I came home tonight about an hour ago from from Wednesday errands which always include a 3 mile run, picking up my CSA share, and doing some grocery shopping for the week. Today was special in that it also included a 10 minute stop at a downtown park so that I could hit up some Poke'stops and try out my first battle at a gym. I lost twice.
As I drove the 40 minutes back out to the tiny rural coastal town where the fifth wheel trailer that we call home is parked, I pondered such important questions as "what does it mean for a Pokemon to evolve?", "Why do they all hatch from eggs, even the mammalian ones?" In a world full of Pokemon, are there any regular animals?", "Why didn't I pay more attention to Pokemon all those years ago when my little brothers were all over it?"
Sometimes I feel so behind. Which gives me serious anxiety. I walked in the door, put groceries away and contemplated these deep poke questions while I began frying bacon for BLT's. Then my husband said I should check out something called "steem" which was some sort of internetty thing that involved bitcoins and social networking."
"So you get paid to post content?" I asked.
"It's not really like that." he said. "Users are incentivized to generate content with Bitcoin" .... How is that not getting paid to post content? "It's important to get in on the ground floor now while this is still new" he said "it just came out like 2 months ago."
Two months ago? I'm even more behind than I thought I was.
We ate dinner while my Pokemon anxiety was replaced by Steemit anxiety. Now my problems are bigger than not being able to snag an unclaimed gym for my team. Now I have to understand and dominate a totally new platform. First things first, is my go-to-username still available? Thank God! Ok... So how does this work?
I spent the post-sandwich hour reading a handful of articles and playing around with the website on my phone and I now know enough to know what I still need to know.
What is the difference between my "blog" and a "post"?
How is Steemit organized? When I tried to search a topic it used google to search within Steemit. There must be some other way of creating topics or filing posts/blogs in a relevant category.
How is it social? Is there an equivalent of having "friends" or "followers"? If so, will I be embarrassed to let people I know read this post? ... Probably
How does my article get found and read?
How do I find the sparse niches that still need to be filled out with great content?
Why would someone upvote my post and how much "steem" will I get if they do?
If I buy "steem power" does that mean my posts are more likely to get read, and in turn more likely to generate more steam?
I'll know the answer to at least one of those questions once I publish this, my first post.