit Local Music Society' Discord. You'd be very welcome and I'm sure it would help you find a musical outlet (I'm always willing to help). I'm one of the co-owners - we've got lots of heads in there who are making music and livin' the dream lol, myself included. I'll leave the join link here:
https://discord.gg/zku8RFM