I read this recently and like many things it got me thinking and comparing it to Steem and Crypto in general. I was lucky enough to be one of the few to get into cryptocurrencies early but time was my worst enemy and would not let me ride the waves the way I had hoped I would and kind of knew they could. I remember when I stopped using Facebook completely for Reddit as long as 8 years ago because already at such an early time I could see how the system and way it was being used was going to change the quality a lot compared to what was happening on the other platforms at the time. I remember trying to get a lot of my friends into it and share this absolutely amazing place with them, reminding them to look around a bit, subscribe to some subreddits you're interested in, read the comments, etc, but not many even attempted to do that. They checked the front-page for a day or two which was heavily U.S based and most default subreddits were more serious than they'd prefer, reading was not their thing so checking askreddit was not something they got into either, so they left.
It wasn't long til Reddit started being mentioned in late night shows, tv series and news channels, it had stated to become really popular quick once they got their AMA's going with celebrities participating, usually trying to promote their new movie to the big userbase. Of course that's when they started sending me links to Reddit posts suddenly again and were so amazed at how great the content had become since last time they tried. For many though the content on other platforms adopted faster than they had the chance to get away so they stuck with their Facebook's and Instagrams.
I was going to be talking about instant gratification and how it seems the younger generation seem to be suffering the worst from it because of these social media platforms. Reddit is not a saint, especially not if you only subscribe to memes/10s videos/funnypics, etc, it lets you choose your own activity and has something for everyone (although not literally since they've had to shut down controversial subreddits and user accounts). Coming to Reddit from a platform where you just browse through pictures and status updates and news headlines it often lead to users having short attention span and not wanting to spend too much time on one article/post so they naturally turned their Reddit's into Instagrams too although the content was now much better.
There are many documentaries about the effects of too much Instant Gratification and information at your fingertips, combined with procrastination it is not healthy for people. I'm sure you can take the time to google those if you are interested. The grandpa in the story above says that delayed gratification can lead to a far better long-term outcome which is something that has proven to be true time and time again in the Crypto history charts as well. Would that mean that Steemians today are in the same position as the girl is in the screenshot? Grandpa being the rewardpool and curators while the chocolate being Steem. Could be, many Steemians who have started their career with no investment but spent a lot of time and effort into our blockchain have surely been rewarded in some way from the reward pool over time. Those who have left and come back have surely found themselves in a much more difficult position to get back into the ring (not a circlejerk pun).
In a recent post I mentioned how trying to cheat the system is something that is going to be attempted time and time again, even though Steem has proven itself to be rather strong versus such attacks, proof of brain will always have a weak point that hopefully will get smaller over time with more and more users and experience. The weak point being trust. There's no takesies backsies on Steem, sure you can wish you hadn't spent all that voting power, time or Steem on person who vanished with empty promises, but math will never let you get it back unless you use a fork.
Things will get better though, with more users and eyes these weaknesses will be happening less and less. I remember when Reddit users were being scammed hard once by some go-fund-me and other donation pages pretending to be people in need just to have kindhearted souls have their money stolen as they were trying to do something good in this world. A lot of users stepped up and started looking deeper into things and eventually they started to notice the flaws of their scams and quickly came up with better solutions to make sure those middlemen that were stealing were eliminated. If only there was a way to ensure funds go to the right people without middlemen being an issue, eh? But I guess Steem is still attempting to eliminate unnecessary middlemen on its own chain for now...
Old Reddit was quite boring, a lot of nerds talking about what Reddit could become while most posts were attempting to improve it. It reminds me of Steem in more ways than many probably could understand if they haven't been active Redditors or Steemians since the early days of both. My opinion of this technology has not changed much since the first days I got on here and while things are taking a bit longer understandably to happen, I suggest people to try delayed gratification as the opposite will most of the time make you lose. Even though Steem can be quite unhealthy used the wrong way as well I do believe that the incentives it provides today already will improve the users social media experiences over time. It will be quite interesting to see how it will develop.
At the ned of the day if we get rewarded for sticking with it for longer we'll be able to share some of it with others in the same way as the girl offered to share with her grandpa, and sharing is nice, isn't it?