A lot are complaining that their content is not getting the proper attention and upvotes, and they may be right, or wrong (I've seen both) - depending the quality of their content.
Some say "ohh it's the circle-jerk incentives", others say it's all rigged to the top-earners who get constant whale upvotes, others say "it's like a casino, it's just a matter of time before you hit some proper reward if you are persistent in posting quality content", etc etc. In general, everyone seems to have an opinion on the matter (and that's good).
Now, a few weeks ago a quality poster said something like he would try this platform with something of real quality that he would put a lot of work into and that it would be the benchmark of the platform. If it got nothing then he would conclude the platform is broken. It's hard to argue with the logic.
But consider this: Long before steemit, long before the internet, there were artists, painters, sculptors, novelists, inventors, philosophers who were dying poor and got zero recognition during their lifetimes - and in certain cases they had no recognition even decades or centuries after their death.
A Van Gogh painting today sells for millions, yet Van Gogh had no money. Edgar Allan Poe was very poor as he was selling some of his famous works for a few dollars. Others like Thoreau couldn't find a publisher, or had to pay to get published - and even then got nothing serious. So, was it ...the Steem whales fault for their cases too?
Remember the above before thinking that everything is problematic due to the environment. Life randomness is not guaranteed to be free from variance. It's possible you can flip a coin 5 times and get the same result. People have lost fortunes at casinos, trying to MartinGale (that's a betting system) the roulette when the roulette showed them 15-20 times the same color. Some times, things just happen.
And then, randomness aside, you have the other end of the spectrum which has to do with the inherent undervaluing of the pioneers. The pioneers of their respective fields are often undervalued by the masses because they are misunderstood. Let's say a tremendous philosopher comes along and presents his life work on an issue. Something so ground-breaking that few can understand or appreciate for its extensions in advancing the sciences. And this guy gets ...0.08$ for his submission. What can he do? What can he complain about? He knows that the world is not adequately prepared to absorb this new information. Complaining would be useless.
So, if you factor all of the above into the reward equation, it's quite possible that some things are simply unfixable in the context of incentives as the platform is hitting a "lower bound". This bound is, in essence, something that can't be crossed with any amount of tweaking because it is related to the nature of life (randomness) or human nature (pioneers being ahead of their time). But that may not stop some people arguing that it's all the fault of whales or the platform.
Having said that, and I know most will agree with this, in my opinion curation indeed needs to step up significantly in avoiding the "circle-jerk". But again even if the perfect curation system and incentives are in place, we'll still have unrewarded or unrecognized talent and work although at a smaller percentage. It's just the way it is. You can accept it and participate, or throw the towel from the get go and never write anything. Ultimately, it's your choice.
Thank you for your time.
I liked your reference to the artists. Don't paint what you think people want. Paint what it is you want and hope that's what makes people happy!
"Be like the honey badger" :)
The problem with your analogy is that a popular artist will get rich. Here you will only get "rich" if you get whales to upvote your post. Many of us got more than 50-100 real upvotes from minnows and dolphins and the total paid sum was nominal. Just some minutes ago a meme got $850 with a @ned vote.
I'm not saying no one should upvote memes, I'm just saying the system needs a lot of tweaking. What about great forgotten posts? Who upvotes them? There are 0 rewards for voting undervalued and overlooked content.
I think if you make a post highlighting undervalued content it would do well.
Some of them are a real smash indeed. Some were so good that I "revolted". The post highlighting the undervalued content got >1000$ and the undervalued posts got something like 30$ on aggregate. Yet he was theoretically benefiting them as he was directing people to their articles. What more could he do? In any case I proposed to him to give some of this money to the 5 article writers.
If he manages to get popular. Sometimes he won't become popular and it's not because his work is not good. It happens.
If the goal is to attract the masses to Steemit, then unappreciated contemporary (i.e. currently irrelevant) art is irrelevant to the goal.
All kind of art / painting / photography, philosophy, writing, etc can go unappreciated. You may write about how you found the absolute solution with the unprofitable proof of work for cryptocurrencies and get 0.03$. Even if you were right, you'd be unappreciated for it.
Upvoted