What If You Treated Steemit As If It Were Your Pension Fund?
Dear Steemians,
I starting using Facebook back in the good old days where numerous profiles still had the default profile icon you see above, there was no news feed, or Facebook walls, there was just statuses and profile pages where you could upload a few photos, share them with real life friends and far away relatives. Of course in those days nobody was really on Facebook and you'd need to try to explain to people how putting photos of your personal life on the internet is actually a good idea, good luck with that.
Much has changed since then. The death of MySpace, the birth of twitter, Linkdn, the world of social networking has become an amazing place... it's also become a lonely place. I stopped using Facebook when I realised that everybody I knew on there was living a double life, their Facebook life and their real life, you no longer saw real people on Facebook, it's now all about how much fun you can look like you're having on photos and what's the most outrageous thing you can say or do, this all for receiving some sort of affirmation that you are not alone in the form of likes... I dubbed this new network "Fakebook."
I tried my hand at twitter for a while but again it was one of those social network models that you cant really keep up unless you are keeping up if you know what I mean? To try to communicate with someone directly on twitter proved to be something like trying to have a conversation with someone in a Rave Club, so much noise around it's hard to here what anyone is really saying.
So Linkdn is pretty decent, keeping and online CV has been very useful for me in the past, and being able to tap into professional resources within 3 connections away, this was definitely a breakthrough in social networking, but it lacked the carelessness... things on linkdn are a bit too serious to have discussions like whether Trump is a troll or one of the most intelligent human beings on this planet.
I was on to Reddit for a while, I joined some subreddits where I had various interesting conversations with real people having real experiences, this was "scratching the itch" for a bit for sure, in this forum you could discuss your opinion and if you were lucky enough not to encounter a troll you would have some nice conversational feedback, I was happy with Reddit for a long while until my friend @muks introduced me to steemit.
It's 1 month now that I've stopped using reddit and various other forums for my daily "whats happening out there" fix, the experience has been... well... mostly relief. I feel relieved that I've finally found a place where I can see the world through real peoples eyes, I feel like I could just sit here, write all my thoughts down and send them to the world. Steemit is a place where I can share my personal opinion and the only people to who will interact with me are those that are really interested in what I have to say, for me this is where the real investment is, because as you sit there writing down your thoughts you are describing exactly who you really are and you have the opportunity to grow a support group of people that share your interests and challenge you where they understand things differently.
Of course on top of all this there is the payout system, which Ito think of as my "pension fund", overtime it might grow into something substantial but for the moment I'm more interested in interacting with interesting people. I will continue to brain dump my ideas, and I'll continue to read some of yours, I'm intellectually satisfied now so I really hope steemit sticks around long enough for us to see it mature, I mean this is the beta right guys?
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I've had a similar experience coming over from reddit. I am looking forward to a more mature steemit platform though.
Trolls don't seem to survive long here do they? :)
Hi @satoshimoto. Great article, I am in the same mindset at the moment. I have stopped using all Facebook all together, except for checking birthday notifications.
With the current economic state in South Africa, growing your Steemit account is a very wise decision because our money has a better chance of growing on steem than anywhere else.
I got shocked about 3 weeks back when I checked our companies pension fund website only to notice hardly any growth on the capital invested in the pension fund.
I am also in Steemit for the long haul and not really worried about taking money out of my steemit. I also want to become a dolphin and later on a whale if possible. 😝
Thanks for the compliment, the ZAR is looking hectic man, steemit is definitley a good investment for you. I feel a little richer when I go home for holidays bringing the GBP with me, I'm planning on being home for a few months from December taking a bit of a "sabbatical" so I'll have plenty time to blog more while I'm on the beach in balito bay :)
Just on the topic of your post itself, of using Steemit as a pension fund, there's a guy in my town who is experimenting with an actual cryptocurrency retirement fund.
The reason why I think Steemit collects and distills a higher caliber of individuals than Reddit, tumblr, or wherever, is that most people here understand that once its blockchained, its blockchained.
You don't want to say something stupid, you want to think about your image; which makes Steemit its own form of LinkedIn, with "whales" being the CEO types. You don't want to piss them off.
At the same time, you can be comfortable in the fact that if you can articulate the reason you don't agree, that people will give you a chance.
Thanks for your comment, I'd love to know more about the guy in your town, is there any online material where I could do some further reading on this idea of his, I was actually inspired to write this post as I've recently stopped my pension fund contribution at work, even though I was only contributing 50% and my employer the other 50% I just felt like since understanding how block-chain works there are countless alternative long term investment opportunities that would be more lucrative than pension funds as we know them, It's an interesting point you raised on the higher calibre of individuals and the hierarchy which has developed in steemit with the whales actually nurturing this platform due to the amount of investment they each have in the platform itself, I hope steemit isn't vulnerable to corruption in future though, would be sad to see it turn into something of a standard ponzi scheme
Last I heard, he was trying to get regulatory approval, due to the nature of superannuation (what we call our pension funds here in Australia) being very heavily regulated. He has a facebook page set up, but I haven't looked at it in a while: https://www.facebook.com/GnosisSuper/
If I could resteem this multiple times I would. Everything you mentioned in this post is spot on. My "Fakebook" is filled with 982 of my so called "friends" who are constantly trying to one up each other to portray their lives as if everything is fun and perfect! It's just unfortunate that "Fakebook" is turned into exactly that, fake. It's reassuring to read your post and feel like someone else in this world is on the same page as me when it comes to social media. Steemit is the one place that's been different for me. You summed it up perfectly here:
This is so accurate and so beautiful and I could not agree more. You've summed up my thoughts exactly when it comes to this platform. I applaud you for constructing such an inspiring and honest sentence. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks for your positive note, I didn't even get started on the plank, ice bucket challenges etc... I could never understand the reasoning behind some of these trends and it being turned into some sort of competition on who can upload the most egregious content. I'm glad to hear we are on the same page @mrslauren :)
Thanks for Resteeming, or I wouldn't have seen this post!
Of course. I'm glad I was able to share this amazing article with you! :)
Looks like you are preaching to the choir. This excellent post sums up my experience on theses other 'social' networks.
I dumped Fakebook a long time ago when I had 100's of 'friends'.
I created new accounts on twitter and facebook just to see who would follow them.
I have over 1,000 twitter followers of which I know only 4?
I post my steemit blogs to both and have no idea what the uptake is. Too early to tell. I've only been on steemit for one week so not much traffic data.
I've earned more in one week on steemit for doing exactly what I like and enjoy. Reading and interacting with some very articulate people who know how to argue and debate without getting bent out of shape or becoming abusive.
I've come across some great people and interesting ideas and blogs some of which I have followed.
Not many but enough to see that this is a long term project for me.
I earned zip from facebook and cannot understand why people are wasting so much of their valuable time there?
Full transparency. I did do the ice bucket challenge for the ALS charity just to give it some publicity but I didn't send them the $10 donation. I thought that was a bit of a cheek.
I am on Twitter as FinnianGC, but the primary purpose of that account is to get local breaking news. The site is very good for that. It's like a modern day CB radio. Once a week I get on there and search for my city to go through the tweets too. You learn a lot about your local area without having to pick up a newspaper or watch the local news. The information is coming from individuals and isn't filtered by the media as well. That's always a plus!
That's a useful way to use twitter and in reality that is what a real social network looks like. Small clusters of people who usually know each other or the local area. Think more in terms of Whatsapp etc. That is real interaction with people you know.
Fakebook is an abomination and the user base are largely clueless to what is really going on. All those dumb addictive games where people spend hours and real money to win baubles? Reminds me of the Roman games that keep the public entertained while millions were enslaved.
Steemit is part of the answer.
It wasn't only the fact that everyone lives a double life on facebook it was also the "information bubble" you can find yourself in as their formulae is set to give you more of what you like, it's kind of hard to break out of that bubble using these trend driven forms of social media, I found myself scrolling and scrolling for hours and not really learning anything new, even when I decided to just use facebook app when I was on the toilet I felt myself becoming dumber by the second and in a weird way addicted to the trash content.
haha, don't blame you for participating, my wife did it too ;)
Haha we all got sucked into that one. Facebook is a disaster. People have invested so much time and energy into it that they find it almost impossible to quit.
I use it purely as a marketing tool for my steemit posts now. Virtually no time spent there at all.
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I love a good braindump!
@satoshimoto I have to say this is exactly what I have been thinking at least in regards to Facebook, every time I open it now I just see the same bull shut from news feeds to dumbing down threads. I didn't realise how draining it is until you don't use it! Just wanna say thanks for your post and i have upvoted and resteemed! Awsome
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Thanks for your comment, the era of centralized social networking is coming to an end fast and its people like us that get to pioneer the technology that will take its place.
This post received a 1.3% upvote from @satoshimoto thanks to @sweetgirl !
Thank you @sweetgirl <3
I have been over at Google+ for the last five years watching it slowly die. Even with 11K followers there, the conversation is mostly dead. The majority of accounts are not used anymore, and people simply do not log into the site.
Google is censoring content. Facebook is even worse, and people there are banned for "offensive" content which isn't offensive but apparently hurt at least one person's feelings. There's no reason to be on Facebook anymore either.
Social media, to me at least as it sounds like it is to you, is a place to go and have intelligent conversations with people who are seeking to further the same causes in life. It is a place to learn from others and share what you know at the same time.
No other site does that better than Steemit. I wish I had been active back when I first opened my account, but at least I'm here now. This is a wonderful place with great content, many friends (people furthering the same ideals), and lots of good discussions!
The type of hierarchy here on steemit has a pretty similar structure to tribes, where the elders have the greatest influence over the direction the tribe will take, our steemit whales are the elders and whether you start a steemit account now or earlier being a contributing part of this community/tribe will eventually lead to becoming an elder, just be happy we made it in before the masses catch wind of this. :)
Yes, I almost feel sorry for the other platforms. People will be leaving them in droves. I invested in Minds.com and liked the idea of Liberty.me, but I believe those sites are going to lose out to Steemit too.