There are some myths that you come around on Steemit daily and I commented a lot on them in the past days, so I wanted to take some time and give you my approach summed up in one post.
Myth #1: Self-Voting is bad
People tend to believe, that self-voting is only for egoists and with self-voting you will hurt the reward system. This is not true at all.
See, I prefer to have STEEM-rich followers, that’s how egoistical I am.
The more SP my followers have, the higher the chances, that I will get an upvote from them in the future, that is really worth something.
So I want my followers to be rich! Yes, I want you to be rich!
What’s the best way in the current ecosystem to get rich? Well, besides posting good content and interacting with people, it’s the good old self-upvote!
See it this way: A self-upvote is an act of self-love! To be able to love another, you have to first fill yourself up - then the act of loving another is not something you do, but it’s a natural overflowing you can’t prevent.
Your basket is filled to the top with Love and everything that is overflowing is profiting everyone else. That’s a very important life lesson.
It’s the same with self-votes here. Fill yourself up and then the overflow to others will naturally have a bigger weight and meaning.
I’m not saying to use 100% of your VP to upvote yourself, but until you become a bigger fish, you should keep about 60% of your VP for your own posts and comments. Doing so, will guarantee, that the other 40% of your VP will grow in weight more and more over time.
When you have accumulated enough SP, you can always reduce the % if you want.
Self-Love is a social act!
So please, be social and make yourself rich - if you don’t want to do it for yourself, please do it for me and all the people, who also prefer STEEM-rich followers over poor ones.
Myth #2: Bots are bad
There is also a huge sentiment over bots and most people believe them to be coming straight out of hell.
I have no feelings about bots and neither should you. It’s not healthy to attach yourself emotionally in a special love/hate-relationship with - well - basically a computer program.
Bots are simply an advertisement service for Steemit - that’s all.
It’s like Google Ads, but with benefits…
Bots are not an investment strategy, because you won’t get a big ROI anyway - so it’s not like you put 10SBD in and get 20SBD out.
Most bots are overloaded and if you are clever, have a good ad strategy and timing, you will get free advertisement for your posts.
This means, that your post will show up in the trending, hot or active sections and real people get the chance to see it, interact and upvote it.
As I said, if you are clever, you can get this nearly for free. Another way to see it is, as a cash back reward. Imagine Google giving you back 80 cent to $1 for every Dollar you spend on advertisement there, making your ads basically free.
The other cool thing is, that all the real people who also upvote your post will get curation rewards. So again, this is like Google saying, we give you a cash back, but also everyone clicking on your ad gets paid some cents too. That’s cool. I would take that one for sure.
The only case, where bots become bad, is when they are abused, which brings us to…
Myth #3: Robin Hood will save us!
There are people on Steemit, who claim to be Robin Hoods and protect the reward pool. They speak about „reward pool rape“ and tell everyone and their grandmother, that they are the good guys.
I’m sorry, that I have to tell you, that Robin Hood is a thief!
It’s even worse on Steemit, because these Robin Hoods also behave like schoolyard bullies - they will threaten and flag everyone, who dares to have another opinion or is intelligent enough to see through their facade.
This is how it works:
Some random guy with self-worth issues thinks, the best way to distract himself from his emotional pain, is to make himself look powerful on the outside. So in former times, this guy would have bought a Villa, a Lamborghini and some women to show everyone how powerful he is.
In these times, this guy buys some STEEM and decides to take this game to another level.
He wants to look like a hero to others, so he takes on the role of „The Protector of the Reward Pool“. Since TPOTRP sounds silly as a superhero name, he names himself after some political figure (just an example! nothing, that someone would really do, right?) - just to make sure, that everyone will know his name.
He then fills up some bots with SP and begins to celebrate himself as a hero, proclaiming to flag „all the bad guys“ with his army of bot friends.
Since he also needs to gain a following and people fighting by his side, he wants to post something on Steemit. The problem is, that he doesn’t know, how to write good content, nor what this even means.
So he decides to do, what he can do best: Hatred and cursing, flaming and threatening people.
There is always room for some good hate and envy, so he easily finds people to be in resonance with him. These followers will upvote and like every hate speech, because… well… because if someone who has so much STEEM/Power and shouts this loud… he has to be right. Right?
So our Robin Hood is raping the reward pool in many ways by now, while telling everyone, that he is protecting it.
First, because his posts are only filled with hate speech or just one sentence or picture, and he gets rewarded by followers, who unfortunately believe his story. He gets paid in the thousands for… well… hatred.
To make this even worse, he is also using the bots of others, to upvote his nonsense posts with huge amounts - raping the reward pool a second time and doing so, taking away in every bid round the opportunity of all other bidders using the upvote bots to get seen with their valuable content.
To understand this third rape - because it’s tricky in a very devilish way - you have to know, that when you bid a huge amount in the last minutes before a bot goes out and votes, it will reduce the value of each other bidders amount and no only steal their money, but also reducing their chance to get seen with their valuable content.
So guys, the next time you see someone telling you, that he is Robin Hood, the protector of the reward pool, please dare to look deeper.
For every $ Robin Hood is „saving“ from being raped, he is stealing a lot more. Just don’t upvote this shit. Seriously. Don’t get backdoor raped!
There you have it. Three myths. Three ways of misunderstanding. Three opportunities to see them different.
Thank you for reading and let Love guide your way! ❤️