Whales, whales, whales. Everyone's mad about whales. With so many people on the hunt for these elusive, Steem-bestowing creatures of the deep, we've been inundated with an endless supply of posts about what whales are, their real role in the Steemit ecosystem, how to attract them, whether they're good or evil, how they think, and so on ad nauseam. Hell, someone even made them their own god damn t-shirts.

You know what the common factor between all of these people proselytizing about the mysterious and intricate ways of the whale is?

Almost none of them are whales.

That's right, all those highly informative and profitable posts you're relying on (and upvoting) to tell you how to make your posts as whale-friendly as possible are almost entirely based on speculation and conjecture. Sure, a lot of the time they make educated guesses and put forward some reasonably convincing arguments, and some have even gone to the trouble of asking whales for their opinions directly (or at least claimed to), but the truth is that the only ones who can tell you what whales want...are the whales themselves. And I'm willing to bet that most of them don't even agree on what that is half the time.

Yet we continue to heap upvotes and praise upon these holy texts as if Moby Dick himself had arisen from the deep and spoken these very words in his majestic whale-voice:

"Write about what you know...use proper formatting...more travel posts"

"Also boobs. Many boobs."

There's probably a very good reason for the fact that, with notable exceptions, very few whales have actually come forward to tell the Steemit community what they want directly. As the top-left corner of your screen will confirm, we're still in beta here, people. That means we're testing out this whole system to figure out what works best for it. We are the aquatic equivalent of lab rats, and the whales are conducting an experiment to determine what kinds of posts people catch onto, deciding which are most likely to support the growth of the network as a whole, and dispensing Steem-flavoured treats to those who pull the right lever. And let's not forget that the end of the day, the whales are Steemians, and part of the experiment too.

The whales are smart. They know too much interfering with the experiment might skew the results.

This is why hot topics on Steemit seem to change so frequently, and why there's so much difference of opinion on the formula for success. The truth is, that formula hasn't been discovered yet, and probably never will be.

So we're probably better off ignoring most of these posts claiming to offer a beginner's guide to whale taming, especially if they're written by someone who's only just put his feet in the ocean. Instead, we should be making use of our own intelligence to figure out what makes a good post in and of itself, and not trying to fit into someone else's definition of one.

Be free, little fish

I'll say it again: forget about what the whales want. You're just as important a part of the Steemit experiment, if not more so. Therefore:

1. Choose topics that you want to write/read about.
2. Write about them in original and interesting ways.
3. Engage with other authors who write well about things you want to read about.
4. Grow the audience for yourself and your chosen topics through the power of good writing.
5. Judge the quality of your writing on the feedback you get from this audience, instead of your chance encounters with whales (or lack thereof).
6. Learn, adapt, improve.
7. Profit (in more ways than one).
8. Repeat steps 1-7

Not only will doing things in this way add immense value to Steemit and help it to grow in a healthy and sustainable way, your satisfaction with your efforts will improve, and with it, your skills and your confidence in them.

In the wise words of @dan, and perhaps the only ones that matter:

"Whales are small in the grand scheme of an ocean of fish."

So put down that rusty old harpoon and pick up a net instead - one with which you can catch plenty of readily available smaller fish. Chances are if you're successful in doing that, you'll attract the bigger ones as well - but it's much more difficult (and much less beneficial for Steemit in the long run) the other way round.

Edit: I was unaware when posting that my gratuitous use of the w-word would result in a veritable swarm of botvotes. The abuse of bots and their detrimental effect is probably what I'll write on next!