The other day I was casually listening to a conversation that happened on SteemSpeak and the conversation keeps coming to my mind. I kept wondering why the conversation bothered me. To be clear it isn't about the people that were talking it is about the idea one of them was promoting.
Two people were talking about their Steem Witness projects in an unofficial chat, basically just chatting with each other.
They were trying to explain to each other why they deserve more witness votes, while they were slinging shit in every direction about the "Other Witnesses" that are unworthy of community support.
One of them said something that sounded like.. "I wish I would get some recognition for feeding and sending resources to (I didn't catch exactly what he said other than it was sympathy provoking) 7689403 poor children, puppies. baby seals and midgets in some starving part of the world."
My Reaction?
Why on Earth would I give you my vote on SteemIt for good deeds or work you are doing elsewhere?
It isn't just him that I am triggered by, it is the whole idea that others should praise you and pay you for your good deeds. Do you not realize most of us have our own causes and things that we support? Many of us are moved by our own experiences and challenges. People who have been hungry often run charities that feed people. People who love animals support animals, if your life has been impacted by a health issue you might support a charity that helps those who suffer from that disease.
Maybe I am old school, but I also dislike bragging about your good deeds or acting entitled to ANYTHING because you are doing whatever good deed you are doing.
I feel the same way about the posts that support _________. If you want help someone or something, just do it! I love it, but you ruined it for me by thumping your own chest about it.
If I do think what you are doing is a great thing, I might ask you how I can directly give a contribution myself. I probably will not pay you to give my resources to someone else.
On the Contrary:
About a year ago I stumbled across a little exchange that happened quietly in a wallet transaction. Person A wrote a post about a life event, there wasn't any begging or even a hint about money in the post. In a quiet wallet transaction without any drama, Person B, sent a fairly large amount of SBDs, without drama, comment or any expectations, the note simply said.. "Good wishes regarding the situation you are facing, no need to repay."
I Was Impressed
Don't tell me you are a good person doing good things let me discover it. Certainly don't expect me to reward you for your mission. If it is your mission, excellent I hope it makes you feel great. It isn't my job to pay you for it.
How about you, do you ever feel annoyed about having to explain why someone else's charity doesn't entitle them to your support?
Is my view offensive to you? Tell me about it in the comments.
I feel the same way. I always explain it like this:
I will hold the door open for someone, that's no problem; but you will never see me yelling, "Hey everyone! Look! I'm holding the door for someone!"
Because who would announce it? Someone with an ulterior motive, most likely.
There have been times where I've been provoked into pointing out a few things that I do, it makes me feel uncomfortable, but it's my response to being told I don't do enough, or anything. It's standing up for myself, and I fucking hate it.
Amen to that, brother!
That's exactly it. I find that people who have to announce how amazing they are generally aren't that amazing. Or they wouldn't have to announce it. They'd just be amazing. And then they probably wouldn't think they were that amazing. And they certainly wouldn't announce it.
But, I think I'm pretty amazing. Oh no! Does that mean I'm not amazing, because I announced that I think I am?
Also, I would totes hold your door open for you and NOT announce it. Is that fact now ruined by the fact that I announced that I would not announce it?
Shoot.
ha, agreed. By the way, I am amazing. :)
You ARE amazing! Says more than just me and you. So I think that makes it official. If at least 3 people think you're amazing, then it must be true. Even if one of those people is just your mama, the other one is you, and the other one is your Kindkergarten teacher.
I agree, I recently "stuck up" for myself also and it felt weird saying.. these are the other things I do. :)
I love the yelling, "I am holding the door open" comparison.
This post got me fairly triggered!
I don't always beg for money on steemit, but when I do, its from @whatsup...
nothing wrong with speaking of your deeds if relevant to a convo. Repeatedly speaking of them, regardless of the relevancy at the time, is tiresome to hear. For the most part, a person's deeds should speak on their own.
In my experience, people who need to announce their goodness usually do so because their actions really cannot speak for themselves. If someone comes to me and says how honest or generous or smart they are, I instantly know they are probably NOT any of those things when it gets down to it.
People who are good natured, generous people don't need to say so.
This is SPOT on. If you're going to save puppies, it will be because that drives you for some reason. You wouldn't care if I knew about it. And frankly, I don't care either. Go save your puppies. I don't care. I have my own puppies to save. If our efforts combined make for better puppy saving, then I'm interested.
That being said, I think there is an aspect to the conversation you are mentioning that you might be missing. That is, there is absolutely truth to the fact that many of the witnesses below the top 20 are doing far more for this platform than a few of them who are sitting at the top, earning far more and influencing the platform with hard forks and not hard forks. It's a legitimate concern and a lot of witnesses deserve praise and recognition and don't get squat. But the ones who are decent don't need the praise or the recognition. They just wanna do good. That being said, they should be paid better than they are. Just my 2 cents.
Yeah, we completely agree on the bragging issue.
On the witness pay, I am torn. On one hand you make a great and valid point about the pay, but on the other hand, I want it to remain highly competitive for those top spots and there are just too many people running witness campaigns that are just so negative. I don't even vote for 30 of them.
For the millionth time, I wish we had better distribution which in my opinion would be a better solution for the pay issue.
Well, if the top spots were viably available to other witnesses, then I'd agree with you. I'm not sure that's really the case anymore.
And although there is something to be said for competition -- meaning, maybe these guys gotta work harder to get to the top so they can enjoy being at the top -- there is also something to be said for witnesses who don't do a whole lot while they're up there, and the remaining witnesses take the brunt of the burden.
The fact is, if we had a few other witnesses at the top, we'd have the very distribution you're looking for. It wouldn't be that hard to accomplish. But it will never happen as long as certain people are in place towing the line, as it were.
Yeah, I agree, the current distribution allows the lazy witnesses at the top to game the system. I've had mixed feelings on that topic, but you've swayed me some. I wouldn't say, I would campaign on the issue, but there might be some valid reasons to support it. :)
I mean, I think it gets down to what we value in a witness. The whole thing is "vote for witnesses, vote for witnesses" but truth be told, it would require like 350 million sbd for us to vote another witness to the top 19. They own the shares of this company. And with the self vote feature of the witness pool, there is no way to get to the top unless you've got that amount of money in steem power. The top 19 go to the board meetings and make the decisions about the hard forks on here. Or veto the ones ned proposes. They are the ones who decide how to become a top 19 witness, for example. And how to stay there. It's a bit of a circle jerk.
It doesn't mean they aren't capable of doing an amazing job. They all got there on merit (and money). They have all done amazing things for the platform. But some people are complaining that only a few of them are actually doing legitimate things for the platform and deserve to stay on top. The rest of them are either towing the line, or telling people how to do so.
I propose the second level witnesses get a little more pay to compensate them for all the hard work they do. These guys are the backbone of this place. Without them, it would not be a pretty place. Obviously it would be great if other witnesses could viably get to the top, but honestly, none of them are even trying. They are all just in it to jockey for 21 and on. I think 20 gets like $1,100 a week. Not terrible if it's worth $3 USD right now. But even still, top 19 earn $5,000 per week. Huge jump even from 19 to 20. And it's not a slight curve as you go down. It's an instant drop to the death.
I say either let lower witnesses validate more blocks, or let them get more for the ones they do. I'd prefer just validating more blocks, because the lower witnesses -- a lot of them anyway -- are more likely to be running nodes not just for the blocks, but seed nodes and external server nodes as well. So they create a better experience all around. I could go on...and on....
I've been thinking about this today because of an earlier discussion elsewhere about what makes a post successful, and I didn't have a good answer to that question for posts about curation initiatives. I have a pretty varied activity around here; some of it I don't post about at all, and some of it I do.
I guess some of it is tied to whether a post is interesting and publicity is good for the people I'm trying to support. Nobody really cares that I delegated x to y for z but if I'm trying to reward people for writing great songs posting about it seems like a good idea. There's a balance there, and it's not always an easy one to figure out.
I can't really imagine ever starting a sentence with "I wish I would get some recognition for" in any context at this point in my life. But I was twenty once, and I have some sympathy for the people who still are. Even if just mentally. May they all level up for their sake and ours.
I don't know. I think we could probably all think of times we've at least FELT that way. It might seem like a long stretch, but I was thinking about it, and I think the reason a person might want recognition for something is not because they haven't gotten recognition in the past, but more likely because they were wronged for some reason, and accused of something they feel misjudged by. So they're overcompensating. That's been my experience.
It's actually happened to me once, where I was accused of something that was not representative of who I was. And it kind of ruined my spirit. All I wanted to do was have these people just recognize me for who I was. And I would start sentences like that. But I grew out of it, because it was short-sighted, limited, and frankly immature in the end.
Still, I have sympathy for folks who feel this way. I guess it's just a soft spot having been through something where I was misrepresented. I think that's usually what that's about.
I guess I see your example a little differently... What you are talking about is actually happening on Steem. So, I'm a little more likely to care about your efforts. :) It seems even worse to tell me about the baby whales you are helping in AZ. It's a tough call.
LOL!! Who is helping baby whales in AZ? Did you just make that up, or is someone pretending they are doing this?
lol, I made it up. Just random charities that people think I should care about. haha
Yes! 100% yes on this. I'm glad when people want to do good. Thrilled that they do. But I feel you should do good because you want to, to support people and things you believe in. Sure, tell me about a cause you believe in, I love it when people are excited about things like that. Maybe I'll get excited about it too. But don't push it, and understand that "No." is a complete sentence.
I also get caught up in excitement, guilt and bragging not as much.
Haha, good to see I am not alone. I am doing some insane good deeds all the time, but am I telling anybody about the enormous depth of my goodness? No I'm not. Not telling a soul! Never! I am good though. Very.
But seriously...
I don't really know if this is an unpopular opinion... People that believe they should be treated like gods for donating money or helping charitable organizations are just egocentrics trying to get every bit of attention they want, a person that truly wants and enjoys helping out others and being charitable receives his reward in the form of the fuzzy feelings you get inside when you do a selfless act..... and donating to charity to get attention is not a selfless act.
One thing is discussing and talking about charities you donate to and why you believe in them and telling you to check them out and see if you would be interested in helping them out and then its this guy, wanting to be put on a pedestal for giving money away.
On the other hand, on the 2nd case, it is pretty much how a selfless person acts, sees someone that may be in need and offers a helping hand, thats it, he doesn't ask for praise or even makes it public!
I sometimes call them do-gooders. Which is mean, but.. sometimes I am mean.
I agree, telling me about a charity is fine. Telling me how much you give to the charity is kind of sickening
I agree with you.
That's all the pay you should need.. right?
The truth is people make it mandatory to earn money here, just because they are doing something to help some people elsewhere, I'm not saying they shouldn't, but it should not be a basis for support really
Lol i totally understand your anger, some people have never been in these kind of positions where they are actually being able to do "good"
“Doing good for the sake of a heavenly reward is not an act of good, but a business transaction.”
― J.Adam Snyder
Likewise doing good for self glorification is not an act of good but a show off
And you know naturally we humans are all different, not everyone has the proper thinking or expression but they may have good intention
In general i want to say as, it's not offensive and it's your point of view and diversified point of view makes the community more powerful. In my opinion the great charities or good deeds are done silently and sometimes the receiver also don't know who helped him, unfortunately in this world there are many celebrities who showcase that they supporting this and that, in every show we see that, what you want to to do with this MONEY, they will reply as, i want to give this for an charity, and sometimes i think that every celebrity contest show, they come and say one thing and that is charity, i strongly believe that, the real givers always stay out of crowd, but if you are giving then that's really kind, but you will say it over and over then it will look like pretending. And at last i want to say as, continue your good deeds and let's deeds speak for you. Thanks for sharing this post with us and wishing you an great day. Stay blessed. 🙂
I agree you point"Many of us are moved by our own experiences and challenges. ". Look at poor people is something like humanity and help them for statisfication.
this is great investing sir and thanks for sharing this, this is something new to me.
This post has received a 17.15 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @whatsup.
All charities are selfish. Even if you dont talk about it, you do it because it make you feel good about yourself.