I am using Steemit for more than half a year and from the beginning I was very active and eager to grow that reputation number and of course my wallet. In some way things run pretty well and I don't regret any second spent on this platform, because it's different and it's good to be here. Different from all that I had and "tasted"..yet. Thus I searched for all types of tips and tricks to boost my account and some of the most advertised ones, that I felt for, were...
No, not bid bots, although I tried them also. It's actually steemfollower and steemengineteam that I am talking about. Some Steem services where you have all sorts of posts listed, from members, on which you can cast your votes in order to have yours listed over there also. Steemfollower was the first I joined and have been using it for some good amount of time, while on steemengineteam I am casting my one cent upvote only for a couple of moths. Both do almost the same thing: you upvote their posts, they upvote yours, but not in the upvote for upvote way.
For a while though, at least in the case of steemfollower I find pretty hard some good posts to upvote because mostly there are that type of posts consisting of one picture attached to a short description and wearing a sensational title like two apples or beautiful sunset. Can't say that I don't understand them and their users mindsets, but I don't like them either...Plus not always the pics are made by the author, being just downloaded from google, so there are times when I find myself scrolling for minutes to find at least 5 posts to share my upvote with in order to have mine listed and it's simply not worth it. If I were to simply cast my upvotes randomly I would do that in seconds but I would encourage spam and low quality posts and I don't want that.
I still consider Steemit as the best blogging/social media platform, that I am aware off, and I wish the best for it thus I am keeping my upvotes for the best. So, yesterday was the last time I upvoted any post around those above mentioned platforms. It's not like I don't find them useful in anyhow and for some users, but not for me, anymore. In my opinion spam is flooding them more and more and I am not a fan of spamming in anyway. I sometimes feel somehow odd and a spammer also when I post with steepshot just one pic and a few phrases, but probably it's just my mental concepts that are too rooted in the idea that Steem is more for blogging than for instagraming. However I am working on that and you would probably see more often this types of posts when that's all I have to say and share.
So, from now on I will give my 1 cent upvote only to the people that I follow and like reading and I can do that twenty times a day, at least, without draining my VP, as I will not vote anything...elsewhere. Can't say that I haven't got some pretty nice upvotes from there, but I am not willing to upvote spam to get listed there and neither find useful my time lost in searching through lots of pages just to get some decent quality to upvote. I'd better use that time to read a couple of articles in here.
However, if any one of you knows something similar trying, but without the annoying spam, feel free to share it with me in the comments section. I haven't quit my plan on growing my blogging account. Still, I want to do that clean. So, yeah, I am going further on my Steem path without steemfollower and steemengineteam. There's life after almost everything isn't it? Even after death :)
Thanks for your attention,
Ace