This place does not exist in a vacuum separate from the rest of humanity. Yes, I am teaching people to go back to the "old ways," because those ways have gotten society to where they are today. The current way things work on here is fucked beyond belief and not likely to change any time soon.
You personally can have the best ideas in the world, but good luck implementing them. If you were somehow able to wave your magic wand and implement all the changes you think would make this place better, you'd have my full support. But I don't see that happening any time soon and it's not worth it to me or anyone else to campaign for it to happen. Why? Because we all have better things to do.
So the current situation being what it is, it seems like it couldn't hurt to have a little realism injected into this place when it comes to making actual money. Content is valued on other platforms like YouTube because it's popular and advertisers will pay to place ads there.
But this does not exist on here because the content is not very good. Sorry not sorry. If the content was good, it would get attention from off site. It would rank on Google. It would be shared on FB, in forums, and people would email links to each other like they did back in the day. But that doesn't seem to happen, hence the low-ish number of active users.
Plus, the fact that people are incentivized here to spam low effort content in hopes of being discovered by some curation team handing out welfare checks doesn't make things any better. I don't believe that encouraging people to buy into the hype that this place will solve society's problems by printing fake money and handing it out for people to write poetry and take pictures of their breakfast is healthy.
On the other hand, if you're able to properly educate them on creating a business that can teach them how to make money in the real world and not just the pseudo fake money crypto world, then you're teaching them a valuable skill that they can use to actually improve their lives and maybe even give a little back to society in the form of a valuable product or service.
I always said that people shouldn't use this site for income. Maybe people like you can write a post a day and make $10 each time. That's great. But $300/month isn't really that much money, and furthermore it's not likely that many people are willing to put in the time and effort necessary to network just to make that kind of money.
Instead, this site should just be used as a blogging platform where people essentially ignore the fact that there are post rewards. IMO that fucks everything up because it encourages people to "take a shit in the street," a la this post: https://steemit.com/steem/@trafalgar/help-fix-steem-s-economy
But again, it's not likely that anything I say or do is going to change that. Just like nothing you say or do will either. So the system being what it is now and not likely to change based on what either of us say or do, I say the intelligent thing to do is to take a look at the current situation and find the best solution assuming that things will stay the way they are.
I don't think that complaining or talking shit about how the system is being used based on what the rules are now is going to do anything. Create a new initiative that encourages the right kind of behavior, make it extremely obvious that a few people are being highly rewarded for doing something special, and I believe that you'll attract others who will say to themselves, "I could do that" - and then come here and do it.
Exactly. But the content there is given the chance to become popular. Here, the middleman stepped in to promote goddamn monkey posts. We can say this place is fucked but I like to point my finger at some of the individuals as well. The "promoters" here are sabotaging our chances at gaining the interest of advertisers and their billions. These guys want to make thousands while their business model puts selling pressure on the token at the same time.
There's far more junk on Youtube. Millions of videos sitting without views, millions of content producers sitting without a paycheck. There will always be junk. It's not all shit, just like here. Unfortunately here, the shit floats to the top, again, because of the promoters. Place one of these "promoters" in a real world promoter position and they'd be fired on the spot, nobody would want these acts at their venues.
They're actually not. Nobody is supporting shit content. Those people taking the shit content approach are usually the ones bitching about how unfair this place is instead of stepping up their game. All of the curators I know look for the quality. They sift through the shit, and they find the good stuff. I insist there is good stuff here, and it's rewarded, but it can't reach the top. When I vote, I'm trying to push the member up the ranks. All it takes is one jackass with a Facebook style status message and a bot to push what I tried to promote down into oblivion.
It's not about being in the now. This is more for forward thinking people. The instant gratification crowd will not do well here. People thought I was a nutcase before this year. I saved my pennies, had another investment on the side because of these pennies, that investment grew and paid me a nice salary, all while I was still able to keep enough pennies here to make more pennies. On the surface, it won't look like much, today. Today doesn't matter. $300, on the surface. I can still take much of what I offer here and find ways to sell it for cash in the "outside world." Plenty of entrepreneurs out there work on building their businesses up before they splurge; pay themselves. Making sacrifices is part of the game. Instead of buying beer and a nice meal, I can buy my own top notch printer, something they use in printshops, and cut out the middleman completely, plus this place gave me the incentive to produce hundreds of images, so I'm already set up with a full catalog for the consumer. That's my world though, and there are plenty of others here who've produced material that could be put on paper and sold.
Anyway, we obviously both want to see this place become better. We both see wasted potential. If I could wave a magic wand, dude, I would, but I can't. If you had a look at any of these links I've shared throughout the conversation, follow the rabbit hole, you'd see I've been yelling at the clouds for almost a year. Whatever though, right?
This does happen but unfortunately, again, the good is buried under the shitty promoted posts at the top. The good is out of sight, out of mind. People would rather earn chump change. I've seen bloggers here do a fine job, but then they turn around and sell their vote to someone and that someone buries the bloggers work. That's how you sabotage your own business. That's like me putting my artwork on display in a window, then allowing someone to slip me a fiver so they can cover my windows with their shit posts. So I can easily say this platform is screwed, but I also like to look at the people who are screwing it and themselves. Of course the truth hurts and they probably fucking hate me for it. Oh well.
Have a good day.