Minnows have feelings too!!!
First and foremost, there are tons of amazing content creators on Steemit fully dedicated to the community who do the right thing. I'm thankful for these contributors, as they make the community a better place, while fairly earning their rewards and sharing them with upvotes. This motivates me to work hard to reach that level over time by earning my followers and Steem Power, one by one. These Steemians have my respect, for whatever it's worth.
On the contrary, I've been on Steemit.com long enough to see that there are also some poor content creators who leverage their popularity and heavier wallets to herd votes/auto-votes for unjustified visibility and rewards. This would be ok if I saw them regularly upvoting and engaging their commenters, but it's most often not the case. They single-handedly demonstrate that the "Reputation" metric within Steemit is far from reliable as a way to gauge the quality of what you're about to read from them. I hope these people recognize how transparent and toxic this behavior is.
As new users join this site and see what any non-blind person would, just know that you're not crazy. There are many things that don't seem fair that are best to tune out, but it's fun to bring some of them up once and a while for a reality check.
Below is my artistic expression of how I feel when I come across some trending posts from high reputation authors that would most certainly grind Peter Griffin's gears.
It's time to go see what's happening on Steemit.com, aka what trending posts I'll be forced to see first. Ahh, here's one from someone with a high rep that has hundreds of upvotes and reward dollars in just 4 hours! This must be be intelligent, original, enriching, professional and thought-provoking.
Time To Learn!! ::Click::
(Post opens) Blink. Blink. Hmm. Are they serious? WTF is this? Scrolling down, it's all insulting filler. This can't be right...
Did I click on the wrong link? Nope, it's the right one. How on earth could people upvote this?! Is this how auto-vote trails work? Do people care that they're associating with this fluff?
Was that even 250 words for $1.25 per word? Did they even try to spell check or use punctuation? They know this is redundant info that already hit Steemit two days ago, right? Maybe they had a bad day. I'll check their previous posts and see that they would naturally have better work and engage their followers in the comments sections... Nope... SMDH.
Takers... https://steemit.com/steemit/@steemmatt/are-you-a-steemit-taker-matcher-or-giver-don-t-be-shy
Maybe it's just me being on a high horse today. Let me ask around...
While so many minnows scrape for $1, this crap makes hundreds! I'll never look at the trending pages again!!
Besides accumulating large follower bases, handshake agreements, and getting overpaid for what some might be embarrassed to post on their own blog...
Ironically, this post isn't about complaining. This post is for those hard-working Steemians to relate to and feel like they aren't so crazy to recognize that this is under-the-radar abuse of the rewards pool. Some people are greedy and take advantage of their status, and it's ok to make some buzz about it.
This post is also for anyone that fits the poor content creator mold above to potentially see and note that the herd isn't as blind and stupid as they may think. Reputation/respect is not just a number...
The adoption curve will weed this out in time, but for now, it's an eyesore and form of gaming the system that newer users don't have to think is acceptable.
Please comment If you have thoughts to share. I'll reply to every one.
gifs from Giphy...
