Steemit Zombies are coming! A protest against the poor distribution of wealth at steemit!
While I do believe that staying positive is the only way to create a positive change, there are real problems at this platform which, while often talked about, are not being properly addressed.
When the posts you put your heart and soul into get little to no attention, you start to question what you are doing here. Some of us experience this despite being here for months and having tons of well respected followers. You might feel less encouraged to post or you might change what you post about or even suck up to those with larger accounts. You may find yourself discouraged about your future here or about the platform itself. This only leads to more shitposting, bot usage, and behavior which doesn’t help others much or doesn’t feel like who you are.
Decentralized currency with centralized power
The nature of the system allows users with more SP to sway huge portions of the reward pool with their ideas of how the system should work, encouraging minnows to jump on this bandwagon or the other. A huge portion of rewards finds its way back to upvote bots, which may benefit the user but becomes a crutch. Even valuable members of the community who have been here over a year like @scandanavianlife claim that they will not get any significant payout without taking advantage of such bots. Some users like @haejin feel it’s ok to post 10x a day for $200 a day, mostly through self-upvoting. Other users like @berniesanders may try to do what they believe is good for the system, but at the same time pressure users to conform to their point of view Or shut up about it. People are quick to point the finger st this one or that one, but perhaps we should focus more energy on ourselves and what’s we can do to make the platform better as we improve our own position on it, rather than feeding the polarizing debates.
We all have different ideas about how to solve this problem, and while we disagree the powerful get more powerful and the majority of minnows still eat scraps and are told to shut up and smile about it cause $0.50 is better than nothing. They are lectured about human nature and how they’ll be there someday, as if trickle down economics actually works in the long term.
This is a sorry state we are in.
Don’t get me wrong, we are all VERY fortunate to be here. Steemit has allowed some of us to peek into new possibilities where we are able to build our lives the way we see fit, earning money for just being who we are. This platform has literally changed my life for the better and I love the people here. But the system is easily gamed and so our potential rewards often go to those who game the system. We don’t have to sit back and just deal with it.
We should not focus on demonizing these people but instead focus on changing the conversation.
These people all have their own perspectives. Even among friends we don’t always ahree about what’s fair and while I don’t think it’s wrong to have strong opinions about how we go about interacting on the blockchain, we do much better as a community when we form a consensus.
As @berniesanders has shown us, sometimes trolling is the easiest way to draw attention and support from people who have more power in the system. Demanding better conditions can accomplish way more than whining in the chat rooms about our small payout and the misbehavior of certain whales.
But how do we demand better treatment when we seem to have so little power?
The Necromancer Of Steemit
Some of you may know me as the organizer of “The Deadpost Initiative”. I would like to expand on this idea and bring forth an army of high quality zombies upon the steemit ecosystem in an act of protest but more than than, in a statement of self empowerment.
First, let me explain The Deadpost Initiative. It is a weekly contest that invites undervalued steemians to share their undervalued posts and receive rewards and comments for it. The initiative has been going on for 22 weeks and has not really grown significantly. My goal was to be able to reward 5-10 minnows with 5-10 Steem each for posts which deserved a lot more than they got. Instead, most weeks we get about $3-8 in total payout for awesome minnows who believe in the project, but little support from dolphins and whales. @ats-David and 2-3 others helped us out once or twice and @bubke a few times as well but often our biggest upvote is from @irreverent-dan who is still a minnow himself, though larger than myself. @amariespeaks donated $8 this week despite being at around 250 SP herself. The project has shown me both how awesome people are and how broken the system is when one whale upvote is worth so many thousands of upvotes from others and there are so few whales around.
At times I want to rage against the whales and dolphins for not supporting this project when meanwhile we see things like @dmania apparently receiving delegation from @ned which is taken advantage of by dolphins and minnows alike. But again this is not about pointing fingers. The fact is, many whales and dolphins are TRYING to act responsibly with their power. But if those great whales and dolphins are too few and too spread thin and busy to notice us and help us grow, we need to find another way.
I propose that all of us who feel under appreciated or undervalued spam steemit by reposting our undervalued QUALITY CONTENT. We are told quality content will pay off, now let’s demand proof!
This will be a nice way to vent our frustration when no one notices our posts and when we see shit posts doing better than our life’s passion! I think it will serve us and serve the platform much better than trying to change ourselves in order to receive payout, or getting discouraged and quitting the platform or posting less.
Let’s bring the deadposts back to life on a mass scale. Rather than shitposting, why not just spam with really good content?
We will organize under a tag #steemitzombies and support each other’s zombie posts through resteeming. I think we should also add a little blurb at the top explaining why we are reposting and any other extra information about the post.
The goal
The goal of this protest will be to raise awareness of all of our friends and fellow steemians who we feel deserve more than they get and advancing our own personal status as individuals on the platform so that we can have our piece of the pie and share larger upvotes with people who deserve them. We want a distribution of wealth that reflects a distribution of talent, passion, and hard work, and until we get it, we will rage against this machine.
This is not a war. We are not fighting with anyone. We are just putting our foot down and saying we will be ourselves and post what we want to post, and insist that we are worth more, even if we don't feel like playing by others rules. We hope that more whales and dolphins notice us as individuals and if they don't at least we can work less than churning out new material every day or sacrificing our standards if we want some kind of payout.
Why should we mind seeing the same post a few times our feeds, there is so much great material that we don't have time to read. It's better than letting it all go to waste!
Building Consensus and community
Rather than deciding all the details by myself, I’d like to open this to discussion first. I want to brainstorm with others about how to make this as beneficial as possible to the widest amount of honest and dedicated steemians. It would be nice if we could get a curation group going for zombie posts (we will need curators and delegators). I’d also like ideas about how we can make the biggest impact and get some dolphins and whales onboard to help us. I am not looking to do this all by myself, or be in charge of this project, id like it to be a community effort to improve things at steemit and help turn it into everything it could and should be.
Come find me on discord. I will be in the “Be Awesome” chat for now but we will likely openca different discord for this if enough people are interested.
Please shoot this a resteem if you are onboard.
Join the "Be Awesome" discord community
The Be Awesome discord chat, was created with the intention of making deeper connections with fellow steemians. Come talk about "deep shit" and make friends.
I’m also a language learning coach. Come find me if you need help learning a language.
Confessions of the Damaged - a collection of short stories
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I welcome crypto gifts :-D
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by @skyleap
I'm very selective with what I resteemit, but this one is put myself behind. I am Relatively new here . have read a bit about the war but like most of the minnows am trying to and keep me outside just of fear. but a dont like it and a see all the time good post that get no attention and the the sea of shit post who gets so much more. It's scary in the long run.
a have some posts who could need a little more love am going to see what's going on later.
am if a see a good re upload gets it up vote.
Don’t be scared of the war. Stay away because it’s a waste of energy. I talk about it because I know users who have been here longer than me and posted great material consistently and are still struggling cause there aren’t enough whales out there to reward us all and so dragging out that kind of drama benefits them but it hurts everyone else.
Making friends with similar perspectives or passion is essential to do well on steemit. It’s only half of the equation but a very vital half so keep leaving great comments and getting to know people better.
this is true in my short time here I have found myself a little gang of users
it works very well. am in my bubbling there but difficult and avoiding the war and neither do you want to. find out what I can do with it. So as u are saying, just ignore them and hope that the rest of the little people do the same.
a have a I have a rule here when I find a new user ho is who posted something good , I add a comment and an upvote a few times. if a get a response a can follow if not am out.
All you can do is what you can do. Post what you like and share and promote and comment on things you like. Focus on that. And that is the risk of life in the real world both online and offline. Life does not guarantee success and wealth ever, or maybe not always. Be happy with the potential, brand yourself, relate to people, and be patient.
I agree with all your points! Following you!
No need for fear, we actually need people to discuss the subject with good constructive criticism.
Warn us all that you posted something and make us react.
We are in this bullshit together, we can oly lift eachouter out. So we need you to give us a hand so that we all become a bit stonger. We have all have two hands, the bullshitters oly have one 'shithole' so we should have double the power IF we all help eachother a little.
Please correct me if i'm wrong. :-)
@bifilarcoil
u not wrong at all @bifilarcoil . just find the most correct road. its seams like more users are speaks
of these so so things happen.
So rant with both hands my friend. Don't wait for change, be the change.
And sure sometimes you will grab in bullshit and get your hands dirty. But at least you will have warm hands, right. :-)
indid
I can agree with much of what you say. This place is a voting circle for the rich to get richer and the hell with everyone else. I often pondered leaving because I believe my thoughts are worth more than what a lot of spam gets rewarded yet aside from the occasional post that do well, most of them are worth next to nothing and I'm also tired of seeing other worthy posts earn a few cents but I can't do much to help with my 2 cent vote. I do believe in the concept of steemit and it could be a great place if it was used appropriately. I also believe the current price also reflects the state of the platform and that less and less people believe in it's future. out of almost 1 million accounts, only 60 000 are active, that also speaks volume of the current issues and I'm sure many great writers have left because they think they deserve more and that's unfortunate but I don't blame them. With that being said, it's the first I hear about the deadpost initiative and I think it's a lovely idea to introduce the tag #steemitzombies to help each other out. How would we post under that tag? copy paste an old post with a few added features and a link to the deadpost?
It's a good idea LadyBug!
:D How have you been?
I've been TOO BUSY, but this idea is a pretty solid one, I believe you can do darn near anything like that as long as you use the Quote Tags and linkbacks. The people getting in trouble with Cheetah and Steemcleaners are just fk'n LAZY! One can use the proper references and attribution, and add their own input and be Just FINE!
Don't give up yet, check out the many minnow initiatives that are out there. We have a lot of people over 50 Rep that are still struggling, and it's usually lack of being plugged in with the right groups. It is getting Better! I know you are getting around more, I see your name popping up in a lot of my folk's posts that I curate and help promote. YOU CAN DO IT!!! :D
i'm not even here for the money, yet i'm also annoyed that bullshit carries away heaps of coins, wile my serious work doesn't even get read, and hen it is read, and someone votes on it i still don't even get 1 cent LOL About all my posts are dead posts, so the idea to make the zombies walk sounds good to me.
I can however feel a cheetah hiding in the bushes.... If you know what i mean?
And i think it is going to snack on zombie bones
Hey @underground!!! I hope you are doing well! yes I have noticed you have been pretty busy lately, I haven't been spending nearly as much time on steemit as I used to. This place can be hard on the head, Seems like ppl notice my near absence more than my presence! I noticed a few trying to promote me in their posts to help me out and am very grateful for that. Do you know how I can get a notification when someone does a shoutout? I may miss some at times.
As @bifilarcoil says, I'm not in for the money and never was just get tiresome to see poor quality rise to the top while many hard working minnows or red fish struggle to get 20 views on most of their posts. I think it gives a poor image of the platform as a whole and new users copy the behavior on the trending page and perpetuate the low effort that gets rewarded.
Don't give up @bifilarcoil, we'll find a way to get out there in time penny by penny! Just stay true to yourself and continue to publish great content. Once in a while one of the many great curation trails like @ocd or @curie might notice you and help you. They do a good job at searching for undervalued content daily on the platform. As for cheetah, he's not that bad, add a bit of new material and it is real people behind the bot and they do read comments, just explain yourself and the situation and add some fresh material to the older post also state in the post that it's a re-post due to lack of viewership.
Yea we'll get there. good people find eachother at the bottom of the dungeon :-)
Cheetah ... i can't see goodness in poor executed patchwork o be honest. Yet i hope that i'm wrong. just cant see it yet.
an ISP should not be policing it's users
EVER.
So let the cheetah lay in the sun and leave us alone. :-)
lol . Bad experiences eh!! I had an encounter with the kitty cat during my early days because I post my pictures on my personal facebook. All I had to do is explain my case and I posted one of my Steemit post on my facebook account and I never seen cheetah again. There is a lot of plagiarism on Steemit and cheetah is just trying to help, she just needs a bit of love.
not bad experience as such, just the worn people doing the policing for the elite copyright industry.
An ISP should not even think of policing it's own platform. this is asking for corruption. and inequality.
Plagiarism is a hoax, your mom does she claim copyright on her best soup recipe?
Or are you free to adjust it to your own taste, elaboration on her skills?
Same with information. Set it free, let people elaborate and improve it, or just copy it for that matter. And then maybe a cheetah like thing can try to find a link to the very fist 'creator'? ,.... But why? Why do we need that ego trip? Once people get more creatice and start to enjoy to adjust and improve the cooking source code then we all can evolve together in peace
The money system is the bigger problem. THATS the actual cause of 'plagiarism'
The need to have more to be able to earn even more is just oldskool bankers bullshit.
We need a system that is most efficient at the 'enough' level. and the more you have THE HARDER it gets to earn more, and the less you have the more easy it becomes to always have enough so that you don't have to starve to dead when things get a bit difficult.
Its a different approach that still needs a lot of refinement, but this should be the basics in the raw form somehow.
cheetah needs to be set free in the wild, that the most love a cheetah can get. total freedom. not being some drone for the copyright police. :-p
what i'm talking about is a fa cry from a mom making a recipe. Take a good look around the platform and see how many people rip off a picture/text/artwork/videos from the internet without consent or linking to their source and taking credit for someone else's work and getting paid for it. It's not just stuff from big corporation but from regular people. If I ever found someone taking credit for my work that I worked hard to produce, I would be petty upset and heads would roll. Why should someone else be making money off of my intellectual property without my knowledge or approval and claiming it as their own? I know it's a chance to take when we upload our content on the internet.
It may not look like it right now but the point of steemit is to give average regular people a chance to display and monetize their skills/art/knowledge since the world doesn't allow for regular joes like us to get recognized. Is the money the problem or is it personal ethics of each individual users? I know the world makes it harder and harder to make a fair wage but at the end of the day how much money does the average person from the developed world waste on absolute useless overpriced crap acquired with credit( one example, smartphones) to keep up with the Jones?. Is it the corporations fault for offering products or is the people that need to take accountability for their spending habits or life and education choices? The world isn't a pretty place but it's not a free for all either. I'm not rich but I still earn a good wages because I've worked hard to get to where I am professionally and got a degree that has a lot of demand for my skill and continue to periodically go to school and acquire more specialized training to stay current and relevant in my field. Is it glorious work? no, not one bit. Is it fulfilling? nope but it pays the bills and as long as the world is reliant on electricity/ oil/ fertilizers or any system that relies on highly pressurized steam, I have employment and I started off as homeless in my teens with no parents to rely on and work my way up and I also had to leave my home town and the life I knew and move across the country to get there. If I was able to do it, just about anybody can it just takes will power and good critical thinking skills instead of an attitude of defeat and giving up on life People need to find a different mindset/strategy and not blame everyone else for their downfall. It's a hard thing to do but it is the solution.
Steemit can get sued for the use of copyrighted material and they are trying to take steps to protect their investment and Cheetah may be flawed a little but this platform is still in beta and the original concept was for users to have a means to create original content. not a copy paste article/photo/ video from the internet that someone else created. I know the platform is quickly breaking away from it's original intent for now and it's hard to get visibility unless we buy huge SP to begin with that's just part of the growing pains of the social experiment Steemit is. The platform will be what the people make it as a collective.
cheetah kills a post. It does not matter that it "upvoted" you, people see the cheetah avatar and move on, do not even read your post. They are NOT doing good work, they are self appointed little tyrants shitting on newbies.
And the zombie post is an EXCELLENT idea, except cheetah will kill every effort.
Trump was once a poor man, or at least his grandpa was.
Well said! Following you!
Yes a minnow like me who put in 8 hours work into her last post got an ovation from crickets yielding a paltry $0.81 and have been feeling a bit hesitant about putting up the next installment that took 20 hours and that was just the video portion. Is it worth it?
This is an awesome idea. I'd been meaning to come back to the deadpost initiative once I'd been here for long enough to submit something. And I've definitely had my own rage/rant about whales, inequality of income distribution that ignores quality of posts, and what might be done about it.
So, we will re-post our old content (as opposed to resteeming it), with the #steemitzombies tag, plus a little blurb on why we are reposting etc.? With enough mutual upvoting and resteeming, and if we can all be consistent in our core message, this might work. And if it doesn't, it will still be a bit of fun.
Will see you in discord shortly :)
Yes, I’ve missed a bunch of friends solid material because there is just too much to follow here so hopefully I can see some of their ideas and art that I missed.
Great to have you on our channel!
I totally can relate. Sometimes, I get saddened by the lack of response from what I post. I just think to myself that maybe it wasn't enough. Then, I often find myself tired struggling to be somehow noticed.
I agree. I get tired sometimes too, having very few audience.. *sigh
People get bored by the never ending streem of bullshit posts..
The bullshit is so overwhelming that it is worse then censorship to REAL content.
A big part is making friends and getting your name out there, involved with the community. But a small you can see with some users like myself, it only takes you so far if there aren’t a bunch of dolphins and whales among your following, one isn’t enough because few people will read an dupvote ALL your posts, even if they are great, too much going on here. I’ve tried pandering to large users and it leaves an aweful taste in my mouth and is just a slow and grueling a process unless you happen upon the right one. So many are pandering, you might as well just be yourself, strong and proud and don’t get too emotionally invested in the platform itself, get invested in the friendships you can make cause those are more reliable than payout. Stick around though, it’s a good place despite the BS.
yes @whatamidoin! I agree with you completely mate. People posting good content and not being appreciated is an other issue altogether but talented people not posting itself thinking that this is just like any other social platform and moving away after just a few months try is saddening. Am aboard buddy..Cheers!
Exactly! I know many great people who left the platform or just stopped taking it seriously because the way rewards are distributed or because certain ways of posting has a better chance of getting a high upvote. I’m ok with @dmania existing, I think it has a place here but such a large delegation to a meme platform is a death sentence for the platform if you ask me, sooo many great users post more memes then what they are passionate about now.
yes @whatamidoing , certain ways of posting has a better chance of getting a high upvote and yes @dmania is confining people to meme but that's the thing buddy..what's the point in posting a good article if your meme is making more? I myself made some good amount(nearly 3 SBD) with meme's! It would be good if we post good meme's and good articles aswell and being recognized!
I totally agree with you but I would say that there are so many lovely people on Steemit.com who help minnows get recognition.
There are! For sure! But still way too much of the upvote goes upward to those who already have the most sp, that's simply a function of capitalism. I'm not proposing we get into a debate about whether capitalism is good or bad, although i have my opinions on that, but it is what we have right now and at least we can agree that we want the system to do as good by us as it possibly can.
There are some ideas that I really like here. I have some stuff I'd like to repost so I might start using that tag.
How does one submit a post for The Deadpost Initiative?
Anyway, I'm upvoting this and am going to follow you.
We have weekly posts, this weeks is almost over, a new one should be ready tomorrow or the next day, I will post it.
With all the good sides it is safe to say that Steem is simply not working the way it was intended to. It is obvious and can not be denied.
I’m not sure it was intended for much more, I just think the imagined it would take longer for the platform to become this centralized and that they could keep putting it off. Or I guess a lot of people really do believe the demand of the market will solve everything....maybe it could if you could compensate for the fact that money/power attract money/power in an exponential way, which they didn’t bother with.
I have been stupid giddy with getting .025 SBD from the contests I win once and a while! I think that we get messed up thinking that Steemit is a functioning economy...its a proto economy and the rules have not been written in stone yet. Yes it functions fairly top heavy now, but I firmly believe there is room for ingenious ways to tackle the steemit mountain. A zombie post initiative may one of those solutions that opens up new doors and make the climb easier for more people It certainly would address one of the problems you have if you don't have a trending post...it falls off of the radar within hours. Most things in life have to build an audience over days and weeks. It is just very hard to even promote something that is considered cold fish in 24 hours. So I am for any method that keeps good work in front of potential eyeballs longer.