Pointing fingers and naming names.

What do you think you are going to find in this post? Flags? Pool Rape? NSFW? No this post is about something else entirely and since we are a community, I think we should discuss communities. Nope, not talking about the ones that have been on the agenda for ages already, I am talking about yours.

Yes, Steemit is a large and very diverse community of people and there are massive benefits in getting involved, some of which I mentioned in an earlier post on investing into Steem but, it is a large community made of many communities and more will come and develop within.

There are the topic communities like the art, science, literature, philosophy and of course technical, development and cryptocurrencies. But, there are also regional communities that are based on language, culture or chat channels. These communities support each other in various ways however, some are more supportive than others.

What communities are you associated with? Is that too personal a question? How about this, when you look at their content, would you upvote it in good conscience? What about their comments? are you doing anything to help your community?

This is a very diverse platform and it is filled with all kinds of skills, skill levels and personalities, each with their own individual agenda but, there are definitely some cultural groupings that can be made. Culture is something that interests me and frustrates me as essentially, culture is a group of people acting on habit, regardless of whether that habit is useful or not.

Like many others, I get spam comments quickly after posting.

your information is good. I read it all.
thank for information dear
good post sir! keep it coming...!

You know the type of thing. By the way, the Sirs have been shifting to dears the last week or two. It is worse, not an improvement (unless you are my auntie).

The thing with this spam is it seems to be predominantly coming from a few communities only whereas from others, this barely appears. This tells me that it is a cultural thing of some kind and they think it is a good way to interact and engage. It is not good interaction, it is not engaging (other flag attractors). High levels of plagiarism also seem to come from certain communities too.

But, from these same communities where a lot of these things come, there are some brilliant content providers also who have real skills and talent but, they are getting buried beneath the nonsense of their own communities or being roped into vote4vote, follow4follow and upvote circles with Duster accounts.

I am not going to point fingers nor am I going to name names but, if you are from these communities and are interacting in this way, you are not only harming your own chances of success, you are also harming others in your community. Not just the Steemit community, the real world one in which you live.

I was chatting to someone from India yesterday who earns more from Steemit than his IRL salary. At the same time in a private message window, I was talking to a guy from Nigeria who was saying how work is difficult to come by and if he had a job, he would love to get married and have a child. Really, the numbers they are talking about aren't huge but, this isn't a charity service and will die a quick death if used as such only.

These communities though can benefit massively by people who are able to make a little extra here to inject into their local economies but, it seems that the ones that do achieve some kind of success at Steemit forget that they have this real world to live in too and take an 'every man for himself' approach.

But, if they actually spent some time working out how to develop good content, create a discord or steemit.chat channel and instead of thinking about making money as a group, thought about how to improve their small community interaction with the entire community, they would essentially in time make more money anyway. And, it would have been earned by building skills that will hopefully allow them to provide a more stable stream of quality content as it is this that will make their micro community valuable to the macro Steemit one.

The fear I have is that when the real "communities" come, these groups will be walled off and those quality producers within will have little chance of escape as their minds and opportunities drown under micro circle-jerks. That means they will have little chance to help in their real life communities either.

I am a big believer in selfishly helping the community. What this means is that by being an active, productive, supportive member of the community consistently, it will both help that community and help the individual.

No matter what community you are in, if you care about your future well-being, you should help develop the quality of its content and interactions. And, if you are doing relatively well here by being a valuable part of the Steemit community, for godsake help others in your community do similar. Obviously our individual capacity is limited but, it is easy to start helping one person.

Just find someone who has decent content or ideas and help them develop. Help their layout, their wording, get them to use grammarly or similar, show them how to reference, what tags may work, explain what are good comments and poor and whatever they need to do to be seen as valuable to the community, which means giving. It doesn't mean one must give money or even votes, just help them learn.

In the real world, I know a little about diversity. I grew up in a tiny all-white town, the son of an Indian background, Malaysian immigrant father, a blue-eyed blonde mother and now live in Finland and do not speak the language but have a Finnish/Australian daughter who herself has bright blue eyes. Even now people look at us at the shops if it is only her and I. What made my father's and my life a lot easier is our sense of community and our willingness to use our diversity to be part of it by helping it be its best.

Yes, many may benefit but do you know who benefits the most from a strong, healthy community, me. It is selfish. This is a community designed on giving but if everyone has the 'every man for himself' attitude, the community of Steemit collapses and when the community is gone, so to is the future potential. Community and success are at least for the foreseeable future, tied together.

There are so many ways to be a part of this community but a beggar will always be a beggar until the beggar starts earning by doing. No one need be a beggar at Steemit as there are so many avenues to build value. Sure, in the short term it isn't likely to pay the bills but, some people really have to start thinking longer here, especially when it comes to the communities they care about.

I don't know if this is rant or advice but, I am hoping that everyone will start thinking about all of the circles they interact with and how they can best connect them to the larger community. There is so much opportunity, it would be a shame to lose it and it would be a shame to be cut off from the possibility.

Umm... the end. <<< This makes it a rant.

Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]