Be the Support You Wish You Had: Engage with Your Community!
Why do we choose to engage with other humans?
Is it so that we can become closer with our friends, sharing common space and finding comfort in supportive conversation?
Or maybe so that we can learn from others, gaining new perspectives and shedding light on unknown subjects?
(If these are the reasons why you interact with humans, you need to read this!)
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Sometimes, people interact with others only for personal gain. Scary, right?
We see these kinds of interactions with narcissistic individuals—those who care so deeply for themselves that they disregard the feelings and opinions of others. We also see this with greed driven individuals, or in sweeter words, individuals seeking profit to pull them through a personal situation.
I made the decision to switch to Steemit as my main source of internet interaction a while ago. I wasn’t getting the genuine social engagement I hoped for through other social networks, and was getting a thousand times more drama than I wanted.
While I still post casually on my Instagram account, my facebook presence has almost entirely disappeared. Honestly, if I had cell service at my house I might not even engage with Instagram anymore, preferring to contact friends via text, calls and snail-mail instead of through IG’s messaging system.
When I put thought and personal connection into creating a post, I choose to share it with a community that can benefit from my contributions and can literally support me on my journey.
The engagement on Instagram these days is so rarely genuine. I get lots of comments that were clearly copy-pasted onto every other relatable image, lots of followers who immediately unfollow. Lots of flitting, mindless interactions.
Many posts are either direct ads or hidden from our feed due to the in-depth advertising algorithms. When you can connect with real people, lots of folks choose only to share simplistic miniature word-voms under a picture of their cat followed by a casual thirty tags on whatever-is-trending-at-the-moment.
(If that was a perfect description of your instagram, please don’t take it personally)
Unless you follow very selective accounts, it's likely that your instagram feed won't be bursting with quality content. But the fewer people you follow, the less interactive the platform is—especially as these posts are formatted to be scrolled through quickly, meaning casual users rarely read the full caption.
Designed to share mobile photos, Instagram simply isn’t a system that was created for expansive + in-depth community support.
Recently, with steem value having gone down, we have been seeing groups of users getting less interactive. Posting less, or not even bothering to comment or engage with the users in their feed… @canadianrenegade just shared a great post right along these lines-- encouraging steemians to keep grinding our blockchain gears and continue to contribute to this community.
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How can we grow and find the support we need if we do not interact with our economy and the individuals which make it so unique? Especially in times of need, we need to be aware of the reasons we are here and what we are looking to get out of our social media interactions.
Let’s be honest… what are you spending your time on instead?
(Maybe you have legitimate reasons to be off steemit, but I know when I catch myself mindlessly flipping through stories on Instagram I try to consciously snap out of it and put my energy towards actually supporting people, and maybe getting some real support in return.)
I am putting out a call to all steemians of all communities!
Engage with your fellow fins, show us you care!
Show the world that this economically connected community is about more than just profitable posts, it is about genuine and supportive relationships.
If we continue to steem through the low times, we can have the power to swim strongly through the steem-stream when we are riding high waves once again.
Do you interact with this platform only with hopes you will be rewarded monetarily?
OR
Do you interact with this platform with hopes of creating long-lasting supportive relationships?
Choose what kind of human you are.
Till next time, my friends,
be sweet, stay wild
@coyoteom
Hungry for more?
Check out my latest posts:A Life Changing Evolution in Steemit Interaction: A Must Read for All Steemit Users (collab with @notconvinced)
Alright My Friends, It's Time to Give This Platform a Name! (collab with @notconvinced)
Choosing Consciousness + Conscience: Be the Change You Wish to See
Real Talk: Releasing Self-Doubt and Victim Mentality
Notes on Language: 'Superiority' in Spiritual Speech
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posting a remarkable.clean work together hopefully we are both successful
success of self seems to be dependent on the support and success of those around you.
good luck, friend!
Beautifully written and so true. I just hate the impersonal nature of Facebook lately and much prefer spending my time here, reading, supporting and writing. Much more rewarding and it bring me so much happiness.
I found that a lot of the posts I had been seeing on facebook were mostly self-involved and querulous.
Plus when facebook decides to run tests on its' users happiness levels by showing only sad feeds to some groups and positive feeds to others? No thanks, I don't want to be a lab rat!
The integrity and engagement of steemit users, (and let's not forget the ability to help financially support content creators that we appreciate), has been a big eye opener to me in terms of how and why we are using social media.
And in the same time I've seen enormous growth of "quality posts" on steemit... it actually poses a problem to my limited upvote power, but I vote as long as I can reward the blogger.
Oh boy, that's a fantastic thing to be noticing.
What a decently swell problem to have on our end! I would much rather have to be selective and curate my votes than search through endless pages of mindless blabber.
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most people come here only because there is money involved. If this where like FB without compensation no one would know about it. But I do believe once here, new friendships are formed and people actually enjoy it.
My very first understanding of this site was that it was a decentralized + crypto-monetized blogging system. With that in mind, I definitely see the draw for new users to get involved. I think that the true wealth of the system comes with active engagement and these great new people we are introduced to.
The ability to share so much more in-depth and through various mediums all from one platform is incredible. I love that it can bring folks from all societal ranges and interests into a shared space. My feed has crypto experts and natural building experts, graphic designers and poets. It's beautiful!
I agree it is wonderful that one is exposed to so many different cultures and countries as well as customs.
Its posts like these that make me feel so connected to the steemit community, realizing we relate more together than all of my real life Facebook friends.. such a beautiful platform- thanks for being here and contributing :)
So glad you found some connection through this post! I have come to realize that tons of my 'real life' friends aren't actually my friends anyways-- facebook's linguistic labeling just makes us think that!
I was actually pretty surprised, I previously made a post about leaving facebook and to drop me a message if friends wanted me email or address. Since the original post on my fb, I haven't gotten a single email or letter from any of those friends, but I did get seeds from another steemit user (whom I've never interacted with offline) via snail-mail.
Steemit has proven to me to be a very engaged community, I shan't go back!
Amazing post! Steemit is such an amazing community and rant n' rave about it to anyone that will listen. I cannot stand Facebook and Youtube is horrible for adds. You just spoke total truth! Thank you for sharing.
I can't stand advertisements when I am simply trying to commune with friends! I have some definite distaste for being born into a capitalist system, and mutually beneficial interactions like the ones here on steemit are helping to ease the pain.
My views on ranting and raving about steemit are as follows:
SourceGreat post, very true many don't comment, very guilty of that, sometimes just don't know what to say.