Out with the old and in with the new!
I have been working on the internet for years. Taking advantage of social media platforms and advertising to people. Weather it was through creating websites that rank well in a process called SEO(search engine optimization) or hard sales through the back end of Facebook,Instagram (which can be extremely profitable!) I was always on the happy side of the payout. I hardly ever used social media as a platform for myself other than business. So, recently when I started wanting to share more of my personal thoughts via podcasts, interviews, discussion and write ups on our personal website (http://arcanebear.com ) I quickly realized something.
"The most important part of the social platform is the people. It always has been, just like our governments are really only supposed to have any power cause we give it to them, social media is the same."
The first thing that really pissed me off about Instagram was its total lack of user functionality. Your pretty much forced to use whatever they give you, its not geared towards people who want to share high quality posts, in fact, it makes it quite difficult to do so. It wont allow you to upload from a computer, so if you have any camera experience and photoshop, its been made an ordeal. Already with 
Sometime's having to email myself a photo to post!! Are you kidding me, What year is this?!
I was baffled at their severs extremely slow upload times as well. Having tried multiple times to upload a video of only 15 megs on a ripping fast connecting only to see it fail, and the post and all its writing and filter options. GONE! An hour wasted on a 1 minute video. Absurd! F&$% You Instagram.* Oh, But look here, sponsored ad after sponsored ad. So here we are, again, bombarded by advertisements while Instagram makes all the profits. We are the value of Instagram, we bring all the users, we bring all the content and media, yet. We get nothing in return. There has to be something better I thought to myself.
Ah HAH! I thought to my self. I remember something called Steemit! Our love here
Sweat Equity,this is genius. Having started a few companies and working with multiple talents and skill levels, this makes so much sense to me as a contributor. It covers all the basis. Its partially the same way I feel about music festivals. Here the owners and promoters go through a great deal of work to align a space, co ordinate bands, vendors the works, yet, without us. Their venture is worthless. Yet,year after year, hippies and business men alike crowd into these mainstream events spending hundreds of dollars to enter and leave. There are likely very few people who would go to a music festival if they thought no one would be there, regardless of the music, talent or venue.
There was a great Penn & Teller episode on their series named "Bullshit" where they wanted to show the general arrogance and willingness to conform the masses had. They would ask people they just met about bands they would make up on the spot like "the circle jerk bum f@!$s" or "poop in your teeth" With these obvious fake and absurdly pushed names they proceeded to ask the people if they were excited to see them perform the next night. Without fail, the masses replied how excited they were, how they had been waiting for this so and so band to play tomorrow. Its an amazing experiment, and you can try it out for yourself small scale. Now obviously they were looking for kids around the age of 20-25 and focused on a demographic who was more likely to act like they knew, instead of say, what the hell are you talking about....... I digress....
This leads me to Facebook
Facebook started off in a great place, myspace wasn't very user friendly and MSN messenger had no idea they were most likely only a few code lines away from being the big thing. At least in my opinion Facebook is much more user friendly than Instagram and offers the user a palatable experience that allows friends, family and business associates to communicate in a simple manner. But somewhere along they way, it broke, social media started to break the souls of the people who use the platform. There are many studies that show receiving likes, shares and comments is almost as pressured on the saritonin and dopamine receptors. I actually quit using both of these social platforms over a year ago before deciding I wanted to man the helm of The Arcane Bear Its been a most wonderful experience to dive in with a loud voice, cursing the political memes at the top of my internet lungs. I am so grateful for places like Steemit for allowing us the opportunity to try something new. Working on forging a new place in our digital lives. Making the ones and zeros even more valuable.
Our Conclusion
Every individual is generally looking for the same things in life. Respect, Love, Gratitude and Honesty any mix of these has us jumping head over heals to meet the people that offer us these rare feelings. The Steemit community is offering these things to me. I can do nothing more than humbly express my love for this unique idea and share it with all my fellow humans. Its time we brought the power of ourselves back to the centre of government, politics, monetary control and our own social expressions. Censorship and bans will only prove to create more problems; like that of prohibition of alcohol, only creating a worse bootleg outlets, or like the total failure of the drug war. Instagram, Facebook and Google are trying to convey what is real and what is not. Its our job as a community to teach and practice critical thinking and inform one another as kindly as possible to new avenues of discussion.
This is a new home for my thoughts.
I am so thankful to be able to share them with you.
Tijo~ The Arcane Bear
http://arcanebear.com
