Have you wondered what the world would be like if the way it works were more like this community? You work, they upvote you and then you get paid. In this world, you will find whales, curators, bots, spammers and, most importantly, minnows who are just on this Steemian Earth trying to figure out a way of making a living throughout hard work. That’s the case for our hero, Leo Torres, who is on the search for a place within the community and wants to grow with it.
It was Leo’s 23rd birthday, the age when people were inserted into the system. The state granted a set of devices at that specific age, which were installed inside people’s brains and allowed them to see a person’s profile, to post on the go, upvote and transfer Steem or SBD. Pretty much like what we see in a user’s account nowadays, including posts, comments, replies and a wallet; with the difference that there is a new feature called JOBS, similar to that of posts, but it shows their performance in their daily jobs. It looked similarly to holograms, just that the only person who could see such images was the individual and they could interact with the images. An individual would see something like this:
Leo had strong beliefs about hard work and success and how minnows were the real reason why the world hasn’t collapsed. He despised how the system has become more of a place where what matters is not quality _per se_ but rather the popularity someone has acquired throughout the years. But he knew that despite all that, the helping-others based network made everything more fair.
He graduated as a Technical Analyst on Steem and other Cryptocurrencies (TASC) for that was one of the most successful careers; however, that wasn’t what he truly enjoyed. He was a lover of novel writing; even though, it was no longer a world where that was appreciated. The most popular people were: those who discussed money (that’s how people called cryptocurrencies those days), trips and photography, and Virtual Reality Games (VRG). It was a much more competitive world than that of 20 years ago, when Steem was recently created. Usually, you would get paid either by someone hiring you for a specific job, and then be transferred SBD, or people would upvote you for such work or by the posts you would make. Leo was interested on the latter. People get inside this economic system once they turn 23 years old, so they could make sure people would prepare at college or a similar way of training, to attempt to avoid low quality performances just for the sake of money. But it wasn’t enough.
Leo had prepared himself for this day and had written hundreds of short stories he believed everyone would appreciate for the last years. His #indroduceyourself post did not bring him much revenue, but that was to be expected. College taught you to adopt such mentality and not give up even when things did not look right at first. After that, he published an amazing story he wrote when he was 18 years old called _My Face in the Light_ , which was one of his favorites. Nevertheless, after its first three days, the story only made $0.12. He thought it was a little disappointing for all the effort he put into it and because it was conceived as an actual great writing, but he could overcome the emotion quickly.
One day, he was walking down the street when people would surround him with offers to resteem his work, so others could see it. Leo refused every time. He believed so hardly in what he did, and thought that it would be enough with quality content to succeed. Maybe if he got the attention of a dolphin, or even better, a whale, his luck could change.
It was easy to notice who a curator was. People stuck around them just like flies, trying to impress them somehow and get their attention. But Leo refused to do such a denigrating thing. It was a complete humiliation to kiss someone else’s butt just for an upvote. Leo knew that if he kept up writing good stuff, he would be noticed at some point.
There was no evening when he would not sit at his desk, upload his stories, edit them, make changes on the scripts and write new ones when he felt inspired; and he loved doing all of that. But the weeks went by and he saw no improvement on his income. How could it be that there were such mediocre posts around whose accounts made so much profit and got thousands of followers, when his work was superior and barely got him any money to eat? Luckily, he had another job as a TASC in a company who transferred him around 7,000 SBD a month (depending on his performance and if his boss liked what he did) which paid the bills (minimum wage at the time was only 5,000 SBD, but inflation had increased after a USD crisis in 2026 which led to the its disappearance); although it was very boring. He wanted to dedicate himself to full-time writing, but competition and popularity standards made it difficult.
Everything changed when one day at the office he got so overworked and unfairly yelled at (due to his bad performance, as he did not make too much of an effort on what he did), that he quit with a terrible argument. It was a huge mistake. I this society, every time he wants to work for a new company, they’ll have a full record of his previous job performance and behaviors, thanks to the devises they had inserted, so it would be almost impossible to get hired.
Those devises, as I mentioned before, show a record on most of the things related to the individuals. He did not have many friends as his reputation was not very good at the moment, either, and society took that a lot into consideration. Whenever he tried to get aid from a curator community, it would be almost impossible since there were many others on his same position. He started feeling desperation and wanted to end it all.
He enjoyed nature, so he went to a very nice cliff near his hometown. He got close to the edge, raised one foot almost making a step to jump off, when suddenly he hears an eerie voice:
-What are you doing, young one? Your work is great.-
-Huh? Who said that- said a puzzled Leo.
-Let me see more of your work- continued the mysterious voice.
-You don’t need my permission, you know? Just read whatever you want to read, and leave me alone.- replied Leo with annoyance.
-You are right- said the voice with a very creepy laughter at the end. –Your work is amazing, I don’t know why you are doing this.-
-It’s useless. It hasn’t been enough to fulfill my goals in life. Now if you would excuse me, I’ve got to go.-
-You just haven’t been lucky enough, I reckon.-
-I agree with you on that one, crazy old man.-
-Why don’t you take a look at whom I am, young one?-
At that moment, Leo Torres’ face was in shock. He noticed that individual he was talking to had just a couple of followers, not many post nor was he following many people. He did not even have a profile picture, just the name of @x ; and he had only resteemed a couple of wrinkle related articles. But what had caught Leo’s impression was not that but the fact that he had a Steem Power of $9,520,012.43!
He had never encountered anyone like him in his entire life. There were huge companies that had big balances similar to those or famous people who came to this world with impressive inheritance, but you would never get this close to them.
-I’ll be brief- said the old man –I will 100% upvote each one of your posts from now on, but under the condition that you must write posts of this quality daily. I also have the power to defame you if you do not do as I said. One mistake, and you will be done. Deal?-
Leo could not believe his ears. –De-deal.- He stuttered.
-Well, that’s it, young one. You will hear from me soon.- And just like that, the old man walked away and shouted Leo not to follow him unless he wanted to break his deal.
Leo, obviously agreed, and almost passed out when he saw his previously $0.25 article was now showing off an astounding $2,380.71 number.
With that, many others followed until that story reached $3,628.01. That was just how the system worked.
He became very popular now. A rockstar, almost. Not one day would pass without him publishing something, and @x upvoting it. The first weeks, he could keep up with the pressure of having to write daily thanks to the stories he had from his teenage age and the high motivation he felt. People wanted to be his friends and did everything they could for one of his upvotes. At first he simply told everyone that he would only upvote quality content, but it was no use. Girls offered him sex, others just favors. It was so good an opportunity to have everything he wanted, that he could not resist. What he once despised had now become his own life.
The problem was that he was starting to run out of ideas. His work was so difficult to make that he could get tired very easily. There was no way to find @x and talk to him. He needed a break or he could lose it. So he thought it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he wrote something different for once. He then just took a nice picture of the cliff he once tried to jump from and wrote a short reflection bellow it. It did not get @x ’s upvote. Right away he saw a SBD 0.001 memo that read:
This is just a warning. Do it again, and you will be over.
Leo thought about it very seriously. He said he would not do it again. However, he noticed how despite not getting the old man’s upvote, he still got a lot of attention from other people and it raised $1,500.
He kept struggling week after week as his creativity dried out. He then reached the point when he thought:
-Who is this guy to blackmail me the way he is doing? I am a top 5 account. My work is seen by millions everyday and it is because they all love me and what I do. That won’t change because an old mad man stops voting me. I already have 100,000 of Steem Power and lots of money. I make $5,000,000 posts daily and without him, I would still make $3,000,000 per each one of them.-
And so he did. On the next day, all he posted was a picture of him and a description saying: “The author behind the stories”. That immediately gathered tons of money despite not having @x ’s vote. No memo this time.
That was it. Now, he would be able to have a normal life and not spend all of his days stuck in a computer getting burned out. It would mean less money, but who cares, nothing could change much…
A day off was all he needed, so he would be ready on the following day to write another interesting story, but something happened this time. His newest story could only raise $17.57. He was so surprised by it. He then tried to reach all of the usual whales who voted him, but he got no answer. And the same happen in all of his following writings, where he would just make less and less money each time. He saw how he lost followers very drastically! From over 2 million to just a couple thousands in just days. His reputation also dropped. From 86 to -3! How was this possible? – He asked to himself.
That’s when he noticed all of the whales had been plotting against him. They have been making posts urging everyone to flag, stop following and voting Leo. He found no explanation to that. How could just one old man have such influence on his dream!?
He tried to find it out desperately by forcibly facing those whales. He stalked them day and night trying to get an answer. All he had in life was pretty much lost and he felt like in an abyss. Until one day, he grabbed a gun and kidnapped 
-You saw his SP yourself- said
It was all clear for Leo now. His quality work never mattered. He was trapped in a system that was easily controlled when someone had that much power in their hands. He had no way out, and was indeed doomed. He could not accept being on top of the world once, and a no-one now.