How to be a Hypocritical Community Builder on Steemit

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Like blockchain, innovation and growth hacking, "Community Building" is like a hype term I feel that had been used too liberally, mostly self-bestowed instead of being given. I’ve been called that too over the years at KICKSTART.MY, FuckupnightsKL, Mindvalley’s Project Renaissance and now Steemit’s very own TeamMalaysia. Frankly, I can’t really pinpoint what a community builder should be doing, because each of us comes with a different set of skills and background, and even different causes we wish to champion.

But I do know how to be a shitty "community builder” though, and sadly, a few of them has made their home on Steemit. Of course, this is just my personal observation, and not hitting on any particular self-proclaimed community builder. But then again, as the local Malaysian saying goes, “those who bite into the chillies will feel the spiciness.”

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Oh, and for easier reference, what’s the inverse of community building? Community Raping? Sure, let’s go with that.

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#1. Talk a Big Talk but Poor/No Results to Show

Somehow some community builder mistaken community building with big talking. Sure, all leaders will have their visions, and verbalising them is one of the way to rally support. What separate great leaders from the crappy ones, though, are the actions that echoes the words. Personally, though my mom was never called a community builder/leader, one thing she taught me had always been “If you need to cry out your achievements, then you haven’t achieve much.” Achievements just sound nicer when it’s acknowledged by the right parties, no?

#2. Words and Actions Just Don’t Match Up

Over the years, I’ve seen so many community rapers trying to appear all "mother teresa" about their charitable drives, somehow thinking by mentioning their support automatically makes them angelic. Well, I can’t fault them for needing to do that because as you know, an empty vessel do needs much filling up. :) Bragging about the causes they support is one thing, though I find their humble bragging over the top and borderline disgusting.

What makes it worst are those who rally support for donations, and NOT give a single cent. Not a single upvote even. They thought that no one will know about their non-contribution because it’s untraceable, but well, that brings us to the next point…

#3. Too Dumb to Realise the Leaving of Digital Footprints (or lack of…)

The beauty of technology, amplified even more by the blockchain, is the transparency of things. With every action and transaction recorded on the Steemit blockchain, or public chat logs for that matter, it is easier to track the actions of these community rapers. Interestingly, for the transparency they advocated about Steemit, they are being bitten in the ass by the same technology. Ironic or idiotic, only time will tell.

For example, with Steemit and her big bag of Steem Tools, we can track:

The number of upvotes given and received, so it's always interesting to see "community leaders" who keep their voting power at 100% without supporting any of their community members
The percentage of upvotes (not as fun to receive a “charitable” upvote of 0.1%, where the curation reward is practically non-existent)
The amount in the wallet (no excuse for saying no money to donate, because the message now can be “oh, you can’t even give a small percentage of your Steem or SBD for the charity you advocate so aggressively?")
Bitching about the very same initiatives that had supported them previously (Again, a quick look at Steemd.com can reveal the history of support and upvotes given, conveniently forgotten, of course.)

#4. Me-Me-Me in the Pretence of We-We-We

This is the utterly disgusting one, personally. I’ve seen community rapers charging admin and marketing costs for charity drives they started. Not to mention the lack of transparency on the cost and who got it. A true community leader will find ways to minimise or even zerorise the costs, so the maximum profits can be utilised by the causes, because when it comes to charity, every dollar counts.

Of course, they will try to justify by saying “Oh, I need to cover the cost of my time and effort, right?” Sure, and how true the justifications are can only be evaluated by themselves in the last moments before they call it a day - if they can get a peaceful, well-deserving sleep.

Sidenote: That is not entirely true because I’ve known killers and sinners who get really good night sleep. Denial much?

#5. Bitching about Steemit on Other Platforms

Rather than voicing their discomforts and unhappiness with the people at Steemit and the various communities on the platform, community rapers can be caught (again, thanks to the beauty of digital footprints) bitching about Steemit at other forums and chat groups. For me, it’s just plain unprofessional, ungrateful, much like the wild animals who bit the hand that fed them.

But I guess if the other platforms owners are entertaining such bitching from these community rapers, do ask yourself, “If this person is capable of doing this on others, what’s stopping him or her from doing it to me later?”

#6. Credit Stealing, With Little or No Recognition of Others

Because power and recognition is such a big motivator for the community rapers, they will steal credits for the work of others, and fail to credit others for the work they did. Well, some would agree, again with a vessel that’s empty, much is needed to fill the void.

Honestly, the moment the truth is our, never would be the fall from the "pedestal" much faster, as the followers will see through the phoney they had been calling their leader.

#7. Isolating Own Members from the Rest of the Ecosystem

I am not sure if it’s due to their innate need to control, or to keep their supporters in the dark, these community rapers would prevent their supporters from exposing themselves to other Steemit groups and initiatives. Under the guise of “I’m the leader of the group, so let me go check them out first”, I just feel they sometimes got into their head that they need to make such decisions for their members. Frankly, I would doubt their intelligence and openness to even evaluate opportunities without personal biases and agendas.

Then I realised they often wanted to be the “pioneer” to evaluate the opportunities, is mainly because they want to be the first, keeping their followers a few steps behind. Their level of insecurities is just plain pathetic.

BONUS: Being Blacklist by Businesses for Asking for Free Handouts

Perhaps one of the funniest stories I heard (again, this is all hearsay, which we should all treat it as a story), was when one of these "community builders" went to business operators and asked for free handouts, in the name of "supporting the cause." Well, sad, sad, community builder, please know that at the end of the day, businesses are still need to run a profit, and when you do not have the reputation and results to show, best to just be happy with a collaboration, build the trust, and perhaps approach the topic at a later time.

Asking for handouts will not only make the community builders themselves look bad, but it will indirectly reflect badly on the followers as well. The most disgusting part of the story? The leaders actually charge entry fees for the followers to attend their events, while they were trying to get the cost zerorised.

All in all, I can say I admire their hustling spirit. Misguided, sure, but hustle nevertheless.

What about you? Have you met any of these hypocritical community leaders on Steemit? Don't have to mention names, nor do I want to get into a bitching session, but would love to hear the stories, so we can be more aware of their intentions.

Hi there! Thanks for stopping by. I mostly blog about Steemit Success Strategies, business, marketing, entrepreneurship, psychology, community and random thoughts.

Talking about Steemit Success Strategies, if you want to 10x your results on this platform, perhaps some of these guides will be able to help you.

At least once a month, I run Steemit community events and training workshops with my buddies at #teammalaysia too. Some examples are:

I'm also grateful to be part of #steemitbloggers , SmartSteem and the sndbox.

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