If you've been around on Hive for a while you'd know the term 'shitpost' - a vulgar moniker for a low effort post or maybe just a post that people deem poor quality - for whatever arbitary reason they decide. Maybe they don't like the multiple photos of the same object, all out of focus and left justified. Maybe they don't like the fact it's only 80 words and is a photo of someone's cat sleeping in the sunshine. Maybe they think that in comparision to the other good quality content they've seen this week, that the rewards are undue and raping the reward pool - yep, reward pool rape is also a vulgarity of Hive. I like 'theft' better - and it's only when people are thieving intentionally that it really bothers me.

^{The only cat photo I have in thousands of photos, taken in Chefchouen, Morocco.}

@tarazkp's post this week about what makes a quality post here as well as a few other conversations on Hive about whether blogging is dead got me thinking a little more about what people do on HIVE.

It's this line from @curator.cat's post that got me, simple in it's declaration:

'should we continue to choose feeding our eternal dopamine addictions with meaningless "likes" in place of actually taking the time to not only share actual knowledge, as well as chronicling our existence.'

In my mind, this felt like a response - certainly mine - to a few negative comments that berate 'shit posters' or content that doesn't agree with their sensibilities. Sure, you might not like to read an extended essay but nor do you have to - there's a ton of content here that might be more your thing. A dissection of the week on Splinterlands. A recipe for puffpall schnitzel. A garden clean up after a storm. Some photographs of a jetty on a rainy day. As they say, scroll on by if you don't like it.

We also need to put aside our own judgements about aesthetics - not everyone here is a formatting Queen, nor a photographer. Instagram this isn't. What you get here is humanness - from every angle. The guy who's had an awful week and posts about his sadness. The newbie from Bangledesh writing about the rain destroying his crops. The dressmaker from Lagos showing off her threads. The writer from Canada experimenting with haiku. The Australian girl talking about snakes in her Queensland garden. The messy failures, the joyful successes. The existance chroniclers. There's some real gold there, I promise.

^{The only other 'cat' photo I have, according to the search function in Google photos, is actually a dog. Don't mind the trivia - I'm just prettying up my shitpost.}

We don't have to create a beautiful blog amongst a trillion other Wordpresses or Squarespaces. We just need to engage with life, and share it with others.

That's quality.

And the difference between our quality and the quality you get elsewhere is exactly what @tarazkp says - it's about conversation (though his idea of a 'good' conversation might be different to yours). Because there's nothing worse on Hive than sharing and getting crickets and tumbleweed - a post we've spent time on and hoped for someone to respond to with no comments at all.

So really, in my mind a 'shitposter' doesn't exist - the shit posts are the ones produced by plagiarizers and vote farmers and those that pass off AI produced content as their own.

What we can have, however, is people that produce their own content, but don't bother interacting with the other content creators here. Take a minute. Go visit someone you've never met. Comment on their story. Take the time to acknowledge them, even if at face value you thought their post wasn't going to be your thing. When you make an effort to do so, you'll find 'quality' take on a whole new vibe.

With Love,

Are you on HIVE yet? Earn for writing! Referral link for FREE account here