NOTFaceReveal - How Steemit Changed Me - Steemit Ultimate Challenge 8 Weeks - Week #6

Hi to all Steemians!

First of all, I want to thank @dobartim for this contest and @redjepi for informing us about it.

DISCLAIMER: This is going to be a spontaneously written post and I am a really bad writer. So if you're here to read an inspirational, work of art, good quality post I suggest you not to continue reading because I am pretty sure you won't find it here.

Who am I?

My name is Fatih. I'm a 22-year-old Turkish boi. I'm an Electrical Electronics Engineering student at the University of Karabük (in Turkey)... And that seems like it, I couldn't find anything else to say about myself, so let's move on to my Steemit story :D

What Steemit means to me

I joined Steemit about 8 months ago. When I first joined the platform I didn't know about anything. I didn't know any other cryptocurrencies than Bitcoin, I didn't know what blockchain was, I didn't even know that I would be getting paid in Steem which was also a cryptocurrency. As most of us did, I joined here for the money. But the money I had in mind was 'maybe like 10 dollars a month?' :D

So, I posted my first post; 0.14$ for a video I found online, not that bad. Then I made a second post, bam! 2.3$. I was really starting to like this. Not because I was making -what seemed to me as- good money, but for the first time in my life I was actually being myself when writing those posts.

Many of you might not like anonymous accounts (I am not really anonymous as I talk about myself, but anyways 😃) but I was only able to share those posts because I didn't have anything to worry about. I am a really shy person, I do have social media accounts but I have never posted a status on Facebook. I had never commented on someone else's post -if it is not directly related to me-. The last time I posted a picture anywhere was around 3 years ago. I don't feel comfortable talking in group chats even the ones with my relatives.

But in Steemit I felt free, I wrote -almost- whatever came to my mind. I made some experimental posts. Heck, I even made this post.

Actually, after re-reading this post, that one might have to leave the spot for 'the cringiest post on steemit' to this one.

I was commenting on other people's posts, making jokes. Steemit started to become my comfort zone -I wasn't really aware of that till now, actually 😃-. I was really enjoying here. That was so till something happened... (I will tell what happened later on ⬇️)

...In that long period of 8 months, I only made 21 + 40 posts. The reason why I said +40 is because they are -mostly- Utopian translation posts and I don't consider them as 'real' posts. But looking at my profile page you can see that it says 796 posts, which means I made more than 700 comments. And I know that I made most of those comments when I -almost- quit posting anything for about a month.

Why I quit posting

About 5 months ago the Turkish community went through a really hard time. I don't want to go to the details of this but we were left in a position where we had no curators or let's say leaders. So, we gathered on our Discord channel and thought what we could do to solve this, everyone told their ideas and we decided that we should hold an election and select 3 curators. -I know you are wondering why I'm telling you all this but I am coming to the point 😃 -
Long story short, the election couldn't be held because there were only 3 -eligible- nominees... And I was one of them. As much as I didn't want the job at first -knowing that I'm not up for this job- I couldn't resist my friends telling me that I should.

...So I became one of the Turkish curators. We wanted to make everything perfect, we shouldn't do a smallest mistake, because -as we have seen for the previous curator- anything could be used against us. We just tried to help the community and tried to do everything very carefully. So, the reason why I didn't share anything at that time was because; I couldn't think of many ideas, I am a really bad writer (as you have seen, sorry 😃) I had to be formal when I totally am not, I thought that I -being a curator -shouldn't earn more than other community members did (because that also could raise some complaints), I didn't want people upvoting my posts just because I was the curator, and because I was spending time for community purposes -not that I didn't have time to write a post or two, but still-.

After 2-3 months of ups and downs -and we doing everything but being unable to find external support (from whales or dolphins) probably because of our bad reputation- I quit my job as curator -the other curators had quit their jobs too-.

Now I'm not commenting on posts unless it is a question I can help. I'm not posting anything except Utopian. And Steemit is now far far away from being my comfort zone.

How Steemit changed me

At first, Steemit changed me to be more open. I was able to write something -that is more than 3 sentences- open to public for the first time -as much as I can remember-. I was able to be myself around strangers for the first time. I was talking to people very easily which I am not able to in real life (see; 'I have only 1 friend at my University while being a senior').

These are just for steemit, I'm still 'the same old me' in real life :D

Later on, I met with many good people who thought me everything I know about Steemit. There is so much to talk about them but this post had already gotten way out of context :D
These things made me start to like money. After all, we wouldn't have been here if Steemit didn't offer money, and if we weren't here these nice things wouldn't have been possible('duh..?').

But then I became a curator, so had to act accordingly. I didn't mind this as I was still able to be myself from time to time in comments. What really changed me is when I saw what people could do for money -or maybe some other things too-. I saw people trying to destroy something that was built for them, that wasn't requesting anything but their support, respect, and appreciation and I saw this over and over again. And I have seen (still seeing) people praising whales or people who hold contests with big rewards. So, this made me think that -many- people don't really care about your efforts, they care about 'you' only if you're giving them something material (in this case money). Thus making me start to hate money even more than I did before.

You could say 'if you hate money then why are you still here'. So let me put it this way; I do like having money though I don't like spending it -for myself-but I don't like the concept of money because it leads people to do bad things and forget what's really important.

Now, as I quit being a curator I want Steemit to change me again. -Not about my thoughts on money though, I am planning to talk about that in a later post- I want to be myself again, but I don't want to hide behind being anonymous. I want to be myself and not be scared that people will not like me or look down on me. I want to have fun, do what I want to do.

This post was rather more like a step to freely being myself again in Steemit than an entry to the #Steemitultimatechallenge. So, sorry for that @dobartim and people who read this post all the way till here -I don't know why anyone would read till here but...- .
And to make the step even bigger, I will do something really crazy (extremely normal). I will do a face-reveal for steemit and it will be my first time in 3 years posting a picture of myself anywhere.

_{Image removed}

Türkçe Açıklama

Steemit'deki ilk zamanlarıma tekrar dönmeye çalışıyorum ve bu gönderi de ona ilk adım olur belki diye düşündüm. Aslında bu yazıyı SteemitUltiamateChallenge için yazıyordum, Türkçe'ye de çevirecektim ama baktım çok saçma yerlere gitti, hiç çevirmeyeyim dedim :D Yine de isteyen olursa çeviriyim ama siz zararlı çıkarsınız yani, yazık okuduğunuz zamana.

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This post was created for the Steemit Ultimate Challenge held by @dobartim with a prize pool of 2000 SBD

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