So a little over an hour ago, I received this message courtesy of a transfer memo from a Steemian who goes by the name @themilkymark:
Please REMOVE your witness vote from the downvote freek @themarkymark, he doesn't deserve to be in the top 20 witnesses! You have 24 HOURS from now to act, otherwise you will be DOWNVOTED! (Just let you know how you feel when you received downvotes) Link to remove the witness vote: https://beta.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=themarkymark&approve=0 For reasons to remove the vote, please check out this post: https://busy.org/@fuk.themarkymark/fuck-themarkymark
If you want to see the proof for yourself, click over to my wallet and have a look: the transaction has been broadcast to the blockchain for permanent record. I'm not making any of this up.
A quick look at @themilkymark's profile shows that he's quite the whale, with, well, a total delegated Steem Power of just over 100,000. Zero posts, zero comments, zero replies, and a reputation of 25, yet someone has seen fit to grace this account with fifty times the Steem Power I have earned in almost three years of doing nothing but writing and posting here.
So I now have a gun pointed at me. I can un-delegate my witness vote for @themarkymark and thus remove my support for his efforts to get garbage off the blockchain, or I can suffer what I presume to be repeated downvotes worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.00 per hit.
So, @themilkymark, you want me to let you know how I feel when I receive downvotes? I'll tell you how I feel: I feel pretty fucking angry, because I don't do anything to deserve them.
What do I write here that makes you feel so intimidated, so persecuted, so small-dicked that you have to vent your frustrations on a guy who's been working his ass off for three years to make a name for himself, build up a list of followers, promote and grow the community? I have 3,000 Steem Power, and over 700 of that has been delegated to initiatives meant to build up other content creators.
But by all means, go ahead and destroy me.
Drop that 100% downvote bomb on the article I wrote about three fellow Steemians who I follow, and why I do so. Because fuck them and fuck me, right? They all deserve to be punished because of who I choose to spend one of my witness votes on, don't they? Go right ahead -- you alone can almost entirely de-monetize the post. You have the power if you so choose, I cannot stop you, and because you produce nothing, no one can retaliate against you.
How fucking strong you must feel.
Hit me with that -$1.00 downvote too on the blog I posted just last night, where I bared my heart on the immutable blockchain for anyone to see and read about how hard a time I'm having dealing with the grief in the aftermath of my friend's murder. Go on: do it. You can single-handedly de-monitize it and erase it from just about everybody's view all on your lonesome.
Because something uplifting about how humans deal with our emotions, how that ties into video games, and what my friend meant to me all those years ago is nothing but grist for your own personal grindstone. Wreck it, drive it into the ground if you so choose. I can't stop you. You produce nothing, and are therefore retaliation-proof.
God damn, you must feel like you have big, swinging cojones made out of pure titanium right now, threatening a guy who doesn't know you from Adam, all because of how I cast a vote one time, one place.
While you're at it, go ahead and shave a dollar off the earnings of my most recent book review. I mean, hell, you might as well, it's worth $10 and surely if the community has decided it's worth $10 then it's your god-given right to insist that, no, despite it being an example of a creative work vetted and upvoted by the rest of the blockchain, it's only worth 9/10ths of that.
Punch downward. Go on and do it. I can't stop you. You produce nothing. You are retalition-proof.
Hit me with your best fucking shot. I've done nothing to you. Obviously I am nothing to you.
But you don't get to decide my voice or the voice of any other Steemian around here. So take your gestapo thug tactics, your "nice blog posts, be a shame if something happened to 'em" mentality, and your pathetic little need-tweezers-and-a-microscope-to-do-anything-with-it dick and shove it in the nearest electrical socket.
"Free speech for me, but not for thee" doesn't work around here, you wang-worshiping ass assassin. You may silence me, you may demonitize me, you may downvote me to hell and back, but hear this you useless, spineless degenerate spooge tube cosplaying as a whale: you will not silence me. I'm sorry the last breast you touched was in a bucket labeled 'KFC', but flagging me won't help get you laid.
So now, I'm looking to my community brethren. @steemflagrewards, @slobberchops, @jacobtothe, and the rest of you who patrol the blockchain in search of nonsense like this to fight: what are my options? Obviously this toothpick-donged, fart-breathing dildo jockey is going to come at me like I'm the pivot man in his circle jerk, and if I have to live with that until he runs out of voting power through intimidating numerous other folks like myself who just want to post in peace, then so be it.
Obviously, I'd prefer that to not be the case, but twenty-four hours from now, we'll see what happens.
A quick look at @themilkymark's wallet will show I'm not the only one telling him to sit on it and swivel. This bastard is trying to intimidate dozens of other people.
How can we fight this nonsense? I need options, because I just got dragged into a gun fight I didn't even know I would be a part of, and I'm barely wielding a blunt stick. Talk to me, peeps. If nothing else, let me know you've got my back.