Blippities and Blapaties in search of the HPUD whale cock.

Over the years, I’ve gone in and out of my energy toward Hive, formerly known as Steem, (where my journey started.)
I’m currently finding myself with a lot of positive momentum and hope for Hive. But why? What makes me feel this way? Honestly, I’m trying to figure that out, and this post is me working through my thoughts. I just made a pretty sizable investment in Hive (for me) and powered up 15,000 Hive. But why?🧐

Anyone who’s been around for a while certainly has felt and witnessed the ups and downs—Dapp dramas, whale downvote battles, and system milkers. In general, I’ve always stayed out of the mix. I joined this blockchain mainly because the use case made sense to me as I was researching various cryptos back in 2017. So many cryptos seemed to be nonsense with no real purpose. But a social media blockchain owned by its content creators and curators… that was interesting.
More than just a use case, it felt like something the world actually needed—ownership over our own content. Nobody able to delete our accounts if we weren’t toeing the line. Platforms like Facebook were milking their users for metadata and using our eyeballs for product placement; it all just felt like a mess that I didn’t want to participate in. So i have quit most social medias. Or only use them to post business stuff, they get nothing personal of me anymore.

Hive was perfect for me. I saw it as my digital diary for all things creative. It became a place to document my meandering interests as well as create family vlogs and blogs, preserving immutable memories that I could revisit whenever. Some of these ideas were naive, though; as we’ve all seen people get downvoted off the platform for their opinions.
Sure, I guess they could keep posting with a shit rep score, and their content was still there, just a few extra clicks were needed to display it. But my gist is- Hive was certainly not perfect, and some of these things bugged me and my positive view waned.
Many of my family videos from Dtube are gone. (Luckily, I foresaw this and also created a hard drive backup, but so much for immutable.) Sure, the posts are still there with what I wrote about the video, but the actual content is gone.

Currently, we find @threespeak down for several weeks. I’m hoping it gets resolved, but it’s starting to feel like another disappearing dapp 😢.
The history of Hive is fraught with things going away, and yet somehow new things keep popping up.

@commentrewarder is a new thing I’ve tried a few times and have on this post at 20% because I’m hoping to generate some comments about how others currently feel about Hive.
@distriator is a new way of spending HBD and earning back from it, so if you’re near a place that accepts HBD, it’s a great tool!
@v4v isn’t so new anymore, but I’m always surprised when people haven’t heard of it, as anywhere that accepts Lightning Network Bitcoin, V4V bridges and allows you to spend Hive or HBD—a damn useful tool.
Now we have Snaps, threads, waves, and others are all jumping into the microblogging game.
Leofinance is adding a Patreon-like membership feature and video shorts among other features.
I see Hive.blog has brought back internal chat with a nice icon at the bottom for easy access.
@holozing feels about ready to pop. I don’t even game, but I caught the buzz and bought myself eight alpha vials. Not sure what exactly to do with them yet, but maybe they’ll make a good Christmas gift for @thebombkids when the Zing game gets going. I’m sure they’ll figure out how to play faster than this Butt.

So yeah, things keep getting built here on Hive, and it is certainly a smoother experience moving around the blockchain these days than when i first joined.
And I’m sure there are dozens of other cool things happening here on Hive that im not aware of, so please share in the comments if you think I’m missing something new. ✊

I wonder sometimes if when we were at peak users and interaction on this blockchain, what if some of these new tools and smoother operability was already here, would retention have been better?? Ahh, the what if’s of alternate realities. 🧐

But so if the blockchain keeps improving but now has less daily users and lower engagement…are these consistent improvements reasons enough to feel good about Hive? Why did I just do an HPUD of 15,000 Hive? Honestly, I’m confused myself.
I will say, in a sea of cryptos with unreached roadmaps and talk of being decentralized. Hive in my view stands out for its head down dogged persistence and Fuck You we are still here energy!
Maybe thats it, i love a good underdog story.
Maybe I’m riding a positive wave after @hivefest.
Maybe it’s that life is good for me right now.
Maybe it’s that I have more free time, and Hive is at a good/safe buy price in my eyes. Maybe I’m just an idealistic fool who wants Hive to thrive, and I’m willing to risk a bit of money for that hope.

What i do know is that my core reasons for joining this blockchain haven’t changed. Even with all its imperfections…
I seek a social media platform that I own and control.
I seek a place to share where i am not the product.
I seek a symbiotic relationship with whatever platform I share parts of myself on, and currently Hive is the best option.
And in my eyes it can keep getting better.

I’ll definitely say that im not entirely comfortable with the fact that whales have a disproportionate amount of power. I understand the mechanism—that someone who has invested in Hive power has a bigger say, it makes sense in some ways. It just starts to feel that Hive is less decentralized than it claims to be when major decisions are decided by whale votes. I hold out hope that a more equatable way to govern. Perhaps vote strength limits, ie all whale votes are equal, all orca votes equal, all dolphin vote equal…. So that some extra strength is given if you held and invested in your Hive Power, but not so extreme as it is now where a planktons vote hardly counts at all.

But much like life in the so-called real world, I’m just in the lower half of the middle class. Who am I to say how Hive should work or be? I’m just 1 Butt.

I say what i say because in my ideal vision, even us little guys could help shape the platform. In fact, I think that Hive’s best chance to thrive might really be through some Dolphin Hivian’s idea or effort.
The ants and bees make the best decisions through the collective—mistake, iteration, mistake, iteration… if the queen just jumps in and says, “No, we’re doing this,” that hive likely dies.
Lol, I’m getting lost in my analogies. I’m just blippity blapping, don’t mind me.
I wonder if anyone will really read all this. I’ll mention again, im going to put 20% beneficiary to @commentrewarder As i really am curious where other hivians heads are at.

And in the spirit of meandering hivians thoughts… This Wednesday at 8pm UTC a few of us are starting a weekly chat on the Hive Discord to discuss all things hive and crypto. It will be @buttcoins @peaceandmoney @shadowspup there for this wed.
We would like to invite anyone to come join us on our first open chat - The Crypto and Cola chat, it will happen this Wednesday at 8pm UTC and you can find us in the Official Hive Discord server. A link to the server is right here ----------> https://discord.gg/uzg4Aedf.
Hope you come Join us for Crypto and Cola

I’ll end this with a random question: why are these two posts always in my most-viewed feed for weeks?

Barely anyone voted for either, and yet they persist in the most-viewed. What’s that all about?