Follow for a Follow, Upvote for an Upvote, Like for a Like (And Helping Only Those Who Serve Your Self-Interests)

Being active here on Steemit for more than a year now while having that much-need Facebook detox just made other social media sites uninteresting. I highly recommend a year of Social Media detox especially to those who are suffering from the 'need to be special', trust me it works, it can be that much-needed cure. It's just a matter of injecting a new and good habit into your life. Coming back to Facebook to set up my own business page just make this famous social media network even less appealing. Gone were the days I treat FB friends as real. Gone were the days of posting socio-political rants as if those mattered to them, they like to clap for the wrong reasons. Gone were the days of posting every single place I've been to or any travel updates. I was under the impression that I'm important. Letting go of the need to be significant was actually quite liberating. At the end of the day, the number of friends, followers or likes do not really matter. You don't.

I am quite a late-bloomer Instagrammer because I've never been interested in adding yet another toxic social media to my life. I am happy enough with Steemit but I'd rather reserve my page here as a special repository for my thoughts, diabolic or not. 'It is' a special place not only for rewards. I can post here the things that I can't share on mainstream social media because most people there just don't get it. I'm not saying that Facebook friends or Instagrammers are quite shallow people, it's just most of them have gotten used to shallow stuff being shared regularly, including the glorified lives of others.

Minus the spam and shitposts, Steemit has more of my ideal kind of people. I'd marry a Steemian if that is even possible. Those who really write a proper article, essay or blog about various topics, or fearlessly sharing their own diabolic opinion, free speech so to speak. Not those limited character posts, the so-called micro-blogging, photo blog and the like.

I remember when I started out here on Steemit and I was still naive about the concept of 'follow for a follow'. I was just following whoever followed me. It didn't take such a long time to know this cheap tactic. Aside from the usual third-worlders' 'please follow me' beggars I've callously learned to ignore too, I've also had high rep people commenting on my posts without even upvoting. Pretentiously commenting about the post then saying 'I'm following you from now on' which turned out was a lie after doing a 'following clean up'. Cheeky people, aren't they? Yet another subtle cheap follow for a follow tactic I say. There are the thick-faced upvoting their comments instead of your post just so they can move up to the top of the comment section for follower promotion. There was also the usual 'clicking and clicking follow' until fingers' hurt then the joyride of unfollowing everyone. Just so that they could look like classy and important people with more followers than following. However, it does not change anything. Dipping a skunk into a perfume doesn't turn it into a cute kitty.

I've realized how the same cheap tactic applies on Instagram, of course, especially that it is a community of downright competitive promoters thinking that there's money to easily gaining more followers through Insta-bots. Thousands of followers gained this way only makes one look like a skunk dipped into a perfume. The cheap tactic does not turn anything into a dignified begging.

I know probably this Instagram tactic is nothing new to you but I have my business page set up recently on Instagram. I was amazed by how many people would do anything to have more followers. I will have this increased x number of followers then it will be back to the original number in no time, people are quite funny. It happens after the Instagrammers or bots probably realized that my business page is too self-centered, plain 0 following. It is for a purpose. Fine, it's not that I don't have anyone to follow, it's just that I'm not interested in anything, yet, probably because everything seems shallow and unreal on Instagram, the colors and all. I'm just happy knowing that people can genuinely like my business page and who knows? Perhaps I can find pages or people I genuinely like too. I heard about IG banning people who abuse the unfollow function, so it's great that I am not following anyone still. I still do click and like my friend's photos if I get to visit their profiles. However, I love my empty feed for now and how I can focus on my own content. You can have very few quality followers to start with but at least they genuinely like to follow you. If you really like something, if you really like to help others from the bottom of your heart, this means you don't necessarily have to expect something back. It's like here on Steemit, there are many of those who expect an upvote for an upvote, most of them do things for others just to serve their own interests. Then there are those who really like something for real.

I must admit that I've been too self-obsessed and busy these days that I have no time to dig into the Steemit Shitposts abyss for new people to follow. I apologize for the great gap between followers and following, that was not designed intentionally. I like to follow those who write unique content but it just happened that those who are already esteemed writers already have some consistent high upvotes from whales. I can follow them and read their posts but I don't necessarily have to upvote. I just don't see the point of doubling their income or making anyone richer when there are hundreds of hungry talented minnows around. I just need to exert some effort to find them. I'm looking for more talented writers who are still undervalued to follow and they don't necessarily have to follow me back or upvote my posts too. I don't plan on applying the same real-world principles here - negative nothing for those who have nothing and more for those who have more, and helping only those who are useful to you.