New Steem: So Now That Curation is More Lucrative, Who's Creating CONTENT?

I admit that I am sometimes a little slow in the uptake... so bear with me, please.

Still trying to figure out the aftermath of HF.21 and this whole thing called #NewSteem.

I do dig the idea that there are better rewards for discovering and curating content... I think that's something that has been needed around here for a while: In short, Steemlandia was in need of more content consumers.

So that's a pretty good thing... right?

Of course, then the rewards distribution also changed... and I keep running into these statements to the effect of "if your post is below 20 Steem, your reward will be lower," which sounds like a genteel and politically correct way of saying that the 98% of content creators (or more?) are actually worse off than they were before.

Daisy in the afternoon sun

I don't really CARE, but...

...I'm pretty sure some other people will. I'm just a blogger, so I plan to keep on blogging.

Still, this new distribution sounds mostly like a form of what we used to call "Marketing Window Dressing," back when I was in that biz. To the innocent bystander who swings by one of the Steem front ends and looks at what posts are earning, it will look very attractive, while the truth of their likely fate if they do join the community... is a lot sadder.

It's almost like a "loss leader" at the supermarket: They offer you $3.99/lb ribeye steaks to get people to come IN the market... where everything else is overpriced.

I'm not disagreeing with the premise that we need new people to join the community so we can have some membership growth... just concerned that it will end up playing like "false advertising."

Leaf and spider web

But Back to Creating Content...

The question still lingers, for me...

If you have some klout (aka SteemPower) and it's more attractive to curate than to post... and you're unlikely to be rewarded very much unless your posts are gonna make 20+ Steem... exactly who is going to be creating this content actually needed to get those better curation rewards from?

And if you come here as a newbie... no matter how talented a content creator you may be, isn't it now just going to be that much harder to work your way past that 20-Steem boundary?

Feels a bit like a chicken vs. egg thing... but maybe I'm missing something?

Yeah, I know... lots of questions, few answers.

The view from here...

Tribal Creative Shuffling

Currently, my answer is that I am still more interested in the potential of the Steem-Engine based tribes than in Steem Prime. It's interesting to watch, at least... I'm guessing more than a few of them will self-destruct, in pursuit of a few more cents. But a handful — with appropriate moderation and oversight — might end up doing pretty well.

Many seem pretty ill-conceived. A few already are showing themselves to be "too small" to sustain activity. Let's face it, if you have a group that announces a team of 10-12 people... and not a single one of them has posted anything of consequence in a week, that does not bode well.

Of course, the world is full of people who will come running at the slightest suggestion that the word "TOKENS!" hangs in the air.

Reminds me of nothing so much as throwing a handful of small change (coins) into the air on a crowded pedestrian street and then watching seemingly rational and sane adults scramble like crazy and fight with each other... just to collect less money than they make in one minute at their places of work!

Hope everyone is having a great day!

(Another #creativecoin creative non-fiction post)

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(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for this platform.)
Created at 190830 17:42 PDT
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