Greetings steemians! I have been hearing people talking recently about changing the terminology we use to distinguish between various levels of steem power. Apparently, some people find the term minnow degrading. However, I see nothing inherently degrading about the term minnow. Outside of steemit and crypto the only term we use that would ever be considered degrading would be whale, in fact. If someone outside of steemit were to call me a minnow, or a dolphin or orca for that matter, I would think that person was strange and probably avoid them as much as possible but I would not be offended. However, if someone called me a whale I would probably think they were calling me fat and might get a little offended or at least a little defensive.
Minnows are by far the largest population here on steemit. For this reason they would basically be synonymous with the idea of a normal user. Steemit itself has only been around for a little over a year. Unless you were around from the very beginning, which most people weren't or you had a ton of money laying around to invest in steem, chances are you are a minnow. Even some people that have been here for over a year are still minnows. This can be for a variety of reasons but most likely they don't have the time or inclination to dedicate to the platform to quickly rise through the ranks. This doesn't make their content any less worthy of consideration just the same as having a bunch of steem power doesn't make someone's content more worthy of consideration. Mostly it is because they don't expect steemit to pay their bills and fund their lives and are busy working jobs.
The fact is, unless you have spent the last several years learning to code so you can build tools that benefit the community, are a major YouTube personality that can bring a large following with you to the platform, or you're a modern day Shakespeare who can wow everyone with their engaging writing, Steemit is probably not going to ever pay your bills. Basically, unless you have skills that you could be using elsewhere to make a good living but have chosen to migrate to this platform because you can benefit the whole then you aren't likely to ever make your living off of Steemit.
Most of the users here have no problem being called a minnow. It is what we call a normal user and most people have no problem being normal people. Only people that think they're better than other people would even find the term degrading. They see other people making decent money off their posts and think they should be able to do the same by writing shit posts. However, the people who do make good money off their posts have usually donated the skills they spent years learning to improving the platform. If you can't even bother to learn to format your posts or properly spell words then why would you think that you should make the same? Why should we change our terminology that most people have no problem with to suit your ego, especially since you will eventually find whatever other term we change it to degrading since it is not the term itself but the application of it that you find degrading. I am proud to be a minnow and I see absolutely nothing degrading about the term. Thanks for reading and happy steeming!