RE: The EIP and how curation will matter again - a.k.a false hopes
At the same time, I feel for those who weren't able to get the same kind of recognition.
A lot of the folks I vote for often don't see much, but they'd see less if I didn't vote. Some folks do well, and I still vote, because I've always been a fan of their work. I often vote late. Always manually.
Subscribers often purchase something before they've seen or read it. People purchase music and movies, before they get a chance to judge if it was good or not. That's just part of how the entertainment industry works. Some folks make a purchase simply because they are fans of that performer. To me, auto votes are similar to that. It's quite normal. I do hope they check in to actually consume the content, even though I do realize some folks buy comics and don't even take them out of the packaging. It's not up to me to judge how one wants to consume or support my content in the same way it's not up to banana growers to say there's only one way to enjoy a banana. I know this system here has flaws, and I see where you're coming from. Just know, I'm not offended. I can't really look down on someone though for maximizing rewards, when I know every content producer here wants piles upon piles of Steem next to their work. We're all striving for the same thing.
I just read OCDB went the way of manual curation. Over time, @pharesim, I expect to see more and more folks stepping up to the plate to curate, and with that, more will receive the recognition we both know they deserve. It seems the majority these days want to see balance, an even playing field, and want to push for positive change. It'll take time to get there.
My critique is mostly directed at the bigger stakeholders. I've always wondered how those who already own a significant stake of the platform prefer to grow their personal stake over growing the platform as a whole. There's so much potential here, but most of the people who joined over the years gave up because they didn't manage to grab a foot.
My mission has been spreading since the beginning. Because I own a significant part, and I want to grow the pie for everyone. All I've seen is my share going down, while the value dropped at the same time. My efforts may have helped, but I can't tell, because value has been extracted by others who don't do anything to bring all of us forward.
I see the majority interested in growing the platform too. But that's the majority of users, not the majority of stake unfortunately.
Time will tell. There's no final judgement to be made yet. All I see is that the incentives given by the ruleset don't help, and lessons we learned before have been thrown overboard.
I know about this potential, and know it well. We want the same things. I don't cash out. I watched thousands of hours of work first spike in value, and at that point I could lead by example and show people what was possible here. An easy way to get that mass adoption stuff so many seem to want is to simply have proof of concept sitting there looking everyone in the eye. They want big names here? Well, those big names aren't coming until they see the money. Those were good times and it would have been easy to take this thing to the stars BUT that was precisely the moment charlatans and profiteers took over. They convinced people to buy something that was free! I had to sit and watch thousands more hours worth of work and two years slip by where everything went in reverse. Not only did the value of account drop, but so did the value of my work. I had to sit and watch people sacrifice potential billions the entertainment industry generates yearly, while they attempted to convert the place into some kind of makeshift crypto mining platform so they could earn thousands instead of generate billions.
I've been one of the most frustrated people here for a long time. The only thing I want to see is this whole thing work. I see a lot of folks bragging up how they've invested money but when you've invested nearly your entire life into something, for years, what's worth more?
As I said before, sorry that you're on that list. It could've been anyone else being successful here, but your post was close to payout when I screenshotted, so it showed up on top.
Keep up the good work!