I can still remember my first downvote. I'd been struggling as many new people do, but had lately after about a year of what was then known as Steemit, begun to find my sea legs, and slowly started to gain some traction.
Yet I Persisted...
As now, back then very few people saw my content. It wasn't unusual to spend hours, days, or even a week researching a subject, creating the blog post, and seeing a big fat zero in terms of engagement and support. Yet I persisted, knowing that if I kept it up, sooner or later I'd break through.
Then it started happening... Nothing huge mind you, as I've never been a trending centerfold pinup, but things had begun to change and I was excited to help contribute to the platform in its very early days.
Part of that change came from engagement, which I encourage those new to Hive to engage in. I'd find interesting posts and leave a comment, and in that way, I was becoming more known to members of the community.
Three Little Words...
One day, Ned the leader of Steemit, made a post and I left a comment not dreaming that it would result in my first ever downvote. The comment?
"I love Steemit."
That was it, nothing else. I then left to start my day and anticipated answering any responses to the various comments I'd left earlier that day. What greeted me upon my return was disturbing...
Instead of a response to my innocuous engagement, someone had come along and left my first downvote. I could feel a blush of trepidation as I clicked through to see what had happened.
According to Tim Cliff, the downvoter had had a beef with Ned the CEO of Steemit, and gone in downvoted anyone who had anything positive to say about the platform. I was collateral damage, just one of many he'd hit all at once that day.
Some whales might not understand it, but as a new person trying to make a good name for himself here, I was devastated until I found out it had nothing to do with me or my content, and was just a personal conflict between him and Ned, and I want to thank Tim for looking into that and getting back to me (thanks Tim!). It was such a relief to know I'd done nothing to deserve that downvote.
That downvote was one of the reasons I didn't rush to delete my account when the fork happened. The memory of that and the other downvoting gang stayed with me.
Just in case the new place turned into Nazi Germany full of power-hungry autocrats, I didn't want to lose all of the work that I'd built up over the years, and I never forgot my grandmothers warning: "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." She grew up on a farm and learned from painful personal lessons. The lady knew her stuff. So it sits there, gathering dust.
Word somehow got back to Ned, and he left me a huge upvote to compensate, something north of $20 or so. I was elated, and immediately powered it up.
Here's Why I Don't Downvote
Number 1, it's corrosive.
So many good people have been driven off the platform by others drunk with power forming downvoting gangs. I'll never forget the new guy who was convinced to join by his friend, and then signed up with a downvoters club his very first day. I'm thinking "so you joined Steemit not to participate and help grow the community, but simply to use your vote to tear people down."
My attitude is that If I don't like someone's content, I simply don't upvote it. Now on the other hand, there's a certain region of the world: those who know, know, I won't name it, that's becoming known as a hotbed of copyist and mimic plagiarism. Lately, they've gotten slick after being caught directly stealing other people's work, and instead of blatantly copying content, they "mimic" it, and have been handsomely rewarded for their efforts.
They'll subtly rewrite someone else's blog posts. Work that the original creator might have spent hours or even days researching, writing and editing. This allows them to avoid the effort involved in doing the work themselves, and in many cases, they're rewarded far beyond the level of the original writer.
It's lazy, but it works, or else they wouldn't keep doing it.
However, when you copy, you don't grow as a creator of original content.
It's interesting to watch them scouring Hive for good writers to steal from. If you take the original work and place it next to the copycats, you can see what they're doing and how they do it.
Last year I smiled watching a "blogger" brag about how "creative" he was and that this was why he was making so much money on Hive. One day I was reading his posts, and thought I saw something familiar.
By complete chance, I'd read the post he copied from first, then clicked through trending and found his. The copying was remarkable, and if I hadn't by chance read the original work first, I might never have noticed it.
I went back to the original post written by the other creator putting them side by side, and you could see where he went paragraph by paragraph, using the first one as a template in order to build a copy of his own. Then, lest someone notice the all-too-similar familarity, he'd swapped two of the eight paragraphs places in order to hide the mimic even better. But I saw it and others did too...
It's exactly their lack of creativity and originality which cause them to need to shoplift content from others.
I get it. English isn't their first language, but that's just sad and pathetic. I'm sure they know somebody in their village or campus that speaks proper English and can help edit their work. But for them, it's easier to take from the hard work and creativity of others.
There are groups here that downvote people like that and those who they say have been excessively rewarded. I'll never forget a person who'd been told to write an apology post for content they'd stolen. Astonished, I watched as the original post remained in trending, and get this: the apology post itself, trended as well...
So what lesson did they learn from all that? What's the takeaway for them? Aside from a little public embarrassment, there was no real consequence at all. They didn't decline payment on the posts, and the upvotes continued to roll in unabated.
I may not trend day after day, but everything I publish is my own content from my own head and based on my own research. Each post can sometimes take hours to write just the skeleton. Then I pore over the details, tweaking it for readability while trying to quash as many grammatical bugs as possible before publishing.
The graphic at the top of this page alone, took an hour from concept to finished piece. I don't just slap the items together, each element is tweaked, resized, and carefully placed, often going through many iterations before it's done.
Th title itself was changed six times, with the original being much longer, before I boiled it down to the current one. And don't even get me started on fonts, I went through at least 20 of them before settling on the final one (everything has to be just so, know what I mean?). The post you're reading is shorter than the first draft, as I always "overwrite" before paring back. When complete, it's like sending a newborn out into the world.
No copying needed.
Creating original content can require a lot of effort, but I receive pure joy in creating something, where nothing existed before. It never gets old.
The downvote is considered an effective tool by some people for abusers like that, but I have another focus.
Growing Hive Is My Goal
I want to grow the numbers here on Hive. While action may, be warranted against the mimics and copyists, we want to avoid the growth of the "Little Hitlers" we had on the old platform which caused the exodus of so many good people.
We need to always remember why we built this place, and have growth in mind, while creating a welcoming environment and keep that as our north star. If we do, we'll have a future so bright, we'll have to wear shades. :)
Please check out my recent posts:
Image Credit: [1] @EverNoticeThat Created using Canva.