I came to a spoon in the road. My guess is that someone pilfered some cutlery from a local restaurant and embedded it in road tar on a hot summer day.
So, I was working on one of my personal web sites yesterday and I realized that I actually feel good when I work on my own stuff.
Conversely, I realized that I really feel stressed out when I log into SteemIt.
People pretend that SteemIt is a format for creating great content. I have yet to come across a thread that I would be willing to cite as either a quality or authoritative source.
Yet we are supposed to pretend that posts in the "trending" section are the highest quality post.
The word "trending" indicates popularity, not quality. In the world at large there is usually a huge difference between quality and popular.
In the publishing world, there is a great deal of weight placed on the approval and editing feature. Assuming that the people in the professional publishing world are smarter than me, I figure that a good editing system is necessary for great content.
I came into SteemIt thinking that Steemians would be highly focused on honing their writing skills. What I've discovered that many of the people are so ego driven that they are incapable of handling any form of criticism.
Personally, I make mistakes all the time. For example, I commonly make the mistake where I put a negative in the wrong place and end up negating the idea I was trying to express. The self-reflective paradox is common error.
I've tried pointing out this mistake on SteemIt posts. In all four cases that I tried, the ego driven monsters writing on SteemIt became defensive.
So, it appears that the current reward system is about inflating egos. People on Steem hire bots to vote on t heir posts. Bots don't think, they just upvote.
A platform that encourages stream of flow writing that doen't have a good editing feature will end up with mistakes. If the people have invested their ego in the writing, they will be incapable of engaging in the editing process.
Such a system will not produce great content.
So, I came to a spoon in the road and have been meditating on the creation process and how overblown egos tend to undermine the process. I think I will go back to working on my personal site. I enjoy working on my own creations even if my own stuff lacks a viable reward structure.