My experiences with social media since I first started
I am writing today very excited about discovering steemit a little more than a month ago. Since I've joined, I have felt very inspired to express myself through writing andcreating content that has value in peoples life. This is unlike all other experiences I have had on any other social media, for the first time I feel like what I have to say actually matters; Which is very weird for me because many others have not had this feeling the same way I have and are very vocal about what they have shared on the internet (regardless of the platform or the quality of the content they have to share). Also many other people have gained a big following from some of those social media platforms; Often they bring the following that they gained on one platform to each new platform that they start using (like steemit); I myself have not created a following on any other social media platform and have really only felt this desire to create new content consistently since joining Steemit. Since I haven't built a following, I will just have to start from scratch. Realizing all these things has caused me to explore why I feel more inspired to contribute more content to Steemit than any other social media platforms.
My attempts to have a strong expression of myself online
When I was younger I wanted to create something for the purpose of adding value to peoples lives. As I grew older I partially lost/forgot about that part of myself and started focusing on the monetary aspect of on the value of how much something is worth instead. Thinking things like,"I wonder how much money I can make off of this", instead of thinking what type of value can this bring to a persons life. Regardless of those changes, I've still always wanted to share the true expression of myself and the gifts I have with people who I don't know in person.
I have had strong desire of wanting to expand myself to a wider audience for a long time now, yet I've restricted myself in many ways. I realized jealousy, shyness and complaining have been major obstacle during my expression of myself. I have seen all these people come onto Steemit and they link their profile here to all there followers on there other social media platforms that they have built up the strongest. Seeing people do this makes me think, why didn't I do that in the past with my social media accounts? I have shared myself partially on social media and when people acknowledged me It felt good. Yet the difficulty that I had was that I never fully felt rewarded or I felt that the support/acknowledgement was a biased superficial response because they knew me in person; Liking what I create regardless of the content that I was producing. Now this may or may not have been true (probably untrue) but this is how I felt. Looking back on this, it was not my place to judge how people interacted with my content I created. Actually, being this way inhibited me in the long run but that is just how I used to be.
The value that Steemit brings to me on a personal level
Steemit was an amazing discovery that I made and it actually has brought two parts of me together that were once split apart; The younger part of myself and the older part of myself. Once having two conflicting ideas, now together into one perfect combination. Fulling the younger part of myself by creating value in peoples lives from the expression of myself and the content that I produce. While also fulfilling the older part of myself by earning a monetary currency with the content I create, giving a feeling of "responsibility" created by the teachings of a monetary society. Being able to look at the value of my account so easily through my wallet and seeing it expand, also helps the create that "security" feeling too. Seeing my account grow in monetary value gives me the feeling that I am doing well. Then more inspiration is created within me to make more valuable expressions of myself through steemit content that I produce that adds more value to peoples lives.
My very first interaction with social media
Oh myspace, you came onto the scene so strong by turning social media into a big high school popularity contest. I remember when I first was introduced to myspace. I was in a collegiate college and was trying to do well in school while staying social with friends. In this college program I was in, every kid who was enrolled received a laptop to use during the college period. At one point while staying social, I heard people making many references to this myspace thing and all the cool kids were doing it. So I decided to make an account, it was important for my reputation after all. Joining myspace was my first interaction with social media that I have ever experienced, so I began to learn every little thing I possibly could. Every user had a unique page with different backgrounds, song playlist, animation, gifs, videos, etc. Basically anything a person wanted that they could customize with HTML. Very soon I realized how much of a popularity contest it was by seeing things like the "top 8" each person had to choose on their page(with opted out only added way later), the gossipy bulletin boards made by each user that all the friends on your list can see, and the general page comment on each page showing how popular a person was. All of it a popularity contest. People were constantly comparing how many more or less friends each person had and making many reference of that by saying,"Tom (the creator) has the most friends out of anyone". I could create an expression of myself by customizing my page to some extent but overall it just felt like I had to constantly keep up with the new trend. Constantly having to change my my"space" with new html so my friends could see a different layout each time they visited. It was fun and great in the beginning but it became old after a while. Shortly after I stopped using myspace, it became uncool for everyone because of all the spam, viruses, tricks, scammers and porn that were add through the HTML that certain people added to their page. I soon left after that and then, with only a little time passed, I was introduce to a new social media platform.
And then I discovered FACEBOOK!
In 2007 I joined Facebook after my "best friend" introduced me to it. It seemed very similar to myspace without all the trouble that came with the capability of each user being able to customize their page using HTML, so it seemed better than myspace in that way. Also I still had the strong desire to stay connected to people and to express myself, so I decided to sign up for an account. The first thing I noticed was that Facebook replaced the "bulletin" on myspace with a newsfeed of everyone that you are friends with and all the things they post. Same concept but the difference is that Facebook emphasizes their newsfeed as one of the main points of social interaction, compared to myspace's bulletin board which is more off to side; In the end being more of an extra thing. With myspace the main center point looking at interacting with the page that each person had on their my"space". Facebook's newsfeed style is more of a constant flow of new information, which is what attracts people interested in only the business model side and for the average user wanting something new each second. (societies are fast these days).
My personal experience with Facebook is that of very mixed feelings. It allows me to stay connected to friends with very solid communication ever since the beginning; Giving me the capability to connect with them by sending or receiving a message or to express myself whenever I post a status update, which they may or may not see based on what the FB algorithm has chosen for them; But this is also the problem too. Without giving a lot of people that are close to me that ability to connect with me in this way, they wouldn't know what was going on with my life anyway. Connecting through a social media platform makes sense for people that live really far away and is ok even for people that live close by, but the biggest problem is the dependencies that it creates long term. When I first started that was not a problem as much as it is now. But now those friend I see in person less and talk on the phone less to them.
Facebook did allow a different type of connecting with friend in person or on the phone. I could express myself in a way based on what pictures I uploaded, what I wrote on my profile and what different types of things I would post on my status. It was a new way to connect with my friends that I had never experienced before. Overall It was a very amazing over a long period of time.
Yet as time passed It started to become clear how it was also effecting me negatively. I would sometimes get on Facebook just because I would feel lonely and wanted friendship connection, yet it was never fully satisfying because of the lack of real physical connection with my friends I interacted with online. The other downside is the fact that Facebook was and is constantly growing and it seems to be mining/selling our information more and more. With no positive benefit to the user except with the "privilege" to be able to use their platform.
Steemit VS. Facebook
Facebook Is the social media platform that I have interacted with the most, overall I've enjoyed the user experience. At the same time though I feel like every year Facebook has sacrificed little parts of that user experience for money, with the recent years just being an awful user experience that I can barely keep up with; Flooded ads everywhere, sponsored content hidden in newfeed, controlled algorithms and controlled information everywhere. constantly getting in the way of how I used to interact with the platform.
Because of these problems I've had with Facebook, Steemit is a very refreshing social media experience for me. Steemit feels like the users are creating the social media platform, instead of the platform creating their users.
Steemit (compared to Facebook) actually values anonymity and honesty at the same time;Difficult to enforce but the ideal are strong. Instead of threatening the user with their account being shutdown if they don't tell all their real information. Also any problem that Steemit users are having or that is seen, is solved within the community. I've always seen someone post about. Sometimes talking and bringing things out in the open can lead a great controversy started by the (OP) original poster which some people think makes Steemit look bad. I disagree though, mostly because it creates transparency and creates a safety feature against corruption that corporate entities with secrecy seem to always fall weakness to.
Above all, the most positive thing about joining Steemit is about the kindness and abundance mentality. I have received so much help, support and good feedback since I've joined Steemit; The most amazing thing about that, is that it's from users that I've never even met in person. These people have really touched my life in a way where I want to give something back to people without any conditions attached to my gifts; Just as they did for me. I've never felt or had that experience with Facebook. The closest thing I felt to that was with my friends or the groups that I was a part of, yet the random acts of giving were not really present as much. Also I've been seeing so much talent and creations here on Steemit that it's inspired me to create my own things that I didn't even think about doing before; Like the poems I have been inspired to write. Now when I get on Facebook its hard for me to even stay on there longer than 30 mins. It just has become so bloated wit everything that I can't even use it for its main purpose anymore; To connect with friends.
Flooded by all the social medias
long after I joined facebook, I began to see and discover other social medias, usually a long while after its launch date, but I decided to try each one anyway. Every new social media I joined felt like being late to a party were the main part of the event already happened. Not really understanding how to interact on each new platform I mostly just observed what everyone else created and what they had to offer. Eventually spending less and less time on each one as time went by. In total here are all the social media platforms (in no particular order) that I have signed up for: myspace, facebook, twitter, reddit, google +, soundcloud, and I think like two more accounts that I abandoned/forgot about. Now I pretty much only use steemit but would like to know how to use the other platforms for advertising the content I create
I would like to find a way to use all of the platform to expand myself to all the people across the world, yet at the same time I don't really know how necessary it is to create an account on every new social media platform that comes out. Also I would like to understand better what the advantages would be of having accounts on all of the most popular platform. I guess it's about having a wider audience.
In the end, it's all about staying connected to each other
In the end it's all about connecting with others all around the world, sharing ourselves and everything we are passionate about. I definitely want to use all the social media accounts that I have, using them to the best of each one of there abilities. Ive built up my facebook page with 150 followers of mostly close friends. My google+ account is the least active because I just don't understand it for some reason(even though it use a very similar format to all the others). All my accounts are made using the name
, here are all the current social media accounts that I have that I don't really actively use as much as I would like to:
- Facebook Page
- Youtube
- Google +
- Gmail
The Music social media sites
soundcloud - reverbnation
Also Seriously thinking about getting an Instagram. But the social media platform I like the most is Steemit.
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