that is essentially the equivalent of a life sentence

Bro, I am over it when people get flagged and say they were robbed and call it a life sentence and think that their personal experience applies to the entire platform. It doesn't.

It is not hard to avoid getting flagged. In fact, I find it hard to get flagged on purpose. I've felt the BERN multiple time, if you know what I'm saying.

You people don't know how this platform works. Like at all. The trending tab is not determined by the blockchain, but by the specific frontend you choose to use. Are you using Peakd? That means Peakd decides who's on trending, same with hive.blog, busy, and every other one, ever.

All of this is irrelevant because people with big votes rarely check the trending tab and vote based off of it anyway because it's garbage. Just wait until someone competent and innovative steps up and makes a trending tab that isn't hammered dog shit. What will you say then? The same thing goes for the reputation system (even moreso).

But just because you don't agree with it, does not make it not true.

Yes, it does, because I know what I'm fucking talking about.

2 + 2 = 4

You gonna argue that one?

your rebuttal is compromised of Ad hominem, straw man arguments, and insults

Now this is probably the most interesting thing you've said because I was just asking my girlfriend the difference between the two yesterday. Let's ask Google, shall we?

https://thebestschools.org/magazine/15-logical-fallacies-know/

An ad hominem is more than just an insult. It’s an insult used as if it were an argument or evidence in support of a conclusion.

Example

All people from Crete are liars.

In the strawman argument, someone attacks a position the opponent doesn’t really hold.

Example #1

The Senator thinks we can solve all our ecological problems by driving a Prius.

Example #2

But just because you don't agree with it, does not make it not true.

Does this one look familiar? Your argument is the strawman argument. You are assuming that I blindly believe that I'm right about everything, and that's what makes me wrong. Like, really? It's a non-argument nothing statement. You might has well of said, "Just because blue is blue doesn't mean yellow is red!" Yeah, you're right! Who gives a shit? How is that relevant to anything? Spoiler alert: It's not.

Thank you for forcing me to learn something today, because you sure as shit didn't teach me a damn thing. Where are my ad hominem and straw man attacks located, hm? Did you think you could just say that shit without backing it up at all? That's ironically gotta be some kind of logical fallacy itself. Oh oh! Perhaps is #3: appealing to ignorance... no no... it's #7: Hasty Generalization. Nailed it. You committed a logical fallacy while trying to say I was committing logical fallacies. Fuckin' hilarious. Plus you said they are all the lowest form of debate. You know there can only be one lowest, right? That's the definition of ranking things.

So lets see, was it ad hominem when I explained how no one is entitled to rewards? How about when I explained the spectrum of decentralization? What about when I explained the math of inflation and distribution of rewards? Yes, so many logical fallacies here. My god, you've shown me the error of my ways! Oh shoot, is sarcasm a logical fallacy? Let me check. Nope!

And neither are insults. Wanna guess why? Because insults are defined by opinion. I did not insult you. I am stating what I believe to be valuable truth, and you took it as an insult. I also gave you really good advice. Get over yourself. Because again, your personal experience has no bearing whatsoever on this platform as a whole.

Anyone is free to pump a million dollars into this platform and try to bring value to it by negating the actions of the accounts attacking you. Nobody does that. Hm, why is that? Because it's not worth it, and regardless of what you think, those accounts very well could be bringing in a net gain to the platform.

I'm supposed to feel sad for you because you're too proud to "go crawling back" and ask those accounts for forgiveness? Get real. I know what "venting" means. I know exactly what you did; They all do it, and it has been recorded on the blockchain forever.

Let me end this shit-show by stating I do not approve of automatic downvotes or what a lot of people on the network do. In fact, there are a lot of witnesses at the top that I have conversations with in Discord... we don't even like each other... we have a nice hateful respect of one another. We are all on the same team in the end.

You are going to regret that powerdown, I'll tell you that much. You can't see where this platform is going. You can only see your hand in front of your own face, getting slapped.

In any case, I hope to make this network a better place, ESPECIALLY for people like you. I want users to be able to retreat to places that guarantee reward and allow the community a place to work without having to worry about downvotes. Truly, I don't think it's going to be very hard in the long run. You'll be back... you just won't be as rich as you would have been pre powerdown. Which is fine. I'm sure you'll work hard and get paid.

Plus, Bitcoin/Ethereum are extremely risk-on assets anyway and less volatile/risky than Hive. Do yourself a favor and trade up to a safer asset. We'll all be rich in the end.

Peace!