Selling Slivers of Self on Steemit
(No, this is a not a self-help guide, tutorial on writing great content, or a marketing how-to. If you're looking for that...look elsewhere.)
Salty Rant
Once in a while I get a salty rant bug in my brain, rattling around. Usually it finds me when several similar things coalesce at the same time, and I make some pithy realization.
In this case, I was chatting on The Writers Block discord about embarrassing things we write on Steemit that we wouldn’t write anywhere else. One person was nervous (I won’t name names so as not to embarrass) about a Comedy Open Mic entry being worked on, and if it would go over well. Of course, it doesn’t matter. In seven days it won’t matter. Hell, usually in seven hours the lifespan of the post is over, and it's just going to sit in your blog like a dead thing.
Then this morning, @nobyeni had commented in Discord that the song she sang as an entry for @v4vapid’s Tinfoil Hat contest would have been weird for her to do four month ago when she joined steemit, but apparently not now.
And then I noticed @gmuxx’s insightful rambling post yesterday (Thursday) about having run out of things to say, at least in the short term.
The Path
They’re all kind of saying the same thing, but they’re all at different points on the path. We’re all just cutting off little pieces of ourselves and selling them. Even the most embarrassing things we’ve ever done, we offer them up on a platter in the hopes of upvotes to justify the baring of our souls.
Our Comedy Open Mic friend from above, he’s a newer steemit user. He’s still new enough to care about what others think. Too new to realize that nobody really remembers anything you do on steemit. Not after seven days, anyway.
Our Tinfoil Hat contest entrant, @nobyeni, she’s probably grown quite a bit in her four months on steemit, and is doing plenty of things she’s never done before. This is a good thing, surely. Until you run out of things to do.
And our fearless leader, @gmuxx, a steemit veteran and writer of many posts...well, he’s run out of things to say. I can’t judge him badly for that. He’s never been one to just dump garbage posts out. But after awhile, you’ve said everything you wanted to say. Now it’s up to him to find something new to say to toss onto that steemit bonfire.
The Steemit Bonfire
We’re all just cutting off little bits of ourselves. Whittling off little slivers and chucking it into the steemit bonfire. Warming ourselves for one more day. But reducing ourselves each time until, finally, we have nothing more to say and no desire to say it.
Hopefully that's not inevitable.
Title image by @negativer using Canva.
Join us at The Writers Block on Discord.
A great community of writers there, helping each other get better at what they enjoy doing.
Your steemit name choice didn't make a whole lot of sense to me...until now HAHA!
I prefer to imagine that one day my grandchildren and their children and so on, will get a chance to see who I was, to have a history that I was deprived of. I would freaking love it if this had existed in my grandmother's time, a colorful journal of her life for me to read :)
Super optimistic! It's true, this may be exactly that. If there's a way this all would still exist in 20 or 40 years, it would be an ideal way to remember who someone was and how they behaved.
So...um...I guess you have to behave. :)
Behave? God no, how boring would it be if I did come across my grandma's journal only to find that she was censoring herself in case of it? Nope, I am happy to entertain future generations with my crazy flawed self :)
Quite a valid point that I've also pondered in the past. I think there's a big risk of that, of scraping the insides of your spirit to feed to the machine until there's nothing else left. However, I think it doesn't have to be that way, and it's as much a matter of perspective as it is of strategy.
Part of the reason I focused mostly on fiction when I started out with steemit was this worry (not that I don't love publishing fiction here, I think I don't have to reiterate that to you of all people).
I, like Open Mic Person A, felt a bit shy about opening up like that for the chance of earnings. But as I used the platform more and more I realized I felt much more comfortable doing so day by day.
Yes, I stopped caring what others thought on one side, but on the other I simply embraced the opportunity to share with the world what makes me, me. Even the most silly things can be entertaining to others, and receiving feedback on them became increasingly fun.
In a way, it feels like being everywhere at once.
If you can't see it like that, that's where strategy comes in. I totally get why one wouldn't want to bare their insides to the blockchain for a couple bucks, and it's probably not necessary. I think we should always be trying new things, learning new things, exploring the possibilities of life, and steemit is a great place to share our experiences as we do this.
The fact that we can monetize our process of growing as people is just amazing.
In steemit, I've little by little developed my skills as a writer, editing images, etc. I've also shared different projects I've embarked on and generally had fun telling others of my experiences without needing to go too deep (although I don't shy away from it either).
In any case, it ultimately depends on each of us what we want to share, but I think life is so full of possibilities that there'll always be something new.
That's a really good perspective on it. I think 'getting over yourself' is the biggest hurdle, as well as realizing that 'nobody really cares' about your steemit blog, at least not to the point where they agonize over it as much as one's own self.
So I agree, that if you use it for all the things you say (growing, learning, exploring) and sharing that process on steemit, it's a good thing on many levels.
That said, I hope you share your process of escape from Venezuela, and your steps along the way to wherever the journey takes you. Let us explore with you! :)
In my opinion, not everything has to be profound to be read-worthy. Stories are great; one can produce unlimited fiction. There are also how-tos. I enjoy learning about beer brewing techniques, fixing/remodeling things or gardening. I also enjoy reading opinions on various topics. Listening to music videos or learning about techniques on the subject are also great. Most of all, I think it benefits the writer - a person whose mind is kept productive by keeping his or her ideas out there for others to see. Everyone, please keep writing and sharing!
That's a good way to to look at it. It benefits the writer, and if it's of interest to him/her, that's the main value. Sharing with others is great, and if they get value out of it, then it's just a bonus.
I love your Salty Rants(TM). It does sometimes feel like you need to keep cutting off bits of yourself, but I think we are all salamanders to some degree. Life experience is ongoing. The sunset you watched last night, the cardinal mates who visited your feeder, the dialog you heard in the street that put a little zip in your step that day... all those things happen in real time and add to your blog fodder.
And as someone suggested, if you don’t want to share stuff from your life or bare your embarrassing personal bits (and if you are so called), you can always write fiction, or poetry. And of course there’s memes and political diatribes, stock market predictions, recipes, and advice on manners, or what have you.
See, I have no end of things to write about. I just don’t have enough time to do it. Will you write a Salty Rant(TM) about that for me, @negativer?
I like the salamander comparison. Or maybe it's like the old forever-bubbling pot of soup/stew they used to keep on a simmer in kitchens in olden days. People keep eating from it, and you just keep adding new ingredients. There's a similar concept in beer making; you keep adding new beer to be fermented in a large container as you drink it off. So the stuff you're drinking is always aging and changing, depending on what you add and when you drink it.
Anyway. I like your view of it. :)
I like the stew and brew analogies! I always wondered if that was really true, how they used to just keep adding stuff to the pot. Or is it just folklore?
It's a thing! And now I know what it's called: perpetual stew
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_stew
Oh my, it is a thing!
I don't think it's a linear thing, @negativer, having nothing to say. When do you decide that, after one day, one week, one month, one year. Even then you might be back feeling inspired.
Some days I have nothing to say. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I can't be assed to say it anyway! 😂
I would love to get to the point where I no longer care what people think. Not so much about my writing (I'm not a writer) but more about my behaviour whether I self vote, upvote and by how much etc. how often I post, what I post blah, blah, blah!
Bloody hell at times I'm so self obsessed!!! 😁
Note to self . . . get a grip! 😂
We're all self-obsessed! It's our blog, our content. No one else is going to obsess over you, so you might as well do it yourself :)
Steemit would be easy if you were the only person on the site. You could do whatever you wanted, and no one could judge you for it. The ultimate freedom...but boring as hell.
I often think of think of this myself.... But it might just be one of those things that once you let go, once you stop caring it's not only liberating but it reveals the ironic truth that not many think of us anyways.
That's a good point. I imagine it would be very liberating to just 'stop caring'; I wonder what that would feel like. Maybe we'll all end up there eventually, whether we like it or not.
Ouch. Nice yet disturbing imagery.
Sorry for naming you specifically here, but your post was the catalyst :) Hope you didn't mind too much!
Of course not.
Polishes ban hammer...
Do you think if the payout was longer/short people would post more or less?
I run out of things to post about on a regular basis. I almost never write about my personal life or my past, I guess I just don't have any interest in doing that. I generally just write about stuff that I'm doing, and that means that I don't always have something to write about. Also, my depression issues are a bit like the tide, they come in and go out, and when the depression is in, it clouds my thinking enough that I don't feel like writing a post. There's less of that in the warm months of the year.
It probably helps that when it warms up you likely have a lot more things going on that you can write about. Winter time is a bit more limiting :)
Been baring myself to the net for years now. Steemit is just my latest pole ... lol:) If being online has taught me anything it is that ... haters hate ... be it puppies or avant-garde art ... they will find a way to tear it down. But most people are kind and look to like your work, but they only love you short time ... :D ... you gotta keep producing.
That's a... creative way to look at it. Maybe that'll be my next Salty Rant: How Steemit is Like Pole Dancing.
LOL ... yeah go for it ... no need to credit me:):):)