I have seen and read some pretty horrendous things on Steemit in the last 7 days - all of which have left me somewhat "hollowed". Don't get me wrong, I am all for expression and freedom of speech but most of the Sh!t that is spewing itself down on the Steemit feed, is like a kid that needs a good fat SMACK to bring it back into touch!!! There are certain things you can declare on social media and the rest, should probably be dealt with in a room... on a couch, with one of those people... you know the ones ;) lol!
RANT ALERT: WHERE are the BALLS of STEEMIT?!!!?!!?!
......
I may have only been here for just over a year, but I can recall that when I hopped on to this bus - so many were declaring their thankfulness as to how "different this space is" from other social media platforms. I used to feel the same, but to be honest, now... all I see around me if I dare to click on the "new, hot or trending" tabs... is either spam bullshit which has been upvoted by bots to some gross degree, people moaning about precisely that, others bitching about others, and then of course... some random with a $500 color challenge entry which consists of nothing more than a photo which to be honest, they probably didn't fncking take!!!!
Steemit is becoming WORSE than FACEBOOK!!!!
I don't have much power here, but whatever I "do" have - I try to push in the direction of promoting QUALITY POSTS and uplifting the "little people" - but even that doesn't fncking get noticed and it is starting to piss me off! What the bloody hell is WRONG with humanity?! Can we no longer see the wood from the goddamn trees???????
Why are we LETTING this happen?!?!
This entire freakin' system is only sustainable if we look after the people that SUPPORT IT... AAAAAND GET RID OF THOSE THAT ARE MILKING IT DRY!!!! What is going to take to get everyone to grow a set of fncking BALLS and to take damn stand?!
Hmmmmm........ A lot no doubt.
Will we all sit around and wait for it to all fall to pieces before anyone does anything? well, let me just say - I come from Cape Town, South Africa and I feel quite strongly against that complacent kind of bloody attitude!
It STINKS! - Yes, it DOES!
ANYBODY who knows me on this platform knows FULL WELL that I give my ALL EVERY SINGLE DAY into Steemit and the people trying to make it here, but I am getting a "weeee" bit tired of the fact that the BIG NIGS here are simply too preoccupied with counting the money in their wallets to actually give a shit! I wonder how many of them have ever actually been in business and calculated the WEIGHT that their bread and butter customers carry?!?!
...They probably don't even know what a bread and butter customer is! (how sad!)
I was recently called out by @underground to become part of their Dolphin Council because we are those "people" stuck in the middle that actually still give a fncking shit! And I am there! I will support ANY initiative that focuses itself on uplifting the quality people on this platform!! Not like I have the time to actually do it... between trying to conceptualise and create my own posts and managing my @steemitbloggers discord server, but shit son, I will MAKE the damn time because I am SO tired of seeing some ridiculous meme or stolen sunset photo hit trending, whilst all the TRUE geniuses and creatives of Steemit who are "too good a human being" to PAY THEIR FNCKING WAY up the ladder... are getting LOST!
This is NOT acceptable people!!!!???!!!! WTF!!!!
Ok, rant rant rant.... what purpose does that serve??? NONE if there are no solutions or actions implemented. I am not pretending to have all the answers... I do have some ideas, but alone they are worthless - much like this post if it gets lost like every other one!
The other day @jerrybanfield made a post about having the "downvote" option removed... ok sorry WTF?!?!?!?!??!!!!! Quite frankly, I don't think the bloody downvote option is used often enough here! If it was and we all stood a little braver, we may have a lot less crap like that floating around the steemit feed! But the sad reality is that nobody wants to get involved!
The sadder reality though, is that if nobody does... there will eventually be nothing left to get "involved with" - and perhaps THEN, everyone will catch a bloody wake up! - but it will be too little, too late!
Yes, I manage several curation initiatives which are focused on UPVOTING the GOOD content which I find on Steemit... but What if... in the spirit of preservation, we ALL started to DOWNVOTE the utter CRUD which we are exposed to more than 10 times a day through the general Steemit feeds.... "what if" we all stood together and did that and made a consequential impact...... sigh what if....
Would love to hear YOUR thoughts on all of this....
@ocd @curie @c-squared @minnowsupport
……
Until next time...
Much Love from Cape Town, South Africa xxx
FOUNDER OF THE @STEEMITBLOGGERS
oh... and have you met my little man? @judethedude
Header Image Credit
and compliments to Giphy
You are absolutely right.
The fear of being punished by someone high powered or whales suplorting the user we dont use downvote.
Infact I have never use a single time it.
This is quite serious matter to think about.
I appreciate your initiative and support you.
Thanks for sharing
So true!!!!! People are too bloody SCARED to use that button and it should NOT be like that!!!
Yeah I stepped away and came back like what the hell is this. There was something different a year ago. The energy is just all jacked up right now.
yeah... sad but true!!!!
I feel your frustration @jaynie, both with the stuff that's going on and the inability of good people to really do anything about it. Rightly or wrongly my response - once life stops getting in the way - will simply be to post the best quality content I can and see where it gets me. From that position I admire and really appreciate your burning desire to foster people who do that and get after those who have other agendas. At the moment it seems Steemit is ruled by the law of the jungle but things can't go on like that for ever: something's got to give.
Totally agree with you! Well said!!!! And love the positive vibes!!! xxx
I started a similar rant (& counter-rant) yesterday... triggered by a post that @therneau made on whether or not Steemit would be a good place to "invest" millions of $s (assuming he had the $ to do so :P).
That post is sitting on about 3 pages of back and forth, less-than-to-the-point babbling... I'm still gonna try turn it into a post... but in case I don't... I just want to add my 2 cents on bid-bots:
edit: I just wrote another 2 page comment reply here... no more coherent than my draft post... so my full "2 cents" will have to wait until when/if I get to that post.
In short: Don't hate the player, hate the game :P (and use the same rules that make it suck to make it work - or decide to play elsewhere).
Oh yes... BTW: I found this post because of your post on curation groups/guilds and wanted to say thank you over there, but now I'm here :-)
... a few cool sounding ones over there that I didn't know about ;-)
Now that is one of the fundamental problems here. When I look at crypto in general it is supposed to correct the injust system that has been created over the years. Greed and money = power hungry tycoons that dominate the world.
Unfortunately the system here is the same. The more money you have the more power you have. It's created the same imbalance here as we find in the real world. That's not what the principles of crypto should stand for.
Anyhow, there's still lots of good out there so I'll just keep focusing on that and poke some fun at the shit... and occasionally rant about it :D
"There's still lots of good out there so I'll just keep focusing on that and poke some fun at the shit... and occasionally rant about it :D"
hahahaha - I couldn't agree more!
P.S. FWIW - if/when I get to finishing my thought(s), it ends on a positive note, with high hopes for Steem ;-)
You're not alone @jaynie,
I absolutely can confirm your feelings about Steemit.
Since December, member since last August, I started blogging here, mostly travel posts with my original pictures.
I realized more and more there is no way to get the right audience.
I started reading posts of the whales, especially the comment section is very interesting, and I realized, most of them see Steemit NOT as a social network, they see it as a Business and money making system.
There are so many things what have to be fixed to make Steemit social.
It starts with the unfair upvote and downvote system, you never can start argue with a bigger fish and not think to be careful that he flag your account to 0.
Some whale and dolphin groups upvote only their content and give a shit about new users.
Now I started already to make my posts shorter and using bots for "promote" them.
I wait for ONO and will take a look there, I think many, many other users will join ONO,too and if Steemit is not really careful, they will lose a lot.
So let's see how its going on..
Best frustated regards, hehehe
Tom
Yes lets hope and continue to strive for the best 🙂👌
The downvote option is a great tool if used properly. But the problem is, the spammers and trollers downvote every post they see including the quality ones just so that they could make their content more visible.
But what these idiots don't realise is that downvoting everyone without any reason decreases their reputation and makes their content less visible, so basically they are being a problem for everyone including themselves.
And the reason why people are afraid to downvote shitty content or spam is because they don't wanna involve themselves in a cyber war and put their content at risk.
200% on point! A sad but very accurate reality.
I Agree too. Thanks for the advice @ayushjalan.
To be honest, I’d rather spend my precious VP motivating people that do post quality content, instead of letting it go to waste by paying attention to those who deserve to be downvoted. Negative attention is attention too...
And sure, just like everyone I don’t want to come across somebody who can’t stand ‘losing’ and will be out for revenge.
I realize that makes me one of the cowards. Yet, even if I powered up to 10000SP, I would still have not enough VP to do any serious damage to a lot of those accounts. I still believe in fairy tales where the good always conquers the evil.
Downvoting takes away my ability to reward and motivate the people that are actually putting in an effort...
I totally agree with you and as you know well, that is precisely the stance I take... however it doesn't make it any less frustrating at times. Somehow and some way a dent needs to be made...
Right on Jaynie. The rules are set up here to encourage and reward behavior that promotes low quality content and lack of engagement. Too few users hold most of the power and decision making ability and many of them seem content with the way things are. Note that HF20 is likely to make it even harder for smaller users to succeed here, because it will eliminate one of the few mechanisms we have to get a larger percent of the rewards on posts. Check out @tcpolymath's recent series of articles on the impact of HF20. As a few others have mentioned here, I suspect that the Steem witnesses have only a little time to actually correct these issues before an alternative platform comes along that does a better of job of actually rewarding quality content and wresting power from the hands of a few.
That said, there are many users here, such as you, but also more powerful users, working to improve Steem, so lets hope some sensible changes happen quickly.
Proud member of #steemitbloggers @steemitbloggers
This is an appropriate day for this post because it is also the day that @taskmaster4450 suggested having a minnow uprising. Post 3 times a day for the month of July and use the tag #minnowuprising. I started today.
This is a brilliant idea, but realistically (speaking for myself), not achievable, especially if you're talking about a post that is substantive and original. I do, however, support the notion of #minnowuprising wholeheartedly!
Fabulous Idea! I saw your post regarding this earlier this morning @toddrjohnson and am going to resteem that on all my accounts. I REALLY hope that it is successful! I cant really participate as I am technically no longer a minnow, but I will support it whenever and wherever I can! and kudos to @taskmaster4450 for the concept.
Honestly this is the sort of thing I was talking about when I made my post about block buttons yesterday - I get that Steemit wants to be transparent and let everyone see everything, but an option to stop people from at the very least interacting with your content (downvoting, commenting, ect) would be a major deterrent to at the very least the people who post spam comments on people's posts. You spam me once, I block you and you can no longer comment on my things.
And yes, people do need to be more liberal with the downvote button. I know I certainly am, as well as with the flagging of comments. We need to use what we have to make sure spammers know they are not welcome here, until the staff or whoever is in charge of this stuff decide to give us better tools to fight them or implement something that they themselves can do about it.
You have the right attitude!!! (And BALLS) ;)
Comes from being elsewhere on the internet. I learned the fast and hard way that the sooner you let people know in no uncertain terms that they are unwelcome in your space and to interact with your content, the better. I've been called 'block happy' by more than one person but I give no cares, if you're going to come in here and be a troll and spam and not contribute anything of value to the community then get out. I've also been called 'ban happy' when I used to be in charge of stuff, because as soon as it was obvious people were just there to spam or whatever I didn't even bother with anything other than that ban hammer nice and swift :)
Thanks for the rant warning. I read hoping to find someone ranting about anything but Steemit. I did. I found someone ranting about people ranting on Steemit.
That is pretty odd. What makes your rant better than the ones you complain about?
Hmmmm. Much rather see a picture of a flower, whomever took it.
You obviously can't read.
I myself am having a good time here on Steemit this evening. Sorry to hear you have been disappointed.
Just an ineffectual little minnow posting useless photos. Better get back to wasting time and space with my frivolous posts.
We can't all be so creative as to rant about Steemit. As you mentioned, that rarely happens.
oh goodness - passive aggressive much?! lol - I am not "disappointed" - I am VOICING and addressing a GREAT PROBLEM on this platform @nananini and perhaps if you took your rose tinted glasses off for a minute, you may see it. ;)
I am an absolute ADVOCATE for the positive and any one of my 100+ @steemitbloggers members would testify to this, but there is a PROBLEM of "corruption" here and some of us will stand up against it so that people like you who actually take legitimate pics of their flowers get noticed ;) ok?! I am ON your side, NOT against you... perhaps you will see that at some point.
If everyone sits idly watching the wheels go by - nothing will ever change ;)
Help me out here then. What should a minnow be doing?
If you genuinely want to grow on Steemit, then the first thing you need to learn is to be polite. Even if your content is amazing, but you are rude or biased, people will hesitate to follow or upvote you.
You can read beginner guides and help posts like this one to make a careful and calculated start.
Will do! Thanks.
The reality is that as 'one' there is very little which can be done other than to do precisely as I currently do and as @simplymike suggested... and that is to focus on the good content and give it all the support you can. But it doesnt change the fact that what I have outlined is still a massive problem around here... and perhaps given time and support, initiatives like mine and that of the proposed dolphin council will actually start to make an impact... I hope.
Where??? Right HERE!
😎
But I was told if I "keep showing them" I might get kicked out of the Alliance!
😁 😂 🤣
I'm sure having you in the Council will make thing BETTER, that is the Goal of the thing to begin with! :) Our mutual Friend Eagle Spirit reminded me that you were such a stand-up Dolphin, I knew Immediately I would beg your participation!
😎
let them kick you out then ;) You strike me as a more "stand alone" type anyway :)
LOL
U got that right! I like her BOSS! Great PICK!
😍 😘
PS: Cast the big vote, well, it used to be Big LOL
""what if" we all stood together"
Won't happen. We are human, after all.
Anyway, as you said, there is just too much shit.
In the beginning I may have commented (don't think I ever flagged anything) to criticize plagiarizing or something, but it's essentially useless. You either get ignored or even attacked.
So, I largely gave up on it.
the problem is that EVERYONE holds that same attitude! If we ALL shifted it - things would be different. I remain positive... :)
oh man, Jaynie. I haven't had much time to be on Steemit lately, so I'm a bit oblivious to the most recent nonesense. I really appreciate those, like yourself, who are trying to make a difference despite the difficulty in trying to do so. The dolphin council sounds promising! With crytpo so low these days, I wonder if people are just giving up and becoming apathetic about trying to keep steemit the different type of social media it was when it began. Let's hope this is just a bump in the road. Thanks for speaking out!
Thank you hon. Yes, as yoy know well, my attitude is always swayed towards the positive but it does get somewhat disconcerting sometimes, especially when you work so genuinely hard at the upliftment of it all.
When I joined steemit some months ago, it wasn't this bad . I've always wondered why some crazy content from the so called big guys keeps trending. If this continues, soon steemit will be so hard for newbies to succeed.
Sadly I think it already is...
Yep! Singing to the choir here. I'm a nobody plankton. My vote will get you a penny. What's the point of this platform? Why should I spend hours of my day even trying to make a steemit backed dollar? I did as you did lately and cleaned out my following and still my feed is contaminated with basura. I look at the trending section and I see people making $500 or more for crap a 3rd grader could have written more inteligable. I've all but given up on steemit. Soon I'll not post but maybe once a month, then not at all like so many others I've seen in my short tenure. Hang in there... Huh. What for? It take to much of my time ready. It'll get better. Bullshit. Only getting worse from what I see. Good luck I guess. Luck has nothing to do with it either though. I'm at a loss for words other than to tell you I feel your pain but hang around just to read and comment on the few blogs I find encouraging as I hit the re-steem button on yours.
Blessed be. Goodnight
I hear you... it is not so much the platform that frustrates me... I have worked tirelessly here and have seen that it is enormously fruitful but... that is being grossly diluted and I just wish that more people would make a stand at preserving the good. I hate seeing and reading frustration like yours... it is precisely what I work so hard at changing... I hope that in time my and others like me start to see the shift for our efforts.
Rant rant rant :D Ok, take a deep breath, feel better now after you let it all out? We sometimes need to vent and that is fine. Now go back to being your happy self and stop going on trending page, nobody goes there except people have their posts there lol. Much love honey and much happy thoughts your way 💚
Hahaha I dont know WHAT I was doing there in the first place 😉 lol but I do visit the new feed pretty often too and thats equally as rant provoking lol. But yes, acutely aware that moving forward positively is the only ever sensible choice. I just wish more people were prepared to make an effort for positive change because as one person who works tirelessly at the upliftment of others, it can become frustrating to retain that idyllic outlook.
100% agree and it gets to me to the point I ignore trending and hot, which is a shame. Its primarily because people join with one main focus to make money with very little passion or enjoyment for blogging. Especially as we are in realm of cryptocurrency.
I learned within one week to NEVER click Trending, Hot, or Promoted. Those are just advertisements and the payouts are not real, since most of the votes have been bought. One issue that might help is to base and show the actual profit from a post: the payout minus the amount paid for bidvots. Ultimately, we probably need 1 human = 1 account, but that is apparently never going to happen here. Yes, it is hard to do that, but supposedly it will be possible with Oracles. There are benefits to some automation, but the problem is that at this point automated voting seems to be having a for more negative, exploitative effect than a positive one.
And thus the cycle, gaining visibility requires substantial upvotes or curated by the great teams like curie and steemitbloggers but we can only pick up so much. The idea of non profit upvotes from bots would break the cycle of spamposts getting generated. Then it's the battle of quality Vs popularity ;-)
I follow individuals and communities such as curie and steemitblogger so that I have a high quality feed. I also check comments and ginabot to track what's happening.
Yup that's a great approach :)
Such a sad reality
so true @niko3d!!!
You’re talking business. Everything’s changeable. A very quick change is a revolution. I am as a teacher strongly believe that the platform will evolve in the way you describe, and the folks like you are rocking the boat and making the soil ready to plant seeds to grow and blossom… changing into incredible breathtaking flowers. We’re partly in this tomorrow.
Beautifully said @leosenior!!! Thank you!
Congratulations! Your post has been selected as a daily Steemit truffle! It is listed on rank 14 of all contributions awarded today. You can find the TOP DAILY TRUFFLE PICKS HERE.
I upvoted your contribution because to my mind your post is at least 11 SBD worth and should receive 118 votes. It's now up to the lovely Steemit community to make this come true.
I am
TrufflePig, an Artificial Intelligence Bot that helps minnows and content curators using Machine Learning. If you are curious how I select content, you can find an explanation here!Have a nice day and sincerely yours,
TrufflePigThank you for the support. Much appreciated.
I read this when you posted it, but because of where, and what I was up to at the time, couldn't comment. I'm glad I didn't because I came back and read the comments. Very enlightening because they seem to reflect exactly what you're talking about. As you know, my @steemit journey is full of fits and starts and as much as I'd like to spend more time here, it's not doable. I am very much in the same mind as you and @simplymike, but having administered and/or been involved in leadership positions in other communities, this sh*t is par for the course. Including a small proportion of folk who actually and consistently toe the line/follow the rules, diligently and daily.
Perhaps what I'm saying is two things: vent - it's good for the health. Second, pick your battles and part of that is the fabulous work you do with #steemitbloggers and now being recognised through the invitation to be part of the Minnow Council - what a great opportunity.
One of the challenges of self-regulated communities is that everyone thinks that they are right and that their way is the "high" way. Quality content for one is not for another. I remain astounded at the posts (of mine) that get the most votes. Often they're the ones I least expect to get traction. How should I deal with that? Tell them, "That was not my best, take your vote back?" LOL.
I think the principle of do no harm, and original content, i.e. the no plagiarism rules which are universal should be the levellers, and the challenge in that broad church, is that one man's meat is another man's poison. One has to learn how to distinguish between the two and not die in the process.
I am sure you will not just survive, but thrive. You have too much savvy and chutzpa to let this get you down!
Oh, and don't stop venting: it's good for the soul and the debate :D
hehehe thanks @fionasfavourites... don't think I wold ever be able to stop venting, haha - its just not me ;) as you know well. As for your perspective.... it is 200% the right attitude to have! Could not agree more!
:D
You are absolutely on-point with this! I have downvoted/flagged spam comments, but don't do it often with sh!tposts. Perhaps we do, indeed, need to start!
yeah its a catch 22 like I just said to @moderndayhippie because then.... our votes are wasted on the negative... ALTHOUGH, perhaps if we ALL did ONE a day or even one a week... many one's make many :)
wow, you really nailed it with this article.. I am doing my best to stay possitive throughout all this negativity lately but I do see all of the issues you are talking about and it has ran some of my friends off the platform and they had been here more than a year!
I think your right, down voting by a lot of people with shit articles would be a great way to clean up steemit a bit but then all of my upvotes would be wasted on bad articles in stead of the few good ones I still find, which unfortunately seems like it would ruin steemit even more with even less rewards going to people who actually deserve it.
I really hope something changes soon because I am coming up on my one year steemiversary and don't know how much longer I can poor my heart into posts to make $1.
I hear your pain, but much like you - I am retaining the positivity as much as possible. and yes... agree with you re. the downvoting - it is a catch 22.
As for the earnings, this is one of the primary reasons I started our @steemitbloggers community.... the more we ALL support one another, the quicker we will ALL grow.
So true! And steemitbloggers has been incredibly helpful to make new friends and for my post to get seen, so thank u so much for starting that great initiative 🤓
Hopefully all this negativity will soon disappear and we can get back to normal here on steemit..