Minnows have feelings too!!!
First and foremost, there are tons of amazing content creators on Steemit fully dedicated to the community who do the right thing. I'm thankful for these contributors, as they make the community a better place, while fairly earning their rewards and sharing them with upvotes. This motivates me to work hard to reach that level over time by earning my followers and Steem Power, one by one. These Steemians have my respect, for whatever it's worth.
On the contrary, I've been on Steemit.com long enough to see that there are also some poor content creators who leverage their popularity and heavier wallets to herd votes/auto-votes for unjustified visibility and rewards. This would be ok if I saw them regularly upvoting and engaging their commenters, but it's most often not the case. They single-handedly demonstrate that the "Reputation" metric within Steemit is far from reliable as a way to gauge the quality of what you're about to read from them. I hope these people recognize how transparent and toxic this behavior is.
As new users join this site and see what any non-blind person would, just know that you're not crazy. There are many things that don't seem fair that are best to tune out, but it's fun to bring some of them up once and a while for a reality check.
Below is my artistic expression of how I feel when I come across some trending posts from high reputation authors that would most certainly grind Peter Griffin's gears.
It's time to go see what's happening on Steemit.com, aka what trending posts I'll be forced to see first. Ahh, here's one from someone with a high rep that has hundreds of upvotes and reward dollars in just 4 hours! This must be be intelligent, original, enriching, professional and thought-provoking.
Time To Learn!! ::Click::
(Post opens) Blink. Blink. Hmm. Are they serious? WTF is this? Scrolling down, it's all insulting filler. This can't be right...
Did I click on the wrong link? Nope, it's the right one. How on earth could people upvote this?! Is this how auto-vote trails work? Do people care that they're associating with this fluff?
Was that even 250 words for $1.25 per word? Did they even try to spell check or use punctuation? They know this is redundant info that already hit Steemit two days ago, right? Maybe they had a bad day. I'll check their previous posts and see that they would naturally have better work and engage their followers in the comments sections... Nope... SMDH.
Takers... https://steemit.com/steemit/@steemmatt/are-you-a-steemit-taker-matcher-or-giver-don-t-be-shy
Maybe it's just me being on a high horse today. Let me ask around...
While so many minnows scrape for $1, this crap makes hundreds! I'll never look at the trending pages again!!
Besides accumulating large follower bases, handshake agreements, and getting overpaid for what some might be embarrassed to post on their own blog...
Ironically, this post isn't about complaining. This post is for those hard-working Steemians to relate to and feel like they aren't so crazy to recognize that this is under-the-radar abuse of the rewards pool. Some people are greedy and take advantage of their status, and it's ok to make some buzz about it.
This post is also for anyone that fits the poor content creator mold above to potentially see and note that the herd isn't as blind and stupid as they may think. Reputation/respect is not just a number...
The adoption curve will weed this out in time, but for now, it's an eyesore and form of gaming the system that newer users don't have to think is acceptable.
Please comment If you have thoughts to share. I'll reply to every one.
gifs from Giphy...
Thanks for spotting the tipo in my descritpion ;)
I would not like your support in my last post to upload sp. Thank you @glitterfart
You're very, very welcome! I was on the phone with my friend when I saw your two votes hit my Steemnow page, jumped, and couldn't believe my eyes. I thought I was accidentally on penguinpablo's default home page. WOW! Thank you so much. I had just been on the phone before regarding miserably depressing family health stuff, so this couldn't have come at a better time to get my mind off of things.
wow! glitterfart thanks for upvoting, want to send you some SBD for appreciation but didn't have any in my wallet yet... really great help upvoting my blog, cheers!
I see that this true good whale (understatement) has found your post(s) too... Congrats!
lol... Need any help from Coin Man...???
COIN MAN by @pocketechange
@glitterfart thumbs up for u 😊😊😊 upvoting this post
Now have look into mine work . Please dont mind
Hey @samiurrehman10, telling generous people pinned on the top of comments strings to have to look at your work isn't what inspires most whales. Write something that'd make them want to and would encourage them, through a quality reply that shows them a bit about your mind. Just some advice for you.
Just stopping by to make my Presence Known...
COIN MAN by @pocketechange
I'm glad to see you @glitterfart
Love the handle name @glitterfart :)
@glitterfart can you check my video out, i've seen you upvote africas overwatch vids and i thought you might enjoy my one :D
Greetings my friend,
I want to thank you immensely for your support of Steemit. You may or may not know just how much that you are changing lives for the better by upvoting our content. I am finally seeing some real benefits of being so commited to posting multiple creative blogs a day. It takes some serious effort on my part having a 40 hour a week job still. However I am very passionate about it and still post 4-5 blogs a day, and have plans to stay on track with my recent efforts. Would you be interested in supporting my content consistently by putting me on your auto vote list on : https://steemvoter.com/
Have you used Steem Voter before?
I figure you are not always able to be on Steemit and make full use of your Steem Power by upvoting posts constantly. By addingg me to your auto-vote you would be supporting high quality content that is for all people. I am slightly having trouble getting my blogs seen, I want the world to know how passionate I am.
Hope to hear from you soon, if you want to talk more closely about life you can get in touch with me here :
Thank you dearly for just taking the time to ready this entire email. I am a thorough communictor, I also want you to know I am saying all of this in the most geniuine of manners.
Best Regards,
@daltono
@glitterfart can you please resteem my posts?
We are looking for a SPONSOR and willing to GIVE you (25% SBD Per Contest). These Cryptocurrency Contests are a giveback to participants (Minnows) 50% SBD for each contest @revelationquotes
@glitterfart can you please resteem my posts?
i went to get upvote .
thanks to @glitterfart
Hello, you are supporting plagiarism. https://steemit.com/spanish/@bert0/educar-para-vivir-no-para-trabajar steemcleaners discovered the plagiarism. Why are you doing this? Please stop supporting plagiarism with your votes.
Couldn't agree more! It's disheartening when you've spent like 3/4 hours stressing to make a post perfect then you see Captain Dickhead making hundreds of dollars for something that would receive an F in a Primary school English exam! Great post, well written and relatable!
yeah, captain dickheads need to get off of steemit and back in school..
If they can't figure out how to use Steemit intelligently and ethically by now, they'll probably be back in school for quite a while. Thanks for reading.
I hope those Captains know who they are. Sometimes I am not sure, and think that they might confuse rewards with effort and skill. The playing field will level out over time, but for now, we commiserate.
I'm half tempted to just start exclusively looking for these sort of posts and posters and just abuse them in the comment section lol, leave my disapproval there for all to see!
Hi @steemmatt - I'm new to this platform and really enjoyed reading your post, gives a good idea of valuable content to share and promote on the site. Gifs gave me a good laugh, keep it coming!
Too funny, I go through some of the same expressions when reading some posts. It's hilarious!
Glad you got a laugh! Thanks for reading my post.
So true! Thank you for pointing this out! You have my full upvote (worth like $0.005) but anyway great article!
I find that it's much easier for me to make progress on Steemit by making good comments to gain followers, reputation and respect. Adding engaging or thoughtful comments on higher profile posts is a great way to earn votes efficiently. Keep at the game and support good authors who will pay it forward to you in the future.
You are correct; it really is absolutely maddening. I only deal with it because I have learned to console myself with the fact that doing it the right way will still work; it will just take longer.
::pound:: Keep doing the right thing. It'll pay off in the long run because people will respect you more, and respect gets long term fans who vote.
True, you really raised the right point, content should reflect the reward, but we face this in every platform, but i think it will change over the time, lets hope for the best.
I am an YouTube content creator, and i create videos on Quote Series and in my videos i try to give a short messages from quotes. Below is the link of one of my work.
https://steemit.com/video/@chireerocks/quote-of-the-day-video-series-47-watch-the-video-for-short-message
Have a great day and stay blessed.
nice work. It have a lessons and i like the effort for the photos, it make me smile :) i am redfish turning to minnow soon :)
I try to forget the fish analogies that artificially classify us into a social order. You're a new adopter who is growing their account from the ground up, just like me. Good luck!
Here's a Photo that might put a Big Smile on your Face...
COIN MAN by @pocketechange
Haha your gif’s crack me up! I think this kind of behavior will be weeded out over time. Once Steemit starts to gain traction, it will attract TONS of quality content creators to the platform. (Think high profile bloggers, artists, musicians, podcasters etc) Once that happens, I think people will start changing their voting habits. In the face of so much amazing content, those crappy posts will really start to look out of place.
My post promised to reply to each comment, so I'm a few days late, but not an upvote short. As always, thanks for reading and your opinions.
Thanks friend! Life gets so busy during the holidays that it’s hard to keep up with everything... so no worries! I hope you had a good Christmas. 😊
Have to agree with this one
Thank you for reading.
haha I know it's too late to upvote this, but I just wanna say I love your writing style. This was hella entertaining.... did it make trending, tho? lol
I new member, it is fun to guide those who are really new members of writing. Share high quality content. Not just for the money. To improve yourself. That's why I'm here to
Welcome to Steemit. These were just my personal opinions with some humor, so enjoy being your own judge. There are plenty of great authors out there.
I hope that quality content wins over in the end. If there was a mature app that's easy to use and addictive, and more people used it for everything... weed out the noise naturally.
Quality will win over time. There are a lot of motivated Steemians who will assist in the changing of the guard.
Thanks for sharing @steemmatt. Your post is funny but true. Not all trending content is great. Some people use the bots to promote substandard content. I use the bots quite a bit as well but at least I put in the effort to produce quality unique posts.
It is tough on those that have great content but don't have the SBD to promote their posts as content gets buried very quickly if you can't get upvotes in the first hour. @curie is good at identifying quality posts from minnows but there is only so much to go around.
Thanks for your reply. Bots can help when used properly. Some people use several bots at once for horrific content to game the system. What upsets me most is the preset voting trails some authors have that boost up posts to hundreds in hours that I wouldn't even feel good about upvoting a penny!
Some people got in early. That is to their credit. The rest of us, with some quality work, will grind them level over time. One year ago, big payout posts were in the thousands. Now they are in the hundreds. I haven't done much research on that; just quick observation.
If I am wrong about this then, obviously, the next step is to find where these people live and hunt them like dangerous animals.
I hear you. To clarify my thought, it's strictly about influencers or well-off bloggers generating meaningful and quality content, regardless of tenure. I believe that everyone deserves credit for what they've earned or obtained under any circumstance, as long as it's done the right way. Early adopters have a wonderful advantage, which I fully respect when it's not used to take advantage of a system for personal financial gain.
Thank you.