Do I Need To Sacrifice Privacy To Be A Successful Author On Steemit? (Edit: See Really Good Discussion!)
From the perspective of a hustling Steemian without a big stake, delegations, or ground-floor voting relationships ("special friendships"), I get the sense that people increasingly gravitate toward privacy-sacrificing posts and videos where people bare it all.
I suppose it's logically a more entertaining and efficient way to consume information. Maybe people don't sense authenticity in writing as much anymore, or don't appreciate content without personal visuals/audio.
While flashy sexy pictures headline a post about success in life, or videos up in one's face seem to be the cash cow right now, is privacy and/or long-term safety in a sphere that may make many people super rich targets a concern for others?
Perhaps people prefer vlogs and videos where they don't have any reading to do, and can just listen to enjoy the multi-sensory experience. I understand that more personality, tone and information can be conveyed efficiently in videos, but is writing a dying art on this platform? For amount of posts I've written (apparently not engaging or valuable enough to the larger whole), I have only a small handful of people who consistently and kindly read, vote,
and reply. I'm left knowing I'm simply not good enough of an author to engage more people, or that people don't appreciate the niches I've gravitated toward.
Granted many people have profitable writing-based blog posts (built before video platforms on Steemit rose to their current popularity), but many are previously established, with ongoing large auto-vote/relationship/circle support.
I personally don't want to have my face plastered around on a blockchain that "lives forever" because our finances are public. In my view, it's a security concern and a risk. If crypto moons, guess what, you're publicly on a pedestal... and there are a lot of weird people out there who may be desperate. It's not paranoia, it's a legit concern for down the line.
I'll admit that it's not in my character to talk to a camera, but I do have a lot of intellectually stimulating things to say, and if I type it out here for years and years, I can almost guarantee it'll be largely overlooked. I suppose this is compared to vlogs I see with massive rewards and upvote volumes, yet 10 views, or picture perfect snaps/titles for clickbait I see many large stakeholders supporting because it's shiny. What happened to our attention spans? Will vlogs eventually become gifs at the rate we're going?
While there are plenty of insanely gifted and smart vloggers I appreciate, again, the focal point is on privacy and security... I even feel a little uneasy for them in the future if Steemit reaches the masses and they've exposed their private lives, locations, jobs, family, IP addresses, and other wallet addresses, etc... Facial recognition tech...
I don't know anymore. Is dtube or vlogging the best way to build followers organically or attract busy whales? Is a rambling makeshift vlog with 2 relevant sentences with a hot snap to front quality what I should pursue because it's more popular?
Putting my energy into writing seems largely inefficient. While my SP is relatively unattractive for larger players to want to engage with, I continue to feel the desire to power down to swap tokens and just watch from the sidelines.
Thoughts? Discussion?
Thanks.
well the idea of social media for people is pictures, videos and very short sentences or paragraphs ( twitter style )
we can't blame people coming from those type of platforms which are very mainstream and '' fool proof '' and expect them to just write a ton of words every day.
if steemit wants to beat the fb or the other ones, it has to make their lives easier not give them more work to do!
let's face it not everyone will get the 100$ posts but if this gets adapted you wont see long ass blogs that much!
look at facebook, as a regular person you just want o post a few photos and brag a little but not to sit down and just write so many words just to please!
we need this to be '' fool proof '' for it to work!
I hear you. Excellent points. Thanks.
I just don't think we need to show our faces to achieve such popularity and success because our finances are publicly associated with our profile. Therefore, everyone in the world can theoretically see who we are and our holdings, which are often a fraction of the other crypto some may hold. As prices soar, that's scary.
well that is true but when money goes up they become the new age celebrities and they have to deal with the security issues as for example kim kardashian does.
but for this to become '' THE SOCIAL MEDIA '' we will need people act the way they do in a normal manner.
More than half the people that comment on posts here don't even bother going through the post and it's actually mostly due to the impersonal nature of how things are being done here. On places like facebook, twatter(no typo) and others, people are more engaging because they genuinely feel like they're communicating with a person that gives a shit enough to put his neck on the line. Whereas here, there's this level of anonymity thats prevalent and sort of makes the platform "proffesional" or reward oriented, if I may. As much as privacy is a concern, being too private is actually an engagement barrier. I hope I made some sense
You've made enough sense to warrant a full upvote for caring to express your opinions and engage!
Yet here, ironically, there's a record of everything you ever say to anyone.
Some people get that, and try to inject value into what it is that they say. Others... don't. :D
As much as this is true, it is also found in every social platform.
The point I'm trying to make is that there's a certain level of personalization required to make a platform more engaging.
You'd naturally be more comfortable talking about personal shit on the platform when there's others talking about theirs. If we keep conversations purely intellectual, it'll lose taste.
At least, on the blockchain, you can go back and do an audit to see what people have edited their prior posts for... (like me forgetting this paragraph in my original reply).
I do very much love the pure, intellectual conversations on the platform, and agree that there's a place for these (as well as) the personal shit.
Some of the best posts I've read are candid, personal accounts (not the entitled self-victimisation we tend to see on other social media platforms) - of overcoming obstacles, or dealing with them in a way that appeals to our caveman like instincts of gathering around the fire and listening to a story.
There's posts everywhere here, not a lot of them tell a story, and appeal to our sense of wanting to know what happens next.
The rapid-fire nature of other social media platforms allow this to come about somewhat organically (i.e,xyz person is replying right now) - yet here, there's a disconnect - perhaps due to a lack of notfications (a discord, GINA bot solves that, or using a platform like STEEMPeak) - but I think that the vast majority of users aren't yet willing to lay their personal shit bare in candid, leave out none of the details posts.
We endure as storytellers, and we learn so much from each other's stories. We just need to be open to reading them, and subject to Matt's original post here, not enough people do enough reading on this platform to allow the appropriate level of engagement to occur!
If @belemo responds, I might ask that someone use the popcorn bot as it'd start getting juicy.
I didnt mean it in an antagonistic manner! My point was along the lines of "nice post dear" type commenters.
HAH. I know it wasn't. I was just enjoying my personal Steemit record of generating intellectual dialogue.
Get the !popcorn out, it's intelligent conversation! Signs of life!
I feel your pain @steemmatt (talking about your last paragraph). I have noticed I tend to go through privacy cycles as a content creator and at odds with myself over the balance.
I can also completely relate to your feelings re: the shortening and cheapening of content at the visualization of success. Like you said... Heck, just look at the high payout posts -- they're short snips of "something" that may be useful, but more than not are of no real use! Yet they have high payouts and suck the rewards from others (many people vote for a higher paying post in hopes they'll get curation rewards as the post continues to grow). No doubt... friends in high places or just helping themselves from a higher advantage to climb higher.
It's something I have had the intention to write about for a while, I think hearing that I'm not alone is a good motivation to actually do it now.
Glad you concur, sans feeling the same pain. I feel that there's so much vote politics involved that even if people jived with what we say, they can't rock the whale pod to risk their support.
There are some people who are agnostic to respect effort, value and content with support, regardless of the adverse effects. It shouldn't be the minority as I feel it is. Most though seem to not want to make waves and play the game in order to keep their rewards channels open. More coat tail grabbing than leaders...
I'd suggest that you write, even if it's just to get your thoughts out. I personally vent sometimes just to clear my head on the Steemit topic and allow me to reset to try to blog more.
Yeah, I think one of the things that most irks me is the people who seems to always kiss up in the obvious hopes to get promoted by selling the company Kool-Aid. Ugh... Where's the free thinkers? Where's the free speakers? :-D
Unrewarded and therefore dying off. If you write and no one reads it, did you really create those words? I think that people eventually just give up because they feel it's a waste of time or pointless to take that approach. For me to feel that way after being such a believer for so long, it's telling to me. All of my business common sense sirens are going off, but we're manipulated by the social norms here to think we're the ones who are wrong.
True. True. And TRUE!!! I have wondered, where did all these users go? I’ve been here since May 2017, to meet then loose many good content creators makes me wonder. They were good writers, with good things to share and teach. Now they’re gone.
Posted using Partiko iOS
Time is money. If people feel their time isn't being well spent, I fully support their initiative and discipline to cut the line and move on to greener pastures. As for me, I'm too stubborn and want to grind it out to prove to myself I could do it without bots and buying SP, as I feel it was initially designed for us in theory.
Just today I came across a guy with a blog on blogger.com. Writing is his passion in retirement. I thought about recommending Steemit to him but decided against it. I know that it is harder than ever for a serious writer or newbies in general to get started. For a writer starting off today there are only two options for success, get noticed by curie or buy bots. Though like you said people who got in at the beginning have wealthy voting circles and so for them it works.
I've noticed that there is an inverse relationship between the amount of time I spend on a post and the money it makes. Posts that took 5 minutes always make a lot more than posts I pored hours of my heart into. This is because people are mindlessly upvoting which has to be why Steemit removed the views counter. Because it would make it obvious that no one is reading what you wrote. So putting a lot of effort into a writing post makes no sense unless you're lucky enough to get the attention of curie which will attract others whales and even some people who are interested in reading your long-winded content.
Valid points. Your example with the blogger you opted to not tell about Steemit is pretty powerful. I have similar feelings now and am glad most of my friends ignored me when I was raving about getting them to sign up last winter. At this point, I don't feel it's a healthy environment for new authors to develop. It's getting better for existing Steemians, as they learn to navigate and network better, but it's still highly incestuous in a social way.
I love how the comments you've received on this post prior to mine don't seem to indicate that they've actively consumed or read this content of yours.
I'm very much in the public eye on Steem. My car's number plate is on here (it's even in my avatar) - I stream, I write about personal experiences, and I'm fairly active in several discord communities.
Privacy, and putting everything behind closed doors certainly has its merit, but the power of this social blockchain is to ... get know people (imo) - and build some sort of trust, ironically, through a trustless mechanism.
I've often asked the same question if I was to powerdown and continue to create content, would I see my rewards change at all?
Thank you.
Everyone has the right to do whatever they'd like, I just worry that a lot of the safety some people feel at the moment may erode in 3-5 years' time if crypto is globally adopted. While protected by a private key, our bank account is ironically literally completely public. If I kept my avatar a tomato and never gave any personal clues/info, that's ok, but most other social media doesn't have money linked/fueling it, which raises the flag for me.
As you closed with, I also agree whole-heartedly... if I didn't have any voting power or rewards potential for others, I'd likely still keep most of the current people who interact with me (a tiny handful) because they are GENUINE and developing friendships, but I'd faint if real money or new followers would care in the slightest because I'm not a stakeholder/can't reward them for their engagement in return/curation.
This is helpful post for us
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We must sacrifice to achieve success
Really great article