I'm a little triggered right now, so it is time for a rant.
I'm a mixture of sad and angry at the same time, so the above gif pretty well represents how I am feeling. I'm so far from a whale, but I see the few whales that engage with the community being abused because they aren't giving enough, and it is time to say something about it.
I know that growing an account on STEEM is really difficult. There are a lot of us out here, and only so much reward pool to go around. So we do what we can to survive. We build accounts through networking and making new friends who send upvotes our way. But for most of us, those friends have accounts as small as ours, so they add pennies to our account. So we have to look for where to find bigger votes.
Some of us buy votes. We take what we have managed to accumulate and send it to our favorite bidbot to get big upvotes and hopefully find our way into the vision of bigger accounts. Trying to take the next step up the mountain.
We all want to get to where the Whales are. And some people have figured out that forming relationships with Whales by interacting with them could lead to get their upvotes. Going and conversing with whales and letting them get to know you and maybe they drop you an upvote here and there is not a terrible idea. For a lot of people they do this and are thankful for what they get.
But then there are people who start to feel entitled to the support of their favored whale. The whale in question is no longer important as a person to these people. They are only an upvote, a way to increase the user's own visibility and rewards. When a person stops being a person and is just a means to getting more rewards, that is just not right.
I'm not talking about the people who beg for upvotes here. Honestly those people are just trolls and can pretty readily be ignored. I'm talking about the people who have built a relationship with the other user, created something that is beneficial to both sides, and then get pissed off when they "miss a vote", or when the whale takes back a delegation that was freely given to begin with.
It's the expectation that kills me. Getting mad at someone because they decide to use their upvote in support of something else rather than your most recent meme.
Let's get something straight right now. No one is entitled to votes. You have to earn it with every single post. With every line of text you write, with every line of your drawing, you must earn the votes you get. When you don't do enough to earn the vote, then you don't get the vote. It is that simple. Go buy a vote.
Look... Steem is tough. Not everyone will make it. Not everyone who sticks around is going to get the rewards they think they deserve. All I am asking is that when you are rewarded by a whale, orca, or dolphin, or even a bigger minnow, just be appreciative for what you get. Just because you shared five minutes on discord doesn't entitle you to be on someone's autovote. Just because you got a delegation doesn't mean it won't be gone tomorrow.
Learn to show gratitude and appreciation for every gift you are given. None of it has to be given to you, none is entitled and it could all disappear in a heartbeat. Be thankful and find a way to pay it forward instead of griping about how you didn't get what you "deserve".
If I can sum it all up with one final gif it would be this....
