We have some rules around and it is better to respect them or else we get flagged, banned and we lose our followers. Very simple quote, the same could be written for some quarry 3 000 years ago as here on Steemit today! But what is more important, what those rules "cover", what do they prevent us to do and how should we behave... since everyone here calls himself an anarchist and everyone loves to use words "open source", those rules cover very small surface and they don't have real weight. We do what we want and how we want making our own rules and principles.
So, if you plagiarize, you get flags, if you misbehave, people won't follow you, if you publish inappropriate content, just put the right tag and everything is fine.
But there is no rule that speaks your decency, dignity and honor. That's something that your parents needed to teach you before you registered on Steemit.
So we found ourselves here like a bunch of savages, fighting over some change coins on the floor. Even a blind hen sometimes finds a grain of corn. I was really stunned when I realized what people do here for money. Some would keep more dignity in prostitution business. All this struggle for upvotes and higher rewards made some people to lose their way. So you will see a lot of upvote-beggars trying to contact those who can get them those rewards. You are not aware how many upvotes here is given because of acquaintance or good promotion because someone is doing pretty good job on the sites outside of Steemit itself (steemit.chat, discord...) and successfully can make some sea beast to give them their upvotes.
And quality and message of these posts REALLY DOESN'T MATTER!
And that's how trending page is created every day. I assure you that ten strongest voters of your post haven't even opened it to check what is inside! And you're doing the same thing all over and over and you know exactly how large reward you will get before you even post!
On the other side we have scams, insults and theft.
So what are some people ready to do for money? Posting dozens of meaningless posts every day hoping that someone will click on upvote button... well if you post 12 of them each day, one has to be at least nearly successful. There are also people who claim to have golden tongue with a Bible in their hands but they will use the first opportunity to get an extra dollar! This wouldn't be a problem at all if there was no other, good and quality content on Steemit that really deserves that extra dollar.
You'll find a lot of stealing ideas and so that's so obvious here. Just take a look at the recent war of two different meme challenges/contests.
And every day we can see some fights and speech of hate.
When I read some people's posts about their Steemit fights, I wonder would they get into physical conflict if they meet outside... Steemfest in Lisbon could be very interesting event...