New to Steem? Don't upvote yet

Steem is a great place. You (or at least I) can spend hours reading quality articles about almost any subject you can think of. Everything from Bitcoin to food, ghosts to cats. It's all here. It takes some time to learn the ropes. Who pays for my upvotes? What is the difference between trending, new and hot? How do I get followers? How do I get people to notice me? What did I earn for whatever I just did? Is that real money? How much real money is it? What's Discord? Who can I trust?

You'll find articles here that answer most of these questions and you should upvote them when you read them. You should upvote anything that helps you. In Steemit or in life. But, please don't just upvote posts because everyone seems to be. Things here are not always as they appear. A post may show lots of money earned when in fact the Steemian has bought some of those votes to make themselves look better. So read the post first. If you don't understand it, don't upvote it. You might be giving money to the wrong person. (No, the money doesn't come directly out of your wallet and it's good to upvote and interact with people.)

There are some wonderful people here. Salt of the earth type people. People who have probably been on the internet since it was created. Some will help you. Some will not. I've already met some very friendly folks. The millionaires/ billionaires are called Whales and they are fully capable of eating you. They get in fights from time to time and your best bet is to stay out of it.

It took me over two weeks of digging to figure out who some of the good guys (for me personally) are. There are some very scary people who are not bad, just big, and intimidating. Follow them, but stay out of their way. There are occasionally some people who will take advantage of your "newbieness". This isn't Facebook. If you don't understand a post, it hasn't helped you. Don't upvote it.

You know the difference between someone trying to help you and add value and someone trying to confuse you, right? There are some very confusing things being discussed here. The blockchain is still a mystery to me. If a post about the blockchain doesn't clear up some part of my confusion, I don't upvote.

Upvoting is like taking money out of the community pot and giving it to someone you think deserves it. Well, it isn't LIKE doing that. It pretty much IS doing that. Someone is going to get it and it's built into the system that you can only distribute a certain amount every so many days. But there are thousands of people and posts that deserve an upvote every day. Find them. You'll enjoy the site so much more if you do.

If you got anything out of this post I hope you'll upvote it, but only if you think it merits it. If you think it's helpful you can even resteem it. And if you'd like to follow me that would be great. But I'm only a minnow so there's no telling where I'll go. Oh! Look! some pretty flowers.