It seems like larger society's confusion about a token of exchange and its underlying value has made it clear in this community, too. Everyone is chasing upvotes, trying to come up with this one story that will give them a huge payout, negating the social connections and creation of value that would do it in an organic way much later on (if at all.) But it seem like this is what steemit should really be about - building a community that sees a value in exchanging ideas, providing great, real info to people who are drowning in superficial, artificial info environment and showing that there is a better way for us as a society than mindlessly chasing profit all consequence be damned. Yet most end up here doing the very same thing they have always been doing "on the outside". I am very new here and I bet I'll get a lot of flak for this, but it does it not seem to you as a pretty degrading way to think about yourself and this whole steemit community? If all it is good for is a few (hundreds or hundredth of) dollar(s) than
was it really worth it to worry about a new idea and another way of exchange to finally uproot the old system?
How about we take it slow and really build the connections, upvote the content we actually like (and read) and do not keep the constant calculation in mind as if it was actually way more important than any of the social stuff.
Because it is only when we recognize and learn how to build more of this community value will we really be glad we are part of it, and the others will see it and want to be a part as well. And that is how you grow a real currency, where the token of exchange is an expression of the underlying richness of the source it represents, not mindless manipulations.
Finally, I think that humans will only be able to find themselves in a better position than computers if we are clear on what makes a human life actually worth living, and if we are actively creating an environment that supports that way of life. Approve of the content you really appreciate, write and share the things you care deeply about and see the value as the foundation and the digits as a mere reflection of that. Let us build something real here!
Right on. I've been a pretty strong advocate of the platform since it first came out. I saw it as an awesome way to make some money doing things I already do (namely browse and post on Reddit all day). I got some Steem, even if not a ton of money. As the ability to make money seemed to get more and more concentrated, I started to shift towards more community engagement/involvement. I've come to realize we're missing a very basic mechanic of content discovery. When you sign in you're met with a list of everything that gets submitted to the site with no way to aggregate a feed of the kind of content you're interested in. The lack of ability to subscribe to tags/topics you're interested in makes finding things you (and your readers) are interested in a lot more difficult than it should. At this point its almost up to luck for a new user to find your content. It also discourages me from spending a lot of time browsing the site because I have to wade through the whole feed to find content I'm interested in. Sure, I can just go look at my feed, but that's by author, not topic. If someone in my feed writes something I'm not interested in it "clogs" my feed and if a new user writes something I'd read, and I'm not following them, I need to hope I come across it.
I think Steemit has a whole lot of potential, but I feel this content discovery mechanism will just become more and more important as people sign up and make posts.