I think we should just call it what it is. Advertising. You're buying potential views. No one complains that a commercial is shit, they don't get their spot rejected. They're just dumb for wasting money on a bad ad.
It's the same thing here. Money buys visibility. That's what they want steem to mean. They want it to override talent or craft or skill. They want money to mean something in terms of visibility on the platform. They would love it if big corporations eventually moved onto the platform. The platform isn't about you or me or any other normal person having an enjoyable time using a social media platform, it's about preparing the platform for use by even bigger moneyed interests who give even less of a shit about you and want even better returns on their investments.
But they're going about it all wrong.
You can't monetize a platform before it gains mainstream acceptance. That stunts your growth. Look at every popular website, app, or tech business and you'll notice a strong trend. Give shit away for free, hook the customer, then charge. Steemit was pay to win from the start and scared away millions of potential users.
This is why I'm hoping to get delegation. And why I hope other honest users request and get delegation as well.
I feel I can offer a level of curation stemming from 20 years of professional experience to the photography community that only a small handful of us here would be qualified to offer. I've given some serious thought to my position on vote buying, made a kind of internal pros/cons list to using delegation to flag, and came to the conclusion that the smart thing to do with the voting power of any delegation would be to give it to the talented people in the community who are seriously about to quit because their amazing skill is going unrecognized, unacknowledged, and under-rewarded, rather than use it as a weapon. I know that's subjective, but I know how that shit feels, to know what went into the creation of an image for it to maybe get $1 or 2. Some will pop up and say "You should be grateful you got THAT much!" No, not when you see an image taken with so little effort or technical knowledge or any creativity whatsoever, and it's getting upwards of $300, 400, maybe even $700 or $1,000.
One thing the Steemit culture should not be about is discouragement.
And that shit's discouraging.
As hell.
But instead of going after them, I want to go after the discouraged.
Well, I personally still hope you get a delegation. I would love to see really good photography rewarded... and I say that also as a (brick and mortar) gallery owner who has a few photographers in our family. It's hard to get ahead these days when any "idiot with a smartphone" can get lucky and capture something amazing.
Well, if we want to throw money at people for making good content then that's on curators and curation groups, of which there are more than a few good ones already operating on the platform. The problem is that everyone wants to influence how rewards are distributed, but no one really has the wallet to back it up. I'll admit that I don't.
We need more curators. Not sure about curation groups - because I'm not completely sure I believe they've made as big a difference as was hoped or is claimed - but we need more people who, if they've got the money but they're not going to do it themselves, would at least be willing to delegate to people who are committed to it.
I myself am aimed at specialized curation of one of the biggest sections of Steemit.
That's a fine opinion to have, I don't disagree that curators are nice to have around. Without them this place really would be like any other blockchain, might as well not have steemit at that point, and just have stake produce steem/sbd for the SP holder automatically.
I did not read the rest of your comment, I did complain about what I thought was a shit commercial for a cable TV network Channel, they removed their commercial, and changed it. So People do complain about "shit" commercials. Just thought you should know that.