It started out as a simple accident. About a week ago, I was reading a rather long and convoluted post, skimming over parts here and there, but still getting what I thought was a general idea of what the writer was proposing. It sounded like a harmless enough resteem proposal, one that might even give something back to the community. Since the person in question does put a lot of effort into promoting the Steemit platform, I decided to send a tiny amount of SBD his way and see if I got anything back from it.
At this point, the reader has to understand that transforming SBD into actual dollars in my bank account is such a convoluted process in my neck of the woods that I pretty much don't think of SBD as having any real value outside of cyberspace. So, tossing a tiny bit of it at a potentially good idea is no loss for me, particularly when it may help the greater good.
As for resteem services, well, I have found some interesting things courtesy of one of them, but it's not something that has ever worked for me.
In a nutshell, I considered it as a loss right from the start.
Then, to my surprise, I discovered that I'd been upvoted by the individual's account, and that the upvote had some value to it.
This was my introduction to actual bid-bots, and it intrigued me. I realized then that I'd been something of a hypocrite, condemning the practice without ever investigating it. So, I decided to do a bit of an experiment; I'd set aside about 10SBD and trying some of these bots out. What I discovered was quite interesting. It also explained some things that have long been bothering me, such as how boring, mundane, oftentimes crap-content providers can have reputations that are higher than quality content providers.
To start off with, I have noticed that many good content providers are using these bots for some reason. Before the experiment, I looked down my nose at such behavior, wondering why they would sully themselves in such a manner. I don't anymore. These people have put in a lot of work in an effort to bring some intelligence to the Steemit platform, as well as some quality content. Unfortunately, almost as soon as the post is published, it disappears in a quagmire of bullshit. I believe that buying an upvote serves several useful purposes for these individuals, not the least of which is that it increases the visibility of the post.
Yes, people do look at posts that already have some monetary value before looking at posts that don't. Moreover, they are drawn to upvoting them in order to share a piece of the payout. In that sense, a purchased upvote is a form of marketing - an investment in the finished product.
Of course, there is also the sense of being rewarded for the effort that the author has put into work. Most of the people I've seen who use upvotes don't place huge bids, by the way. So, I am forced to believe that seeing just a little increase in the post's value provides the psychological boost needed to write another post, and to keep on plugging away at creating a following that does pay.
Then there is the matter of reputation. If the vote-bot has a high enough reputation it can help to increase yours. This was a dark secret hinted at to me by someone whom I don't think really deserved to have the reputation that they did. The mysterious way to inflate your reputation artificially... .
In other words, if the vote-bot upvotes anything, a crap content provider can get a high reputation just as easily as a good content provider.
I have only done a tiny bit of experimentation, but I feel quite confident that lone-wolf Steemians - that is, people who don't fit in with and/or don't want to become part of a 'community' pack - derive a lot of psychological benefits from vote-selling bots. These are benefits that keep them contributing, and that can't be a bad thing. Lone-wolves tend to see things from a different perspective than the rest of the pack, and are often brilliant in their observations. Their contributions have worth, but without getting some satisfaction from the process they tend to give up and leave.
(I recently went through the list of people that I follow and discovered that over half, maybe even three-quarters of the accounts are now abandoned.)
The lone-wolves need something that puts them on an even footing with the mass voting-systems used by most discord communities, where members are forced to upvote each other even when the posts are all crap. So, why not use this? All's fair in love and war... . Additionally, there are vote-sellers who manually sort the bids, and reject spam, plagiarized and lousy content. If they accept your bid, it means what you produced wasn't absolute crap! This is good thing!
Unfortunately, into all good things a piece of shit must fall. I wrote a post that I considered somewhat facile and not likely to go viral on Steemit, given the platform's biases. I wanted to test something I'd read in the vote-selling guides, when along came the aforementioned turd. He un-voted me, and sent me a nasty message about 'buying votes' and how I probably lost out on mega-bucks curation from Curie. Then he down-voted me and sent me another message that he'd done it in order to bring the value of my post below 5 SBD, and thus keep it eligible for Curie.
I am not an idiot. I know that there is a finder's fee involved here, and that he was pissed because he was going to miss out on it. I was not pleased with any of this! I really don't care about Curie, and it's vaunted high-bucks curation potential. Been there, done that. Twice. Sure, I collected some additional SBD as a result, but I also was down-voted by some of the people under whose nose Curie waved my posts. I'd rather just fly under the radar now.
I am now so soured on Steemit that this post is probably my swan-song here. Too many assholes.
And with this, I bid you a fond adieu. Maybe I'll post again; probably I'll look for another platform to do it on.
