Terrific comment @sarahspeaks144, and you earned a follow from me. First let me say that I wish there were more folks like yourself out there focusing on reading content here and giving honest thoughtful comments. That being said I think if you can write this comment, you can write a post - in fact, this comment could easily be a post! You have already put more thought into this comment and put more words on screen than the average post has going for it.
To address your point - I am glad you have had positive experiences here and Steemit most definitely was founded with a spirit of generosity - I believe Steemit is at its core a gift economy and this is what makes it so appealing to me. I don't think I would back away from my comment though - there are plenty of people on Steemit who do not have this spirit of generosity, and I think that these people on other platforms are the trolls and source of mean spirited comments / attacks. Here on Steemit the reputation score and its potential impact on future post earnings serves as a deterrent for the worst sort of behavior these types exhibit on other platforms. The exact kind of person that a financial motivation to curb nasty behavior would work on is the same kind of person likely to engage in said nasty behavior.
You might be surprised how many people are on here precisely to make money - in fact, many of the "people" on here are sock accounts controlled by a master of puppets, spewing out spam posts and upvoting themselves all to milk money out of the blockchain. There is an awful lot of this - and I think it is a testament to the effectiveness of the reputation score system as a deterrent to nasty behavior that there are so many spammers/scammers and so few incidents of abusive behavior to other users. Those folks are clearly here - they just aren't acting as terribly here, and there is obviously a reason for that.
Cheers - Carl
carlgnash,
Thank you for your thoughtful reply to my thoughtful reply (and I don't know how to make that smiley-face). I'm using your complete profile name in this response because only seconds ago I discovered steemistry.com (you may already know about it). This web site contains a tool that tracks every mention of your profile. My thought process is still meandering its way towards a grasp of why or how that might be useful, but instinct tells me that mentions-tracking might be very useful indeed.
But back to your comment. Yes, I do think you're quite right about the spectrum of motives for using this platform. Some want to exchange ideas and some want to support a lifestyle.
It probably happens that kindred spirits gravitate and associate. In fact, I tried to reprimand someone's use of an upvoting bot, but I'm so new to Steemit that I wasn't able to find that particular video again.
I love your suggestion that a comment could become a post and I'm going to think about how to do that when I finally "introduce myself." There have been so many ominous warnings about the curtailing of free speech that even armchair observers and congenital introverts
(some people have been forced into introversion by psychopathic trolls) are being coaxed into the social media arena. I'll even raise my hand to that. Here on Steemit, I don't even know how voting works or how reputation scores are derived because I haven't read the user's guide. But I'll get there. Some of us treat life a little bit like walking near the edge of the waves on the beach. First you dip your toes, then the wave chases you, then the wave runs away and you run after it until the wave rushes back and drenches your chinos!
Please give me permission to steal thoughts from your comment (with proper credit) because I know that I'm going to say a little more about the relative weight of ideas and information over Steem $. And I've already learned so much from you. God bless.
Yes of course you have my permission and even my encouragement to "steal" anything I wrote. BTW if you are going to take the time to type out a Steemit users full username, go ahead and put the "@" symbol in front of it like so - @sarahspeaks144. Steemit automatically converts usernames typed like this to links to the account profile.
Wonderful beach analogy, to follow suit I tend to treat life like a frigid mountain lake that I plunge into cannonball style, naked and screaming, for maximum invigorating effect :)
Do me a favor - if (when!) you do get around to making a post, kindly drop me a link to your post in the comments here at my Upvote | Follow | Resteem Service post. You are clearly an intelligent, thoughtful and articulate person and I would hate to miss your post.
Much love - Carl
@carlgnash - I love it! Plunging into an icy lake just to remind yourself that you are fully cognizant, and that you have the power and energy to say to life, "Bring it." That image reminds me of a scene from an Ayn Rand novel, but which one? Was it "The Fountainhead?" Does Howard Roark plunge into an icy lake to avoid his thoughts about Dominique Francon? Now I'll have to re-read (both of) my Ayn Rand favorites. But don't worry about missing my "introduce yourself" post when I finally have the nerve. I only have 6 followers and I'll be sure to remind them. Much love to you too.