I noticed this trend even before making my first post here. Begging for upvotes (likes) and follow is not peculiar to Steemit, as I have seen this on facebook, twitter, Instagram and other social media. I can never understand begging on these platforms as more likes and followers add nothing of value to my life but only help in growing the empires of the owners (except of course if I am using the account for marketing).
Begging for upvotes or follows on Steemit is a bit understandable as you are begging for monetary values but still annoying. Steemit is meant to be a platform that rewards you for adding value in form of writing a good content, taking a cool photograph or making a nice video. I know it can be 'hit your head against the wall' frustrating to put efforts into creating contents that nobody is upvoting or no much followers to upvote or resteem it. I have had my fair share of that and I still do but that does not make begging is right.
Credit
I am not totally devoid of blame.I also begged for upvotes in my first few days here as I thought it was a norm since a lot of people are doing it. A lot of folks still don't see nothing wrong in begging because this what they met joining Steemit. This act can hurt the community and the way it is perceived. Again Steemit is meant to be a reward system for the values and how your contents resonate with people and not how much you beg for upvotes or worship the whales.
Before begging for upvotes and follows hurt the community, it hurts you first - it hurts your identity and your rewards especially if you are in this for the long haul.
Here are the few ways begging for upvotes and follows can affect you.
It crashes your reputation and I am not talking of the number in front of your name but how you are perceived. What comes to mind immediately your username appears... Oh that upvotes beggar!
It reduces the value of your posts. You can put a lot of efforts into making a post and people will perceive it as shitty just because you are begging.
The chance that people get you to removed after following is high. Like most people I want my feed to contain posts that resonate with me. If your posts don't interest Me, I will likely remove you later though you begged me into following you.
I noticed people only get the chance to beg planktons and minnows that will upvotes their posts of few cents..birds of a feather, right? Begging whales will probably get you flagged, they most times upvote or follow you out of their convictions or liking your works.
In a nutshell, you get a lot to lose but few cents to gain from begging for upvotes and follows.
It is important to add that there are a lot of groups with #postpromotion on discord, telegram, whatsapp and others that you can drop your links. Post your links in as many as you can but please don't beg.
Thank you for reading.
Don't forget to upvote to encourage the writer, resteem for others to benefit and comment to share your thoughts.