I really like Steemit for a lot of reasons, but it's clear that this platform has a lot of the same (very simple to comprehend) issues that the non virtual world has. The inner part of people is where the answers will lay. Clearly, as a whole, this has not been brought to fruition.
I too have content creating friends that would love it here on Steemit, short of the long wait they will likely face getting in, and the massive amount of time it takes to begin to figure out how it all works! They create content already! Podcasts, community organizing events, raising kids at the same time, busy people. I won't even try to get them to try this until I see if I think it's not going to waste their time.
I see so much fighting on here in various forms and it can be a problem, apparently, for some. It looks like if you just post something that someone doesn't like, it will cause you to get downvoted into oblivion. It's one thing to want people to work hard on their content. It's quite another to expect everyone to want to be in the arena, battling it out over the cornucopia and be grateful for the chance to walk away with only battle scars.
If you look at the TV Programming you can clearly see there are people who feel that because they have a lot that it's ok to dehumanize those who don't by offering huge financial rewards. Rewards which increase with the amount you are willing to subject yourself to very degrading behavior. Why? to get money to live on. Because this is the only species that has figured out how to penalize people for just being born by insisting they pay to live. You can tell by the tone of the comments if you are dealing with an elitist mentality, or someone who really cares about adding value to anything. I've seen a lot of very helpful people on here and I appreciate them a lot...
But I wound up on this thread because on of them is apparently getting a fair amount of powerful downvotes and I am trying to figure out why a helpful person is getting powerful downvotes like the person is. I'd be busy creating content but frankly, I am likely to get more rewards for curation than I get on most of my content... and that is clearly meant to be a means of control starting out here. I can partially see why. However, it does seem like it's pretty difficult to get any traffic on posts because some people are distracted with flagging and voting wars.I'll keep working on the community building and supporting what I do like and see where it goes. But I won't be able to justify spending as much time on my posts for a while so that is less quality content I can make available while I slowly build up community. But these battles going on on here are discouraging for serious people to watch.
I've seen some posts get a ton of payout just because they posted a big 'to do' click bait argument... knowing that people seem to love controversy and it would reel in the votes. To me, those posts are not the kind of content that will improve the platform, and yet I would not even begin to start flagging and downvoting them because you know where that would get a minnow on here... It's ridiculous.
If something isn't shit content, quality wise then it should not be downvoted just because someone does not like the topic, or whatever. Apparently that is starting to happen and it's sounding a lot like FB.
That said I feel that if this platform is what it claims to be, and good content creators are willing to stick with it there is a chance that the platform could succeed. But I really don't know by any personal experience how the platform really came to be so I don't know if it's intended to be crashed intentionally at some point or not. I can afford time wise to look at it as an 'adventure', at least to some degree, so I'll see what I can do... but I won't bring on others until I won't be feeling like I've walked them into a steeming pile of dung and wasted their time. I am glad I held off on inviting them. (I sympathize with you! I have seen a lot of others walk the day they got in. I'm not a quitter but I'm not going to be on some hunger games show kissing ass to people who feel their lives are worth more than mine either. Lol. My time does have value. And the self righteous nonsesne some people seem to be caught up in well they will be gone one day just like everyone else, and it is they who have wasted their time on a fiction. They can't take it with em when they go. Glad to see you have some similar ideas. I've seen some others who do as well. They just are not posting very much if at all because they see this as no different than the bankers problem from what I can tell.