Love/Hate
Steem is a fascinating token, the first social media platform that allows people to earn rewards based on advertising-free content. In theory it's the perfect system to reward content creators, in application there has been a few kinks. But the thing is, all of these kinks come directly from fear.
The self voting.
The abuse of bidbots.
The complaining.
Everything negative about this place comes from fear. And the thing is, we've made fear comfortable. We're used to it, we pick it every time instead of choosing something new. Maybe I should elaborate...
We're afraid when we self vote incessantly, afraid that we won't have enough. Maybe we aren't prosperous yet, but that doesn't mean we can't become prosperous by choosing prosperity in attitude and action.
We're afraid when we use bid bots, afraid that we won't be seen. Afraid that our self-proclaimed important articles won't be found by the legions of should-be fans.
We're afraid steemit will fail, afraid the we're wasting our time on a scam that only rewards people who abuse the system. We're afraid the problems won't be fixed and that adoption won't happen.
I get it. I've felt all of these fears at one point or another in my six months here. I've voted up every article I've ever written, even the zappls. I've used bid bots on a number of articles. And I've felt the fear that maybe I would be better off spending my time doing something else, maybe I could make more money in a different venture or build a bigger following on twitter and youtube. I've felt like steemit is unfair sometimes, that the rich seem to get richer even though the content they produce is no better, often worse, than the minnows.
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But all that is counterproductive. I've been counterproductive to the success of the steem platform from time to time. I've fallen into negativity and times when I wasn't enthusiastic about the platform. And all it did was negatively affect my writing and success. Choosing fear and focusing on the negatives in life will only bring more negativity into our lives.
Resist not evil
-Matthew 5:39
What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size
-Carl Jung
It's so easy to get caught up in the problems and drama here. It's easy to focus on the negatives. What is not easy is focusing on the positives. But that's exactly how @taskmaster4450 operates here.
The Ideal Steemian
He who gives his best to the world will receive the best in return.
-Christian D. Larson
My pick for ideal steemian goes to @taskmaster4450. It's not because he's the one creating all the 3rd party apps or working as a witness(yet.) It's because he's unflinchingly positive about steem and the tokenized future.
Everyday @taskmaster4450 is cranking out article after shilled article in favor of steem and the ecosystem being developed here. He isn't focused on the negatives, he's looking at the good stuff. He keeps reminding us that steem and other tokens are going to be the future of money, because half the time we doubt it.
All of us on steemit are invested in cryptocurrency to one degree or another, all of us have that underlying belief and desire for crypto to succeed, for something more fair and more helpful than the monetary system we have had in place for the last hundred years. We're sick of being taken advantage of, and we think crypto has potential, but we're not all in. We aren't holding strong in our beliefs that this, or something like it, is the future.
Otherwise why would we be fighting? One of @taskmaster4450's most frequented topics is abundance. Prosperity for all. It's a challenging concept to believe in, we've always lived in lack in some form or another. "I have to work a job to pay the bills, I can't just give away my hard earned money, I have to spend frugally on groceries so I can afford so and so." We all have probably felt that at some point or another, but now an alternative is right in front of us.
Now we are on the way to being able to say "I made 50 bucks from writing for an hour today, I made a dollar searching with presearch, I got five dollars from manna this week, I played video games for $20 bucks this month." Mind-blowingly different. But in order to get to the mindset where that's normal, we have to leave the fear behind.
That means no more blaming. You want change? Make it happen yourself, start a movement to develop a new app or get your idea in front of someone who can help. Network. And no more complaining either, send your energy towards what you want to see. You want great content? Make some, comment on other people who are making some and give them your votes. You want a system that prevents any sort of abuse? Figure out how that would work, the devs and everyone else are probably brainstorming right now, why not join them?
It's so easy to start down the path of fear, greed, and judgement, but every time our thoughts and actions go in that direction, we are reinforcing those things in our world. So don't be like that, be like @taskmaster4450, the guy who posts positive articles everyday, comments and replies to nearly everyone he comes in contact with, supports the good causes and ignores the negatives, and grows the platform by helping grow the users.
I may be biased because he helped me grow my account from 0 to 1000SP, but it's little things like that, and his ability to consistently make me feel like this movement is hugely important to the well-being of all people, that make him one of my favorite steemians. Whenever you need a shot of positivity, maybe the market is down or no one responded to your article, head over to @taskmaster4450's blog for a boost. Let him shill you in all the right ways.
CONTEST!
As part of my celebrating hitting 1kSP(I know, I know, it's not technically all SP yet) I've decided to hold a small contest. My first contest ever! Pretty simple, tell me about your favorite steemian and why. Rules below:
- Comment or post about your favorite steemian. Give me some details about why you follow them and what they do for steemit and the people on here.
- If you do a post, be sure to link me to it here or I may not see it.
- Resteem this article, upvotes and follows are optional but appreciated
- Winners (2) get 5 SBD and the steemian written about gets 3SBD.
- If enough people participate I will be giving away 5 runner up prizes at 1SBD+1SBD for the highlighted blogger.
This article is my long overdue thank you to @taskmaster4450, he upvoted nearly every article I wrote in an attempt to get me to 1kSP as fast as possible. He also delegated around 150SP to get me a voting bar back when I was hitting steemit hard. I was absolutely floored when he chose me after seeing me hitting the comments hard. I don't think I've always lived up to the generosity in my writing and work, but I've tried my best to contribute to steemit and have been brainstorming new directions recently.
As an attempt to pay it forward I will be upvoting two people once a day at full power. I have two in mind and will be posting shortly about them.
As always, thanks for reading,