Here's the story which was referenced in Steemit's white paper as well as #dollarvigilantegate.
A man was walking along the beach and saw another man fishing in the surf with a bait bucket beside him. As he drew closer, he saw that the bait bucket had no lid and had live crabs inside.
"Why don't you cover your bait bucket so the crabs won't escape?", he said.
"You don't understand.", the man replied, "If there is one crab in the bucket it would surely crawl out very quickly. However, when there are many crabs in the bucket, if one tries to crawl up the side, the others grab hold of it and pull it back down so that it will share the same fate as the rest of them."
So it is with people. If one tries to do something different, get better grades, improve herself, escape her environment, or dream big dreams, other people will try to drag her back down to share their fate.
The Story of the Crab Bucket, http://guidezone.e-guiding.com/jmstory_crabs.htm
First off who the fuck catches crabs with a fishing rod and line? Story is obviously made up.
For those interested I was in Vanuatu 10 years ago and I saw kids catching crabs. They tie a piece of meat onto a rope and throw it out into the sea. Then they sit there and every 2 minutes they pull the rope in about 10cm. It takes them a few hours but eventually you see a procession of crabs all following behind very very slowly making their way to the meat. The kids stroll down to the seaside and pick the crabs up. And there were no buckets involved. They tied them together.
Second point - How do they know the other crabs are pulling the one trying to escape down. Maybe he just slipped. Have you ever tried to be a crab and climb out of a bucket? It's gotta be pretty hard. Dare I say it impossible. Maybe the other crabs are cheering the adventurous crab on. And then every time he falls they get disappointed and wistful.
This also reminds me of that apes climbing the tree to get a banana experiment. This one's from memory so excuse me if I'm wrong. An ape climbs a tree, grabs a banana, all the other apes get an electric shock. Another ape goes for a banana, apes get shocked. Long story short the apes learn to beat anyone who tries to go for a banana. Then one ape is replaced with another ape. Guess what he does? Yep. Goes for the banana, gets beaten, doesn't understand why people flagged/downvoted him. Another ape is replaced. New ape goes for the banana, is downvoted by everyone including ape that doesn't know why he's downvoting. Eventually all apes are replaced but the group behaviour remains intact. Welcome to ape-hell.
Third point - Assume all the crabs can help one escape. How long do you think it would be before he was back in the bucket? Ok. Let's say he outran the fisherman or maybe the fisherman was busy on a new social media site blogging about crab fishing in the hope of a bit of Steem Power. The crab escapes. Does that crab go back and rescue his friends? Does he tell other crabs about the scam? No he doesn't. Because crabs don't have the internet and everyone knows talking underwater is very difficult to understand, especially if you have a crab-mouth. That crab then goes through life seeing his carb buddies fall into the same fate over and over again and he can't do anything about it. That's one depressed crab.
