Have You Thought About This?

This post is going to blow the fuse most likely, but nos worries, this is just the beginning, I have more.

What I'm going to write about today is not new, it's an age old thing and I think it's going to exist as long as the chain exists. A lot has happened lately and even though I'm not affected by it, I think putting everything into words could help others, especially newbies see things more clearly.

It's about expectations, entitlement and earnings, not necessarily in this order though.

There are various ways to earn on Hive. You can be a witness, developer and work on dapps, provide different services, you can earn curation reward and obviously be a content creator and get rewarded for it. As a witness, developer or service provider, you need not only certain skills, but the necessary infrastructure and technology. As a curator, you need stake, but as a content creator you don't need more, so obviously this is the most appealing to those who don't fit in the other categories.

You can register to Hive for free and start your journey right away, so all nice and good till here, but ... what to write about? And here's where things start to be complicated for so many. We have users from all over the world, from different cultures, with different education and background, which is a very good thing, it makes it more interesting, but has a lot of disadvantages for some.

Topics

Having a colorful content creator base is the most wonderful thing on Hive, but when it comes to content consuming, things change quite a bit. You can't force anyone to read your post, let alone vote on it and this is where desperation kicks in and entitlement comes to the surface.

Not long ago I saw a post about a business without internet and in which the content creator was kind of surprised that people are willing to take their laundry to the laundry service, rather than do it themselves and called them lazy. Reading the post I found out, they are doing laundry by hand, payment is done by using cash.

It is a topic for sure, you can write about it, you can post about it, no one can stop you ... but ... don't expect much.

It's 2025, doing laundry is not a discussion topic for 90 - 95% of the population. You load your washing machine, turn it on using your smart home app and take the dry cloths off when it's done. If you don't want to do the washing yourself, you take your clothes to the laundry shop and pay for it. It's perfectly fine. It's not laziness, it's an option and it's no one's business but yours. The other thing is, in most of the countries there's no business without internet as your cash register is connected to taxman and you are also obliged by law to to have a POS and accept digital currency. As I said, it's 2025, things evolve.

There are cultural differences, huge ones, which is fine and normal as well, but problems derive from this, big ones and not many can see it. What seems to be a top shelf and a very important topic for you and in your community or country, may not have the same effect on others.

How to exterminate rodents from your house ... again, you can write about it, it's fine, no one can stop you, but most of us don't have rodents, you don't see any for ages because municipality is paid to keep your city clean and there's no way you can have them in your house.

The other thing that most likely will exist till the last user on the chain is ... preaching slogans no one is interested in and spinning content.

Those who have no idea what to write and want to look smart, are usually spinning, plagiarizing or using AI to write a post. This is the worst you can do and trust me, you won't get far with it as most of the users can spot such content from a mile. When you see posts about low sperm count, pregnant women's mood swings, global warming, nuclear energy, owners and pets personality ... seriously? Do these people think anyone would take medical advice from a user on Hive? In any decent country anyone that want a medical opinion goes to a doctor, or two, or three, to be sure. Nuclear power and the rest of the crap ... are you a specialist to describe your experience? No. Then why write about it?

The other type of topic that is dominant in some communities is what it is preached in the church. Slogans about what you should do, how you should do it, how you should behave and so on. I wrote about the subject in this post and most likely many of you bump into topics like we have to do this, we have to do that and so on.

Most likely in small towns, villages, there's community pressure and you have to obey a lot of stupid rules and also preach what they brainwash you with, but in most of the world what you do, how you behave is your own business, everyone is free to live as they want.

What I'm trying to say here, you can write about these things, but most of the users will scroll through them.

Comments

This is an interesting and important one. It is not top secret that the fastest way to make yourself known or make people notice you is through comments. No one is going to scroll through the feed on a daily bases to look for new users (except curation projects), so if you want to let people know you exists, you comment on posts.

Newbies are usually targeting high rep users, trending posts and/or those with considerable stake for the obvious reasons. I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing, but it depends on how you do it. It can easily backfire and you get the opposite result.

Over the seven and half years I've spent on the chain, I got 47500 comments. Some are bot comments, templates from curators, a good part is made of interesting comments from nice users and friends, and a part is stupid, spam comments.

Chain etiquette and common sense says you reply to comments, as that's a form of appreciation towards those who spent their time reading your post and leaving a comment too, but sometimes it's pretty difficult to reply and I'll tell you why.

As I said earlier, the number of topic people post about is endless and you can't master them all but some users tend to comment anyway. The most annoying is spam comments like nice post and thanks for sharing, then there are the stupid ones, when it's obvious the commenter has no clue about the topic, or they haven't even read the post, just commenting on the photo or picking a line from the end of the post. You can shoot yourself in the foot with such behavior.

The other is ... promoting your post. This is the fastest road to nowhere. It happens often, especially when there's a contest and contestants thing it's a good idea to span posts with link to their post and beg for support. But there's also another way, when some users always end up talking about themselves or what they do.

My brother has a saying, according to which "before the internet, only your family and friends knew you're stupid, now the whole world knows". Sounds brutal, but unfortunately it's true.

No one is forcing you to comment on posts you haven't read or topics you have no clue about, it's your choice if you want to be marked as spammer.

Cherry On The Cake

Quite often I'm getting DMs on Discord, people are asking me to mentor them. The funny thing is, most of them want my mentoring on "how to be successful". At the beginning I was always replying them that I'm not doing private mentoring, but now I'm rolling my eyes first as it's just unbelievable people are asking this.

I mean HELLOOOOOOOO!!!! This is a web3 platform. Why are you here if you have no idea what to do? And besides, what do you mean by successful? The answer is really simple and consists in one word: "money". Nothing more. The problem is, they think there's a recipe for this, some instructions to follow and success (as they call it) just falls on you. Well, I have news. If everyone would do the same thing, no one would stand out and none of the successful people got where they are now (not talking about people on Hive) by following others, they have done something others haven't before.

Final Words

The truth is, people need spoon feeding these days. We have a bunch of curation projects that were non existent when the chain was born and many of the newbies are assisted at the beginning of their journey and even so, entitlement in some cases is extremely high.

Well, how about you start doing your homework, study how the platform work, start building your followers, work on making yourself known and enjoy the result. How about building your stake to earn curation rewards as well, not rely only on author rewards and cashing out every penny, then complaining about not getting support.

I could go on till morning, but I think you get the point.

If you're a newbie, you may want to check out these guides: