I'm Sorry. I Can't Support You.

Why? I support all kinds of people. In the weeks since Best of Steemit debuted, I've spotlighted hundreds of new and emerging authors of all kinds of material, most of them minnows, many of them seriously obscure. Why won't I support your post?

Because you asked me to.

Look, I don't want to be mean about this. I know it's hard to get noticed as a minnow, when we're all so small in such a big world. I know you're trying to support your family/lifestyle/drug habit, and that my .17 would be a huge boost toward that next kid/apartment/doobie. But I'm not giving it to you, and I'm not giving it to you specifically because you asked me to.

Every post is an ask. Every time you post anything on Steemit, you're asking me to support you, by definition. No one posts anything on here and says "please do not upvote this post, and don't you dare follow me. If you comment, I'll have you shot."

When you post something, no matter what it is, you're asking for support. That's a given. Do not, I BEG you, ask me again three times in the body of your copy. That's not creation of anything valuable; that's an advertisement made by you for you. If your copy isn't already selling me, I guaran-damn-tee you your begging me isn't going to change my mind. Just don't.

And the new thing seems to be rattling your tin cup in the headline: "Original Post Please Resteem and Upvote!" Haha. No. Not only will I never resteem this, not only will I never upvote it, I won't even look at it. You will get nothing. You want my attention? Here are three things you can do:

1. Promote someone else. You want to beg? Do it for someone besides yourself. It's way less pathetic.
2. Have a headline and a photo that makes me want to read your post. Put some thought into it.
3. Correctly tag your post. If you post a drawing of your girlfriend's left elbow, and you tag it "Steemit", because that's the number one tag in the space, I will see that and I will pass you by.

Maybe I'm alone here, and maybe your self-pimping tactic is picking you up money and SP, but I doubt it, and I'll fight it where I can. Inevitably, the space is going to get cluttered up by junk, because money attracts crap better than crap attracts flies, but I don't have to like it and I don't have to sit idle while it happens, either.

If you're going to be a whale (by my estimates, it will take me about a year), and who doesn't want that, you're going to get there with posts of original content, of good quality, and (mostly) by pushing many others up as fast as you can. No whales ever got their baleen and blubber with posts that did nothing but call attention to their creators. In this space, especially, but everywhere else as well, if you wanna get, learn to give. And learn to give without expecting anything to come back to you. It's a lot less stressful, and far more genuine, that way.

~Cristof

P.S. I make a small exception for witnesses, who actually have to tell me they're running so that I'll know and can vote for them. I don't mind that nearly so much. And as far as I can tell, witnessing is just work, and not a whole lot of fun or money. That's a fine thing to ask for help with. Otherwise? Blech.

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^{MINNOWS GOTTA SCHOOL}