Of course I'm not against upvoting people, however, I actually read content before I upvote and look for good content that should be upvoted. This is a hell of a lot of time at a a penny a vote. I don't just randomly throw out votes like some people seem to do. At least with a slider bar, you can decide how much you want to give people and truly reward the ones that deserve it rather than spewing votes just to use up your vote supply.
And by the way, every comment he made was about voting and ended with a self righteous attitude that he had found my problem and I should be thankful to him for it, however, he never addressed my core points. Not once. These are the types of BS responses that I think are totally worthless and never solve the real problems of the platform that I joined the conversation to discuss to begin with.
I will say it once it again, Steem's incentive system and content filtering capabilities needs some real work in order to get really good content promoted properly. Currently, the system is still very immature and is unable to filter out all the crap posts that are being loaded on the platform at an exponential rate. The BS rants in this comment section blaming non-whales for trying to find ways to work creatively to solve this does nothing except polarize a worthless discussion between whales and minnows. And at the end of the day the question that should be answered is one of how Steem evolves to ensure real content gets developed and upvoted properly. This is why I kept pointing out to read the content. For me this is what the point is and always will be - the content.
I read your last article. And I would have voted on it, had you not bought your votes. Especially considering the content of the article-I don't understand how someone with your ideals would sell out like that. You're pointing out the flaws in the system while doing exactly the thing that ultimately brought about those flaws to begin with. In fact your entire argument here makes absolutely no sense based on who you are presenting yourself to be on your blog. If you want to get a message out to the people, if you actually feel passionate about that message, then you would be spending time with the people. Saying that you 'read an article before voting on it' well if the average article takes five to ten minutes of your time I fail to see how you are unable to read, vote, and comment on more then one a day. Perhaps you started out here with the intention of enlightening people, but if you take a hard look at yourself right now you will have to admit that your primary goal is monetary. You wouldn't buy upvotes if that was not the case, if you cared about people actually reading what you wrote then you would spend time connecting with people so that they would.
This is what I've told numerous people recently:
The fundamental problem with this platform is that it consists of probably 99% content creators. Which means that we don't have the luxury of attracting an audience who is here simply to be the audience. That is why-in its current state-in order to attract a viewership your only option is to broaden your own viewing of others material- to be their audience.
Both of you guys crack me up. You think that I'm in here for the money? Let me tell you that my wallet value is exactly $67.97 after 7 months of investing weeks of my time on Steemit. This is with a few MinnowBoosts included, otherwise, I'd be at around $50. Yes, I'm in the big time now. Woo hoo! You sure caught me. The game is up.
As for me "selling out", you are so ensconced in your existing Steemit worldview that you still don't get what the problem here really is, nor have you understood what it is that I have been writing about in my blog. My last blog post is about our screwed up legal system with perverse incentives that lead to wrong behaviors and system failure. Is the problem the attorneys? No. Is the problem the judges? No. Is the problem the politicians? No. The problem is a system that has been designed wrongly at it's very fundamentals and the result is that it will eventually fail from this because it won't adapt. (It reminds me of some whales too.)
What you can't seem to wrap your head around is that this is exactly the problem in Steemit. The Steemit system has not been designed properly to incentivize and enable mass amounts of people and content. It may have worked fine with 10,000 people, but it won't work fine with 100,000 or 1,000,000 people, especially with 90% producing BS.
Lastly, I really appreciate your assessment of my character because you sure have read me like a book. I feel so ashamed now for having used MinnowBooster a few times.. Actually, let me rather point out that you have no right whatsoever to judge me, my motivations, and my character. I find it pathetic that you would even think to do so in a public environment and solely based upon the fact that I used MinnowBooster a few times. This is the height of arrogance and ridiculousness.
It would have been extremely heartening if you would have owned up to it being the wrong choice. Buying votes, whether you're just a common every day guy or the president is the wrong choice. You're talking about a system built on these wrong choices. You posed the challenge for people to read your content in the midst of asking how people could make money without the services. You did.
You're not wrong that at this point steemit is not equipped for 100,000 people. As I said, it is a site full of content creators with almost zero 'just audience' type people. The content creators are also the audience, you reiterated my point and then called me ridiculous.
I don't know you, and I don't judge you based on using minnowsupport a few times, but I know that if I wrote the post that you did and then used the services that you did, and I was called on it, I would have to concede it was a counterproductive thing to do. And that spending almost no time being the audience for others, when you say that you clearly see how it all works---that doesn't make much sense. Again, it doesn't make sense you came into this comment section to oppose the content of the post.
Own up to what? You seem to want to hear me say that it's wrong to use MinnowBooster. I don't think it is at all. If MinnowBooster is so wrong, why does Steemit allow it's use? Wouldn't Steemit want to stop it then? If you want people to stop using it, get Steemit to ban it.
Unlike you, I don't see MinnowBooster as the problem, I see it as a creative solution provided by others for the non-performant Steem content filtering and content value assessment system. And in regards to my beliefs, I certainly don't believe that using a MinnowBoost to get more ratings traction (certainly not money) is some mortal sin against humanity or the Steem community. If you want to know what sins against humanity are, just have a deeper read of my blog on the Luciferians that have taken over our society and that are now finalizing their New World Order.
Regarding how I came to this post, I stumbled across it and realized how much BS was being thrown about and decided I would try to point out that the problem is a different one than what was being ranted about. I didn't come here to troll as you seem to be implying. It only got ugly after the self-righteous and crappy comments started flowing in rather than a legitimate response to my points.
Oh and lastly for the record, I didn't call you ridiculous, I called your judging me in a public forum that..
So let me ask you this then, are you an advocate for things like the welfare program, social services, etc.?
Obviously using minnowbooster isn't a mortal sin, now who's being ridiculous?
I'm well aware of the luciferians and their agendas, my husband is a walking encyclopedia for everything pertaining to it. He was considered a 'conspiracy theorist' before the term was mainstream.
No, I am not an advocate for these things because they inherently fail to achieve their real aims in the end. Inequitable systems are based upon design problems and you don't ultimately solve them by taking away others' wealth and then using a bureaucracy to hand it to others. You need to fundamentally change the deeper economic system issues instead. With such social fixes, you also end up with things like the UK system where it's not uncommon to have three generations of family on the dole and not producing anything.
If by chance you would like to infer that MinnowBooster is a type of social program, this is apples to oranges. It's not a Steemit social program that takes others wealth and hands it to the poor. It's a paid service to boost myself just as an advertiser would.
FYI, my mortal sin comment was hyperbole. My point was that using MinnowBooster is not ethical misconduct against the Steemit community as you seemed in imply.
I'm glad to hear that you and your husband are keenly aware of these things. There are far too few people that are. The reason I joined this platform is to publish more on these and other related topics that people need to be made aware of. My use of Steemit is because I am not censored here and all publishing stays in the blockchain. It's not to make money. I would however, like to get more traction with a higher rating so that my articles get more visibility and interest. This is why I've resorted to MinnowBooster.
I had to sit back and think about this for a little bit. In truth, though I absolutely believe that vote buying is terrible for the platform, I am not the type to jump in on an argument--unless someone I care about is involved. Which is the case here, @meesterboom is a close friend of mine, I tend to get defensive. The funny thing is, I've made two other really good friends in this exact fashion, initially an argument began mostly from my getting defensive of someone. Of course there are cases where I've done this and the individual turns out to be a complete moron or troll, but you are neither, that much I know. And while we disagree mightily on one point--man, there are too few of us who comprehend the dark underbelly of society to be at odds with one another.
I'll also admit that vote buying and welfare is not a perfect comparison. But I maintain that ever since a number of those initiatives came into play here, the number of unbelievably shitty posts making it to trending has risen exponentially, as has the number of those who do not spend any time trying to make real connections. Now you don't fit into the first part of that statement, your posts are in fact quality as you stated. As for the second--I was hasty in judging you, it could be that you feel a bit disenchanted with the platform, that tends to take the energy for making connections out of somebody.
I know that you read the post I put up today, but that's actually not at all representative of the things I write here. Actually, this is what I would ask you to read of mine- a short story series I label Reality in Fiction. I really feel there's an excellent possibility that once you read a couple of these we might end up being friends after all. I'm going to put the link to episode one, and then the last one I did which contains all of the other links if you're interested past the first one. Hopefully we become friends, because I now have this desire to help you get your content noticed, lol.
https://steemit.com/story/@dreemit/the-return-of-the-playground-series-reality-in-fiction-featuring-episode-one-seeking-truth
https://steemit.com/story/@dreemit/the-playground-series-reality-in-fiction-episode-8-recap-the-earth-vs-the-world
You were never interested in my response to your points.
I can see you are reverting even more to type. Calling my comments Self righteous, crappy etc. The only person that looks bad here is you.
Because no one reads your content or votes for it does not mean the system is non-performant you know.
In fact it might mean something entirely different. Hmm, but what? Oh, Oh, I think I know!
Sometimes the truth hurts.. get over it
Hehe, I am!
And I am glad you seem to be too. What say we put this behind us and become chums?