The butt hurt is real...I too feel the same way but am proceeding in spite of all that. If you are doing beautiful things with beautiful people than what does it matter what is going on behind the scenes? Obviously this does not apply to every situation but morality is subjective. Are you still using other social media platforms? I can promise the major ones have more sinister back ends than steemit.
Well, I guess it matters to me because I feel like there are so many scams where honest people get utterly destroyed these days. My conscious tells me that this feels like more of a psychological social experiment than anything else. Where hope is dangled you will find the best and the worst of mankind. I have Twitter and Facebook accounts and I no longer use them for the same reasons.
Here is to hoping you are indeed a real person and this post was not an alohaploy to solicit comments. I was having this very same dilemma earlier and this post was at the center of it. I even reached out to @aprilangel for her take on it.
I personally believe in free markets and systems, manipulation is always ugly and tends to serve the purpose of the few and not many. This was clear manipulation on all sides but at least here was an open discussion about it. In most cases you do not even get that to be honest.
I am not sure how many "movements" you have been a part of but there is always infighting and sometimes even sabotage from counter parties. Sabotage is something I would like to focus on here, conspiracies are something I do love very much. One would assume that the "establishment" would be terrified of a site like this and do their best to ensure it did not succeed.
I would like to point out at the near center of this controversy is a user with the name of a political figure. There is some irony in the selected politician and what he was used for and what the account in question is currently being used for. I am just going to leave this here and move on to the "bigger picture".
Intent, one can only control what they can and everything beyond that is just simply beyond it. If your intention is true and your work pure that is all that matters and all you can control. If this site was created by Lucifer himself and I managed to use it to find God, is that not somehow divine?
In the end of my moral struggle I kept thinking back to my mom's intro post. I had gone through the motions of getting her set up and doing the initial power ups. Helped proof her post and add pictures, when it was all said and done an amazing account of her life was on display for the world to see and future people related to her that do not even exist yet.
The mechanism that brought that into existence was steemit, without it that would simply not be. Any tool of mankind can be used in a positive or negative way, it is up to the individual wielding it. Below is a quote from my guru...
I do hope that you will stay and help us build something of our own regardless of the intentions of those behind the scenes, we can do it our way, the right way. Not sure if you have checked out the 2017 features list but some amazing things are on the way to help in this very subject. Ironically one of those items will give you the ability to delete these very words from your post.
To infinity and beyond!!! :)
Your reply is giving me hope I can still bring you to the Darksiders. Please give me a moment to formulate a strategy.
Lol, I'm intrigued and slightly frightened.
Perfect mixture, in the mean time let me be your single follow and even better sign up for http://streemian.com and add me to your fanbase. That way you can get curation rewards and I can get upvotes even while you are "not playing". Also if you power up your steem a 90% interest rate will kick in, that may come in handy.
Wow, you are a smooth operator, sir.
I agree. Autovote while you're away, just in case a year from now, everyone's talking bout steem.
You can come back to a healthy balance.
Be a shame to go to all that trouble for just one users curation rewards though.
I hear @mattclarke is going places too.