Yeah, most whales are only upvoting other whales' content, as they are looking for a similar level of rewards. There are exceptions, of course, but looking for and upvoting high quality content takes time and usually it's hard for anyone to go out of their bubble.
I'm all for upvoting good comments. Amidst the spam and quite frankly ridiculous accounts that exist (which should just be banned for posting shit such as "nice post dear, I follow" and stuff like that), good, constructive comments are as valuable as a good blog post. I've done it a lot before and had some amazing discussions with fellow gamers (and non-gamers) about random stuff such as veganism, bullfights and whatnot, and felt intellectually enriched by all of it. These comments are deserving of a good upvote way more than a random meme or the latest boring "find your path in life" post.
Sad news is, I don't see these breadcrumbs taking anyone anywhere soon - in fact, many minnows will just feel depressed and leave.
Going to jump on this thread and say thanks @gamingstation for mentioning me (Wouldnt it be great If steemit notified you when you get tagged/mentioned In a post) I do upload daily and feel I am very supportive, if you look back through my comments and replies you will see that I have spent alot of time talking to people and replying and even helping out some (smaller than I folk) There are a few people I support who have very low reputation because they put out really good content, its not just gamers, i support artists and foodies too. I always give a genuine reply to people who take the time to comment on my posts.
I feel that unless your reputation is exceedingly high, then the bigger guys don't want to interact with you. And sometimes when people leave me comments asking me to check them out, I actually do because you never know whos content is worthy otherwise.
The 25% cut that Dtube takes Is a killer, before Dtube was released I used to just share my videos from youtube to my Steemit post but I want to have a decent Dtube account going eventhough I earn less back. Im riding on the hope that Dtube Itself with be a real competitor for Youtube one day and If that day comes ill have all my videos on Dtube.
I have used bots a fair amount myself but like you say, the 25% cut that Dtube takes basically just means that I break even or I lose. Its tough. I have normally around 10upvotes a post, sometimes more and its very rare I ever hit over £0.50 a post which yes is disheartening. Alot never bother to actually view my post either because I may get the upvote but my view count doesnt go up. I have decided that after my last use of bid bots that I will no longer use them because I took a huge loss. My own fault I know.
I do a lets play series of Dragon Quest Builders eventhough I don't call it a lets play. I do play a variety games however I dont play alot of popular games, Overwatch is probably the most popular and that isnt overly often. So maybe that doesn't help my cause but I play the games that I genuinely enjoy. Untill I am 'big' enough to start taking game requests then that Is what i will continue doing.
There has been a huge influx of creators on here since January I have noticed and that doesn't help because everything gets lost in the sea of other posts.
You @bestbroplayer have a huge amount of Steempower more than me and I have been on here 4months longer than you. You also receive more upvotes on your posts etc. I dont know if you personally invest money on here, I do not and im not in the position to do so either. Im not hating on you either :) I have seen many creators join Steemit long after me and they do alot better than me. That Is also disheartening. Maybe my content Isn't good. I don't know, Its not often I actually get feedback on my videos so I wouldn't know if there is something I can improve on. Untill It happens im just going to keep struggling along In hopes than others will enjoy my stuff.
Its not surprising there's such a low user retention on here. It seems the only way to get anywhere is to either be an old school user with a big following like you mention or join being a friend of one of those old school users. Or get a big upvote from DLive, which i have streamed around 10times but did not receive anything from DLive. I have seen new users join in the last few weeks who have a bigger reputation than i with more Steempower simply because when they stream they get upvoted from Dlive. Again maybe my streams arent good enough, I dont know.
Great post, I have rambled abit lol. I only seen it because @gamingstation resteemed it so i will too resteem for you buddy.
Nice to see you discovered this discussion, @xr-hammergaming. An alert system would definitely be great :)
I'm not going to add much more to this, we've said it already, but one sentence sums it up pretty nicely: "everything gets lost in the sea of other posts." That is discouraging, especially when we don't have that much time to do stuff here. Steemit has plenty of great creators, but spam accounts are rising at an alarming rate and flooding good content.
I do love a good discussion :)
Very discouraging. I know my posts aren't exactly blogs, they're videos, I do write up a post on occasion but recording and editing my videos take just as long if not longer to create. I do spend alot of time on here joining in on discussions and commenting on others posts because I believe in the platform. So much so that I spend far more time on here now than I do on Youtube.
I get the same old spammy posts on here that I also get on Youtube and I know the spammers won't get very far on this platform In the long run anyway, but in the meantime, they're taking away space from the hard working creators that actually deserve It.
I will plough on, I'm here for the long haul 😃👊
It could also be nice if I could see when someone replies to a reply in my post! I remember you from vidme. I think your content is very nice, but it's category is more of a "family suitable". I think that is one reason why you haven't found too many people. I have also found that if you don't get too big upvotes for your comment's, it can get bit exhausting. It is kind of funny even if you truly believed in the content.
What I have decided right now is that we all should go out and upvote curators. If we happen to stumble upon a nice content, we should upvote those meaningfull comment's with atleast descent power.
Yeah, I bought plenty of steem, but now since I have seriously started to upvote curators, I have noticed that my upvote isn't too much if I try to preserve any voting-power for next day.
Yes It would be great If Steemit had a notifications system so we can interact with each other better on this platform.
Ahh Vidme, seems like ages ago now. I agree, I am a PG friendly channel so I suppose I cater to a certain audience. My 9yr old son plays with me on my channel and he enjoys watching my videos which is why I decided to do that. I do enjoy watching channels that aren't PG though.
Thats Is a great Idea, I've never really thought to give comments a bigger upvote, my votes are barely worth anything, my full vote is worth $0.07 so I try to keep my steem power higher so that when I do vote at least the user is getting something rather than nothing from my upvote. If I drain my power too much then I essentially give them nothing from my vote.