"Bringing celebrities to Steemit" achievement unlocked!

Good afternoon, Steemit! I’ve missed you! I just read an article about how we’re in the midst of the sixth mass extinction of the planet, and I thought to myself “…I couldn’t dream of a fonder community than ours to go extinct with!”. I mean that. I’m at Adezzo in Scranton, one last time for a while. I get on plane in Philadelphia tomorrow morning […assuming Spirit, or as I like to call them, “the Poloniex of airlines” manages to take off. More than we could ask for at the beginning of trip, apparently. 

I spent the last two days in NYC. Three shoots in two days. It was one of my favorite parts of this trip, but the physical and creative toll was high. Driving 700 miles in 48 hours tends to break most people, but to muster the creative capacity to shoot on top of it is when you have to dig deep. I'll be sharing photos and stories in my next blog post, but first I wanted to talk about a really exciting addition to our Steemit community.

A few months ago, @stealthtrader made a post titled “Bring celebrities to Instagram”. @ned called for bounties on "It's Time For A Steemi Bounty System!", introducting celebrities to the platform in the very beginning [...to be clear, I'm not looking for a bounty reward in any way]. We’ve had a few, and it’s been inspiring to see Steemit create some of it’s own. I work with a lot of celebrities of varying levels of fame, from the Holly Madison to the Masuimi Max’s of the world, and you best believe they all get the Steemit lecture as some point before the end of the shoot. Two of my friends; some of the most recognizable as household names, I knew would be interested in Steemit, are finally here!

The goth power couple, @joshbalz and @ryanashley are here! Steemit accounts created and active! Josh is the former keyboardist of Motionless In White. He’s been touring the world and performing for over ten years, headlining the biggest festivals in the country, including Knotfest, Ozzfest and Warped Tour. Ryan, one of my oldest friends, is the winner of Inkmaster and host of the upcoming season of Inkmaster: Angels. Between @joshbalz and @ryanashley, they’re bringing a social media army of 795K followers on Instagram and 252K Twitter followers!

This afternoon, I met with @joshbalz and had a marathon breakfast at Canteen 900. I told him “…we’re having this conversation at a particularly good time because everything is down!”, and to my surprise, he was already aware. That’s one of the things I love about @joshbalz, he’s a performer, a musician, but above all, he’s a business person. We casually talked about Steemit before my last shoot with @ryanashley and he’d already begun researching Bitcoin and alt coins are observing trends! 

We went through the usual gamut of questions like “…where does the money come from?”, but the concept of decentralized currency and websites, he grasped immediately. He told me about how he just paid Facebook $100 to promote an ad for their store, The Strange and Unusual […so the people that follow him and Ryan, many of which THEY BROUGHT TO THE PLATFORM] would be able to actually SEE the ad! While he was venting about that miserable experience, I opened my computer next to him, and did two 100% upvotes for @hitheryon’s updates on STEEM park in Brooklyn! He watched each go up by about $3.50 and just shook his head in disgust. He was having that moment we’ve all had, where we realized what kind of exploitative, abusive relationship we’ve bought in to with Facebook, Instagram and other silo social networks.

By the end of the afternoon, we’d created both accounts and I’d given the bullet points on identity verification for their introduction posts. A quick tutorial on how to utilize the Steemit chat and the broad strokes on UI, post rewards and the difference between STEEM, STEEM POWER, and STEEM DOLLARS. Mission accomplished, and when I left @joshbalz was starting his first post with the community. Welcome them and follow them both at @joshbalz and @ryanashley. When they see the power of a decentralized blockchain and our unmatched community here at Steemit, they are going to turn their MASSIVE followings against Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and bring them to the alternative. Steemit!

Thanks for reading and following. I post all the time, so just follow me @kommienezuspadt for more art, illustration, photography and thoughts on life.