And there it is: The death knell of steemit. Or rather, the death knell of the steemit people thought @ned and @dan wanted.
What do I mean?
Many people, both old-timers who've been here for over a year, and newbies like myself, have been labouring under the misapprehension that what was wrong with the trending page was that anyone could pay to get there - that any arse-hat with money to burn can buy their way to the front page and get 60,000 pairs of eyes on their self-involved rants for a day, displacing writers and creators with actual talent.
Being talented in any endeavour is relatively rare. Being a talented writer or artist is no exception. Nor are these talented individuals always loaded with available cash, due to the difficulty in making ends meet via these arts.
It's one thing to attract talent, but apparently what the Steem network really needs is new money. Talented creatives do not equal as much new money coming in as untalented but cashed up wannabes (or so some people on steemit clearly think). We worry that the lack of real flair on the trending page is a problem for marketing steemit. But that depends entirely on who you are marketing it to.
Does our trending page currently attract loads of punters in search of something awesome to read? No. Let's not kid ourselves, it's pretty bad. However, for people who have a bit of money in their pockets but who haven't been able to cut the mustard professionally or academically, it's a siren call - a dream come true. Not famous enough? Can't break through in other media? No one reading your cryptocurrency predictions? Pay your way to fame and possible future fortune - all it will cost you is at least $10,000 to buy votes.
What was our 'misapprehension'? It was that the trending page is anything other than what powerful account-holders here want it to be. I'm not saying that this account, with it's promises to help people learn how to buy their way to the top is a direct stratagem on their part, any more than other controversial high earners are. But if it keeps getting the payouts and attention it has thus far, I'd take it as tacit endorsement at the very least.
Nurturing talent might be good in the long term, but to pump money into the system in the nearer future, the trending page we have, complete with a shark-school convincing even more punters to spend up big on SBD and Steem, is exactly what certain people think we need.
Why does everyone hyperfixate on the voting bots? I’m talking about using the current system to get more visibility for better posts. There’s nothing stopping anyone from doing this without a 15 part course by me.
Hey dude, I'm not the one spending hundreds of dollars per post on paid upvotes to advocate spending hundreds of dollars per post on paid upvotes.
To many people do not understand that one cannot be acting in there own self interest until they learn how to act within their vested interest. That interest which is good for all within the community is not only in the interest of the self, but in the interest of the community at large. When enough people understand this the trending will just disappear along with many practices that merely serve the self.
I wish people understood steemit for what it is instead of for what they want it to be. In my opinion steemit is a vessel that is being filled from an old container (the good ole by system echo chamber). Steemit is its own echo chamber and is really destroying peoples moral value. Example the flag wars would never be allowed in the real world because it uses monitory value to harm peoples incomes and abridge the right of free speech. In a very real way these problems will either be solved or steemit will go away too.
I for one am going to do everything in my power to make sure that doesn't happen. I love the basic concept of steemit, and merely recognize that it doesn't support the human value system. Either it will in the future or it wont have a future. Natural law will prevail.