We all know who I'm talking about. The Brazilian Yngwie Malmsteen who's built a permanent home for himself on the trending page.
I want to voice a few thoughts out loud here.
Is it just me, or is it kinda weird that this dude - who by all accounts seems like a complete normie - shows up from out of nowhere and takes over Steemit? He knows how the site works, he knows how to use the paid bid bots and make a profit, and then a little later he posts about crypto investing and technical analysis.
This guitar dude from Brazil.
Think about how niche crypto is - and then realize that Steemit is a minuscule niche within a niche.
How did he get here?
According to him, his friends and colleagues insisted that he joins Steemit.
I mean, I'm sure that's the story of all us right there, right? We all had those friends and colleagues telling us about Steemit and insisting that we join.
Not a friend and not a colleague. Friends and colleagues.
Right?
Take 100 of your friends and colleagues. Or if you're lonely and devoid of love, just pretend. Or you can go talk to strangers on the street unless you suffer from social anxiety, which you probably do because you're a loner and stuff, but let's move on.
Mention Steemit to them, and how many, out of 100, know what you're talking about?
I'd say absolutely 0.
Somehow, however, this dude has multiple friends and colleagues who promoted Steemit for him.
Theoretically possible, I guess, but damned darn unlikely, if you ask me. Maybe Steemit is just pretty damn popular in the Brazilian guitarist scene.
And I know that he did make this:
I even asked a friend of mine who is a Photoshop guru to spend some time and look for artefacts in case of manipulation, but he said it does look real.
But that, in and of itself, doesn't mean anything. Maybe a bot owner/whale knows the dude, and asked him to do this for him. Not saying it's the case, but it's possible.
I also spent some time studying and looking up his posts. And the textual tone and style vary drastically. Either this dude has a severe case of identity crisis, he's on different mixtures of drugs every day, or the posts are written by different people.
Sometimes he comes off as a normal person, and then in the next post, he's in the fifth dimension again.
This goes for both his posts, as well as his comments.
He also receives an insane amount of comments. Compared to the other posts on trending, the level of engagement is exponential. And for what? I know we like to joke around about Steemit's userbase being full of retards, but to see his prosaic and banal attempts at wisdom get hundreds of comments from people saying how that mundane and absolutely imaginative trite was damn near life-changing is just odd.
I know people want to comment on trending posts just to get their faces out there, but something is off there.
I just find the whole thing weird. And I'm not ready to believe the account to be 100% genuine yet.
I dunno. What do you guys think?
I don't care to dig around in this particular pile of manure too much; some very basic "let your fingers do the walking" reveals a B-level Brazilian musician; none of his other social media or web site in ANY way references Steemit, or an interest in cryptocurrencies. In fact, his name is not affiliated with cryptos or Bitcoin ANYwhere.
The fact that he seems to write a lot about personal development is also "off topic." Meaning, out of character.
The only reason I even got curious enough to poke around a bit was the possibility that he was "big" enough to have a PR manager running his Steemit. That's even iffy. 90K likes on FB and 220K followers on Instagram is not "big time."
The other thing that's a little sketchy is that IF he were genuinely sent here as result of "lots of friends and colleagues," he should have a disproportionately large number of Brazilian (or Portuguese language) followers... and he doesn't. So there's that.
And therewith endeth my thumbnail investigation.
I thought it was quite a thorough one! :0)
My friend is a B level musician too and can barely afford a bus pass, look at the cost of the paid upvotes, thousands of dollars on each one, and that's at a loss, you lose money on paid upvotes.
Actually I'm going to have to agree with the 'informative' magic8ball.
From what I've read of his content (very little), I can see why you suggest multiple authors could be involved, (I think writesbackwards is stated multi-author account) but there are no rules against that?
As far as knowing the bots, if you have cash and don't mind a little gamble, throwing bids all over the place may not mean any more than that.
Honestly, I struggle with the desire to open and consume his content, and the same goes for other frequent bot-stacking trenders. There is just so much other and more interesting content around, in my opinion of course.
Cheers
No, it’s not like there’s a rule against it. But if you’re giving the impression of the contrary, it is lying.
Yes I agree that is fowl play, particularly when the account is fronted by one face.
I wouldn't be surprised, but at the same time I am not going to lose (more) sleep with this additional and potential Steem shenanigan.
Somehow, when I read his content and replies, I get the strange feeling I'm reading the product of some rough AI that doesn't quite pass the Turing test. Hard to be more specific.
I have been thinking the same, such varied content suggests to me that he is farming out work via one of those sites like fiverr or something. The comments I will have to look at as I was largely ignoring those
Steemit and the bid bots funding content plagiarism is potentially a massive issue if Steemit were to go mainstream.
It is because these people if that is the case just tend to poorly regurgitate articles which are written by others. It also just looks plain bad
He also just doesn’t look like his content, you know?
I mean, the content just doesn’t feel ”him”. I don’t know the guy, but I just sense this strong disconnect between the guy in the photos and the stuff he puts out on the site.
Seems to have changed at a certain point. Maybe he sold his account? That would explain it and the sudden direction changes. I genuinely didn't believe people sold their accounts until I saw one recently which had changed hands
Oh, it happens. It’s been happening ever since the beginning.
And I mean, it’s possible.
It's a lovely guitar, shame he didn't post more guitary stuff and boost that instead!
His not being a fake is also being defended by Therealwolf:
https://steemit.com/lo/@therealwolf/re-church-of-piglet-re-chbartist-right-before-the-daw-20180807t130355995z
I saw that. He isn't exactly drawing the numbers in eh!
I just removed my witness vote for him when i saw he upvoted that garbage for 4 dollars. Most people giving him fat upvotes just want curation.
Same here brother,
Its just a shame, i actually chose to mute his blog so i dont get to see his post...
However it doesnt make sense a bit...
A renowned guitarist who barely post anything on his blog about music not even for once...
Thats a shame and being a beginner guitarist myself i know thats not possible..
Every guitarist i meet always one way or the other adds up musical art in their blog consciously or subconsciously ...
On the other hand if he was really the guy he says he is then just as earlier pinpointed we should be seeing lots of brazillian folks flock down his blog...
And why the fuck would he need to promote articles if he really is the star he claims...
Lastly a celebrity as such wouldnt constantly be posting here of steemit
No offence i dont mean steemit aint a good blog... but trust me i went through this guys profile and discovered he is obviously a big shot in brazil and very famous as at that... ..
Either way just like the magic ball said
Hands crossed till judgement day....
To the question in your title, my Magic 8-Ball says:
Hi! I'm a bot, and this answer was posted automatically. Check this post out for more information.
I bet he is flattered when you call him brazilian malmsteen
Yngwie, to me, is a meme.
I'm glad that I follow a person who knows this video
Anytime, MEMRI brother.
I would love to interact with this post but I'm clueless about that guy :D just checked his first post
Does he seem weird to you? Like, either a heavy dose of mushrooms, insanity, or randomly copypasted content.
He is reptilian but manufactured in China
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STOPTo support your work, I also upvoted your post!
I have to agree. I've only just started playing around with steemit and have noticed quality lacks with some of the posts around here. This guy getting called out by you on his last post was a needed redemption for the platform. Maybe it is a language barrier but I don't understand how content like that could get voted up so quickly.
He doesn't. Not really. The votes he gets are from the paid bots. A case study in how the bots make a profit by wasting the reward pool on stuff like this.
You are not alone :)
When are they going to ban the voting bots?
You can't really ban anyone on Steemit. And since Steemit doesn't have any rules, the voting bots aren't really breaking any.
It's people using their stake.
Unfortunately.
Voting bots are truly unhealthy, sadly.
I think so, too. I understand the argument made for them, but when it's all said and done, I think they do more harm than good.
In my own, subjective opinion.
I can barely see any good at the moment. So basically if you make sure you transfer similar amount sbd to bots for every post, then you get some other curation bots before the voting bots too, turning steem into a pure joke lol.
It pretty much is a joke right now, sadly.
Banning voting bots is impossible. What they could could do is make each account's vote equal and use an oracle to weed out fake bot armies. SP would get you free steem for doing nothing so people would have incentive to hold it. Ned looked like a fool on Bloomberg media when they asked him about the crap in trending now he's talking about ending stake based voting, there is a video somewhere. If Steem doesn't go this way I'm quitting
Ned is for sure not going to bring Steem to the next level. Steemhunt’s ABV approach is quite devent so far. Or the change of current linear 25/75 would also do.
I wish we could fire him or vote him off the island or something
If we are lucky. Maybe one day.
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