I was hugged by a whale yesterday. Here's how it went.

I had a pretty great experience yesterday when my page refreshed and I noticed this post...

We lived in an off-grid barn for a year.

went from just over a dollar to just over $46 in one vote! I couldn't believe it. My first thought before looking was someone messed up and is gonna want their money back. I knew it was an upvote but somehow in my head I was still thinking someone accidentally sent me money.

source

Then, I open the post and check the votes and see that the upvoter was Hive account@blocktrades.
Now I'm even more confused. I'm thinking blocktrades? That's the exchange, why are they hugging me so hard? My wife thought I may have been having a stroke as I suddenly just started saying "on my gosh, holy crap, what just happened" over and over as I couldn't even explain to her what was going on.

source

In my struggle to understand I went to three different Discord groups asking questions. Although I couldn't find anyone else it had happened to, plenty of people had seen it before and told me I was hugged or slapped by a whale.

Now, I was still extremely excited, but I start wondering what I did to get a whale like Hive account@blocktrades attention? "You had a great post" people said. "Blocktrades noticed and upvoted. Simple as that". "They do that all the time". For me it's also really nice to see this happen when it seems all you see on Steemit is the negative things associated with whales. All that is great, but I'm still wondering, specifically what I did and could do to recreate getting hugged by a whale like blocktrades. The consensus response, no matter how unsatisfying was just keep making good posts. I will indeed do that and even if this was once in a million lucky shot, then that's ok too. It happened once and that's enough to keep me excited and knowing that it can happen anywhere to anyone that just puts genuine effort into posting things they think people will enjoy.

source