Curators? Hello? Where the Hell Are You?
About Sixty Fucking Cents
I dished out about sixty cents and that makes me one of the best?
Normally, I'd be proud to be 'one of the best'.
My bedtime story last night was a podcast about the Alcubierre warp drive; and you damn right I fell asleep fast.
The last thing I remember from dreamland was lobbing incendiary grenades into a black Ford F-150 that wasn't supposed to be there. I'm sure I took him out but then his wife comes running at me from out of nowhere. One of those weird looking redneck wives you'd see on an episode of Cops. I picked up a small metal plate and whipped it at her like a ninja star. Damn thing bounced off her tits; she just kept coming at me...
A notification bell sound effect saved my life.
Someone on the Steem blockchain was talking about me.
Just in time, too.
Instead of diving straight into my device first thing in the morning, I thanked the higher powers for what looks to be another beautiful day, then headed outside for a stroll.
All I could think about was that woman's tits flapping around everywhere and how angry she was with me. I still think a moose charging at me would have been less intimidating.
After much fresh air and peacefulness outdoors in the middle of nowhere, the most frightening of experiences finally morphed into something I could laugh about. My head was clear; I was ready for my morning coffee.
Time to hit the books.
Who's talking about me?
Of course it was only a post written by a robot. Sigh.
A list of the most effective curators. I've been on these lists plenty of times and I think there's a list for nearly every category of content. This time around, it's the music tag being analyzed.
There I was, sitting in slot 132 out of thousands of accounts on this platform. I shelled out two votes that week. Think about that.
And here I thought my nightmare was bad...
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Music
Where there's music, there's money.
Until you come here?
The other day I was browsing what's "trending" on Steemit.com. In one of the top slots was a post written by a bonehead. Probably the worst example of the written word in the history of literature, pointed towards one of the smallest audiences on the entire planet. Inside, the guy basically said STEEM might hit 30 cents before it hits 40 cents again and, because he's just some random dipshit who knows nothing, just your typical monkey behind a typewriter smashing keys for an eternity, hoping for the banana he'll receive if he manages to accidentally string the correct letter combination together to form a word; he was wrong!
Placing that garbage on the front page is WRONG!
Say thanks to your local vote seller for being the worst promoter in the history of promotion.
Who here isn't annoyed when the shit rises to the top?
Go to flush it and it just spins around and around around and around around and around around and around around and around around and around around and around and it never goes away!
What actually goes down the toilet here are those potential billions the arts and entertainment industry generates every fucking year.
Factor in everything I said within this post:
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You'll then see why I've become so passionate about this. You'll see why I'm so disappointed that I made slot #132 on a list of effective curators.
Maybe I'm an effective curator but with two votes in one week, that speaks volumes. Where the hell is everyone else? How can we expect this place and STEEM to thrive when so many are willing to turn their backs on billions of dollars here, billions of dollars there, and billions of dollars everywhere! You turn you backs on billions, for a few thousand dollars worth of paid votes? You pay people to look away, in an attention economy?
Derp!
If you feel something sliding up your ass, don't worry. That's just your Darwin Award looking for a new place to hibernate.
If you factor in everything I said in the post linked above, you might be able to see how this concept of paying content producers and curators could literally give the entire music industry a run for its money. Even if we offered content producers who create music 50% of the rewards generated from their work, that's still far more than the 12% they receive today.
Rome wasn't built in a day.
And here it seems too many are waiting for the first paving stone to place itself.
"Duh I only vote for myself because the system allows it duh profits profits profits!"
That's just a fancy way of saying you shoot yourself in the foot because the gun has a trigger.
"Duh content producers earn too much that money should be mine I'm a smart investor duh."
That's just a fancy way of saying you truly can't see the difference between billions of dollars and thousands of dollars. You shouldn't be anywhere near a dollar because you're just going to end up wiping your ass with it. You also think Snoop Dogg is a homeless man.
Allow the content to thrive.
Allow the best of the best to be the best of the best.
As a content producer here on this platform, is it selfish of me to want to attract thousands upon thousands of votes worth a penny?
Ten thousand votes worth a penny is something like 2.5 million STEEM. The entertainment industry proves people are willing to spend money on entertainment. Everywhere else, a wealthy content producer is a sign of a thriving business model. There's nothing wrong with thousands of people purchasing millions of STEEM.
I also realize there are at least 100 million people on this planet who could do a better job than me, some of them are musicians, music generates billions yearly, one musician means thousands of listeners; I can't bloody well support them all with my whopping two votes worth sixty cents. I'm not saying any of this so I can earn more, I'm saying it so we all can earn more, including the dipshit vote sellers and self voters who make it nearly impossible to earn more, today.
So, whatever.
That's how I feel about it.
And I want to wake up from this nightmare, really bad.
I know the STEEM blockchain has a lot of good things going for it. A lot of progress. Good things on the horizon. Other markets and other potential billions to tap into. All I'm talking about is one pile of potential billions.
If I see a twenty dollar bill on the ground, I'm going to pick it up, so pardon me for being so passionate when I see millions of twenty dollar bills on the ground with a goddamn electric fence around it and a note that says, You can't see me!
Fuck you, John Cena.
Have a nice day.
I think there is an algorithm for the calculation of effective too. Still.
Of course, part of the problem is that no one enjoys music.kinda like that Footloose town.
The levee has been dry a long time.
Yeah and I kinda said this would happen, a long long time ago, before it happened. Pretty sure folks just thought I was dumb...
Oh well. Happy Sunday!
Deadest day on the platform I've ever seen.
To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.
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Great rant that hits the nail on the head. Trending on Steemit is such a pile of garbage. I hope palnet will be able to flourish and do things differently that the current thievery going on. I do have a question though, you mention voting for yourself a couple of times, like it's a bad thing. I agree if you're a whale and producing garbage just to vote on yourself with a thousand duplicate accounts. Yes, that's a very bad thing for the rest of us trying to create content and survive. But I vote for myself all the time. Sometimes I wouldn't have much else, lol. I believe in my own content and know the effort I put into it. And it's only worth a couple of cents anyway. So I hope you were talking about those aforementioned assholes sucking up the rewards. Is there a harmful reason why I shouldn't vote for myself, that you know of?
The self voting I'm talking about are the ones spamming junk 10 times per day and ONLY voting for themselves. I self vote, but 90% of my votes go to others because without them, they get less, and leave.
1-3 post myself each day which of course I am going to self upvote. The rest goes to good quality comments on my posts and then I curate
Imagine a world where actual content producers didn't have to curate but instead only upvoted comments to give content consumers a boost in the reward department. If we had enough content consumers, and they knew that was the world they were entering, the content producers could focus more on their craft. Today, I wanted to post the artwork I spent a good seven hours working on yesterday. Could have posted that but the next guy comes along and buys votes for something like a daily exercise report card and makes me look foolish for posting that much work here. Some of these musical performance posts can take days and days to produce. No listeners and ten cents? They're better off busking on the street.
Sometimes you just make too much sense!
A successful content producer in that scenario wouldn't be cashing out every last dime either. Only a small percent each year would leave. At least, that's how I had planned to run my business here starting back in 2016. The value was supposed to rise as those billions poured in. Now I don't know what the hell to do.
Now palnet May have a chance at solving some of Steem’s problems, with the palcoin. I’m excited about it’s potential, and have invested in it. What’s your take thus far?
I want to see it succeed. They skipped me for the claim drop though so I'm not able to contribute as much as I wanted to in the form of curation. I wasn't prepared to buy and stake either. Right now I'm seeing a lot palnet posts. Looking forward to seeing what the place will look like once people start producing actual content.
Talk to @clayboyn and I’m sure he can arrange for you to get your airdrop!
Things look like they're being sorted out. I wasn't going to make a big stink about it.
You are on the list of people that got missed. Will it get worked out.
It's all good. Just do what you can. I didn't take it personally. I was away from the internet for a long while... and that's just my luck.
Let's hope the investors or those that set the author/curation don't split see this and decide that 50/50 is to much and want a 25/75 split. After all if the music industry is at a 12/88 split why steem chain should be also.
Youtube takes 45%. If they split 12/88, you can't sell this idea because they'd be better off taking the established approach, and this place loses out. Read the other post I wrote a few days ago to be able to understand a bit more of what I'm talking about.
I did, and I understand, my response was sort of how I view some of this 50/50 split, the EIP, and the Downvote pool, all of which I really do not like. I see all as nothing but greed for the recent proposed changes. I can live with the PALnet 50/50 stuff for now I think, not sure, but they are offering two possible check types their pal coin and steem, so will see how that pans out. It could end up being a good test case for other semi-steem chain places.
The people with only dollar signs for irises are going to see that 12% is all the artist get in the "quote" real world, so why should they get more on the chain. I appreciate the content providers, I enjoy looking and reading and seeing what they have to offer, I like that I get to decide if it was worth my time. My wife and I gave up TV partly because it was getting to be expensive, but mostly because it was becoming annoying with the commercials and poor content. On the Steem Block Chain, I do not need to pre-pay for content that I may or may not like. What other entertainment system offers that? I use to spend lots of money going to the movie theater, only to come away and think that was a waste of time and money.
I really really do not want to see the artistic and non-artistic content produces start to go away because of the greed of a few at the top that try to control the steem flow. I like having all the choices that are currently available, and that even if some asshat slams a post because they don't like it, does not mean it is not still available for me to see and view it.
I've watched plenty of solid producers leave. I don't know what to say anymore. Thousands left because of a handful of people.
I keep getting mentioned in various top curators posts, it surprises me more because I have such a tiny stake in Steem - I don’t feel like my vote value could ever give that much back.
But I suppose in a way it’s more DPOS actually working because when I have the time I do read posts and actively upvote them at a percentage based on the content I read.
The potential is there, it’s getting people to read and appreciate posts more that is needed - honestly I’m sure some of Steem’s biggest stakeholders would be amazed at the content on here.
I also think my friend @novacadian would have a good comment to say one the subject, he’s very eloquent when it comes to this sort of thing.
Posted using Partiko iOS
I vote for a wide variety of topics. Almost everything I vote for, I make the list of top curators, with only a handful of votes. This vote on your comment will be the 24407th manual vote I've handed out. This place needs more content consumers. Even the naive types buying votes to be on the front page don't have an audience. Whatever though. I've been yelling at the clouds for years here. People don't really see the benefits in attracting billions of dollars to the platform.
You are right. Human people are willing to spend their bucks in entertainment. Just human nature. No science, no good healthcare. We aliens still do not get it.
Crazy human people...
Bouncing tits are wonderful just not on an angry woman. Let's hope those mamas don't turn into torpedo tits.
HA! Someone finally comments about the tits...
I am top 200 curator for photography, one of the most popular topics. I have only 3000sp... Yeah, it is all pretty depressing, or let's be positive: there is a lot of room for growth and improvement...
Posted using Partiko Android
I like your attitude. Being realistic.
I've been saying this since Dec 2017 when I stopped using bidbots and started shouting about it.
Went to steemfest in Krakow last year... saying something similar to what you're expressing in this post -
by allowing vote sellers carte blanche, we're literally losing billions in the long term for smaller short term gains for 12-15 people ....And guess what? No one cared or gave a shit to listen to me, or any of the other people who were saying the same.
Here's what I think the problem is:
We have most of the bidbot owners, vote selling barons and other psudo-criminals in among the top 100 witnesses. If no one has got together to vote the crooks out, it means too many fucktards are making there small time fucktard-ary $20000-$30000/year by keeping their allegiances and saying/doing/changing nothing.
The status quo here has left me in a state of perpetual nearly giving up if I'm honest. Until I see a post like this, and realise that others see the same truth and would like to see all our investments bloom massively, rather than what will happen if things are allowed to continue as they are.
Anyway, 🤣 your rant inspired this rant...
Cheers for the rant inspiration 😉🔥👊
Oh yeah, and the image in my head of an angry woman charging at me with her tits flapping 🤣
I started pointing out these issues at about the exact same time. I had come back from about five months away from the internet, saw what was happening to the place and thought there goes the neighborhood. I compared the paid votes to crack cocaine and explained what happens to every neighborhood once crack takes over.
Thanks for the rant. The place needs more good and honest folks who can see the true potential. ...and I'm glad you got a chuckle out of that.
100% spot on. What needed to happen was for all the whales and orcas to bitch slap the vote sellers with flags to stop it proliferating... but instead most of them just learned how to make there own bidbots. A prime example of how greed breeds stupidity.
If it weren't for vote selling, steem would have really mooned (like $20-$30/steem) during the last bull market as a huge influx of mainstream artists, musicians, writers and film makers flocked to steem. I don't think many realize just how much money would have come to steem if the value proposition had have held up.
I was personally developing a way to bridge the gap between traditional publishing houses and indie authors using steem before everything went to shit. And it would have worked. I honestly think It would have brought millions of investment to steem and possibly made me good money as well. But I wouldn't even think of wasting my time in the current climate on steem. Fckn legitimate business ideas are dirt when the ecosystem is such a riot of leaches and value thieves. Things may improve with a return to 50/50... Maybe.
Until then....
.... because you are crack heads children 🤣
Posted using Partiko Android
I feel your pain. Unfortunately Steem seems to have moved on for where its founding fathers left it. Content is not king, not even a court jester. The Blockchain has unfortunately become a mining rig in a race for the bottom. There I said it!
Sometimes I wish I could lower my standards and ethics and go buy some votes but the most I've convinced myself to do is give myself a sneaky self-vote on my posts every now and again.
I really thought that if I was the change I wanted to see in Steem then things would start moving in that direction but, No. Content is nowhere within the castle walls.
Maybe things will change or maybe a new castle needs to be built.
Vent over. I Still love Steem.
I still like it too. I simply feel like there's far too much lost potential and would like to see that change.
Yeah I agree, we just gotta be the change, do our own thing and hope for the best! Steem has gotten sad!
I enjoy the music community here.
As do I. Some of my favorites left. I hope they come back.
The curators all self vote with bidbots now! This is more like an investment scheme than a curation blog environment these days! Before the bidbots people would have extra steem power to vote with, and we would vote for each other. Times changed, everybody got greedy. Even me, I got mixed up in Bid Bots for a long time. Now I'm not greedy, but for the amount of steem and followers I have I only maker 15 cents a post on my own! It is not anything more than a hobby. No big dreams of striking it rich on a post anymore! Still I stay positive about STEEM that one day maybe something will change??
The place needs more content consumers. So many potential consumers got duped into delegating away small amounts of SP for minuscule short term gains. Those gains quickly turned into losses. Those losses turned into losing thousands of potential eyes on the content. Potential votes are locked away and centralized into larger paid votes. The moment one pays for a vote, they're paying for that SP and the potential content consumer to look away. Those eyes are so important though. I hope people start looking again. Looking and voting.
To get them to look we need to offer good content that they need. Niche blogs, computer tech blogs, tutorials seem to do the best. Also trending worldwide topic can be maneuvered if you can relate them well!
To get more lookers we need more cookers! lol thanks!
I disagree with your idea of what successful content is/can be. I'm more about variety. If I walk into a library or a browse a magazine rack, I wouldn't be impressed if I only saw a book about tech.
What works for one, won't work for everyone. It's not always about content. If someone writes about trees, nobody cares. Who wants to follow a tree? The moment that individual adds their own personality into it and makes it about their experiences with trees, people follow. People follow people. I like motovlogs on Youtube. Not all motovlogs though. If the individual inside the helmet is boring, I won't watch. A combination of personality and content is important. That's why those plain writers who stick to writing basics do so poorly here. What would this post above be without my jokes about how my day started? Just another steemian yelling at clouds.
I wasn't saying all successful content must be X or Y. I was not trying to start an argument either?? I was just talking about some good topics. Of course when I say technical blogs I would hope the author had his own unique spin on it, their own reaction of code to teach us! I idid not say anything about variety. I was not telling you what to do, just what I noticed the big players do to make more than the others! And as for the botguy posting on your blog, sorry about that, not under my control. I have haters, some things I post about threaten their way of being. Whatever that person does is all them, nothing to do with me! Thanks!
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Please take whatever problems you have with that individual elsewhere. My blog isn't the place for this.
Modern people are lazy by nature. Vote buying is the epitome of laziness. So fitting for this modern social media experiment. The boomerang ‘derp’ hole 🕳 round and round on the circles we jerk.
Posted using Partiko iOS
Many who bought votes a year ago thinking it would help their blog left once they realized they were duped. Most think it makes things easier until they see the end result. They get a rush of dopamine being on the front page. Fake popularity. It's addicting. Eventually they become ashamed of themselves, which is normal in addiction. Especially once that rush wears off and there's no way to get higher.
With all these front ends... @steempeak @busy @partiko @esteem @appics @dtube @whateverthefuckdapp .... I can’t figure out why one of them haven’t built a ‘real trending’ section.
I would have to guess that the most complained about thing is the shitty payed for trending. So to me the first front end that tracks real activity and comments and organic upvotes and shows them in a ‘real trending’ will immediately take leap ahead of the other front ends in usage.
To me that a front end would benefit from providing a solution to the most bitched about thing on steemit is as ‘derp’ as it gets!
Posted using Partiko iOS
Need for profits has indeed driven the whole system to a new level of greed-like mentality where we all after some sort of huge returns as compared to our dear input. In my recent post, I did call up on African curators to at least come up with a customized curation system and will be covering more on the same coming days.
There's no point in stacking coins though if the actions to accumulate diminish the value. That can't be called greed because those who seem greedy on the surface stand to lose the most. It's just silliness. They want the high score instead of actual wealth and success.
Stress to those folks the importance of building up the account value before cashing out. Team work.
Dude, this place is dead. It's over.
I thought you were dead.
On the inside, I am.
Is there anything I can do to help with that?
No.
Congratulations @nonameslefttouse!
Your post was mentioned in the Steem Hit Parade in the following category:
There's a pretty good music scene here on steem, but small. It is hard to attract people who aren't amateurs because the pay is so low, and the audience isn't as large as on places on Instagram or Spotify.
I'm trying to show an example of how a musician can use steem with my own blog, it's fun to share life updates and music stories here. I find it rewarding even if it doesn't pay very well, and I suspect that it has been driving new listeners to my music on Spotify lately which is cool.
But the curation thing is a big problem. I agree with you.
The question is, how else to determine value of content. Is there any hope of finding a perfect metric, or series of metrics, to "fairly" distribute money? Is distribution of money and resources ultimately an unfair game no matter how we slice it?
I feel like we are still extremely early in addressing concepts of fair compensation with blockchain, and we need a lot of patience and goodwill towards each other as we try to figure it out.
You're totally right. Things need to be figured out. Things also need to be said though. It's a bit frustrating watching people leave, feeling unwanted, when really people just simply prefer to get paid to look away instead of actually curating. A lot of new folks don't even know that's the case. We need a large audience. This place once had it.
Hey @nonameslefttouse
There is much truth in this post. Thank you!
Not sure if you are familiar with @ddaily ... we are mostly video content creators who are dedicated to ‘daily’ activity. Our slogan is For Creators by Creators.
In the nearly 2 years we have been around we too have noticed that we have plenty of creators but not many watchers/readers.
So rather than continue bitching about it we have taken steps to do something about it.
One of our members created DIYtube and built a curation team around it.
We started a Ddaily curation trail to highlight quality content and created a team of curators around it.
And we recently made a contest called “THE 5 REEL GOOD” that serves to motivate both content and curation.
We will not muddy your post with shill links... but encourage you to click on our profile and peek at this weeks contest that was dropped monday. The theme coincidentally is MUSIC this week.
We think that many doers and groups are working on solutions to various steem issues all in there little corners and that we need to start becoming aware of each other and what we are doing.
We are not begging for support. We are hoping that the Orca’s and Whales see and recognize the effort actually happening by us at @ddaily and by so many others.
It seems groups like @curie @helpie @c-squared @onelovedtube @powerhousecreatives @steemitbloggers @steemsavy and initiatives like the curation league by @abh12345 .....can often go unnoticed in there curation efforts.
Our hope is that all of us that are seeking and creating solutions can find each other and stick together.
So this comment is in no way denying any of your points but more highlighting and drawing focus toward some of the many groups working to bring more eyes, retention, and value to the steem blockchain!
Cheers
Could not agree more!! Together we are stronger!
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I don't mind you coming here and shilling your curation efforts. A lot of people saw this post and I was kinda wondering why nobody was stepping up to vouch for their efforts.
Glad we stepped in to fill the shill shoes in that case😎
Your content is quality, sharp, opinionated and often funny as fuck. It is great to see you back!
Thank you for the mention ❤️