I respect the aim for purity, but avoiding outside influences sounds pretty close to 'avoiding media / the creations of others' entirely, sooooo... uh... good luck? Sounds tricky as hell, but if anyone can do it... :)
Suffice to say, any similarities I saw to Mr. Thompson are purely my own (likely biased) perceptions and are intended only as a compliment you in that HST was able to keep me riveted on the edge of my seat with his writings, and so are you.
😁
It is difficult but I do manage to shut it all off and walk away. But then what right? That's only temporary relief.
I took that as a compliment. A good one. One of these days I'll learn to simply say, "Thanks!" But for now I'll continue to be terrible at small talk.
That is the question, heheh. I guess we'll see! :)
And yeah, I've experienced some challenges just saying 'thanks' myself, I'm sure we'll both get it eventually, lol. Who wants small talk anyway, right? 😁
Speaking of small talk, just wanted you to know I think you've been doing some cool things around here.
lol, well I should probably just say 'thanks', given our recent convo, heheh... but I can't tell if this is a joke or not, because:
A. I respect you and your insights and appreciate any kind words or support coming from you. (Not small talk :D) and B. My posts around here likely wouldn't be called 'small' talk by anyone. (also not small talk)
Either way, thanks for continually brightening my experience here on Hive, bro. It's appreciated. 🙏 😁
It's cool how you simply showed up out of nowhere and made a splash. Many people who've shown up over the years will say that's impossible, on their way out, as they're throwing a bit of a fit. Of course, I've always disagreed and leaned more to believing they simply didn't know how.
Did you know 'they' used to dupe people into purchasing votes in order to reach the trending page with the push of a few buttons? Their selling point was often something along the lines of, "It's impossible to get noticed here."
So we had a trending page and majority of the reward pool going to those selling votes, and the people buying them, who would only earn maybe 5% of the post face value(and sometimes even lose money). And the content was atrocious simply because the 'business model' catered to folks lacking the ability to create or act in ways that draw others to them naturally.
You mentioned you browse trending. You would have had to scroll pretty far to find something worthwhile, back then. It was also more profitable to sell votes than it was to vote for free, so those refusing to buy votes, like myself, were slowly but surely running out of potential support, since consumers were being paid to look away, in an attention economy.
So you almost made it look just as easy as buying votes, but did it naturally. So that's cool.
Thanks man. It's funny, I've seen what you're describing happy many times over the years, on many platforms. People avoiding responsibility for their failures, people labeling a platform as 'unwinnable' or 'impossible.'
I believe @antisocialist hinted at this aspect of Hive's past but I didn't fully understand. So I'm glad you explained the (apparently brutal) condition of the trending page previously. I'm glad I wasn't around for that, and I'm impressed you 'stuck through it.'
So crazy.
Anyway, I imagine 'downvotes' played a role in the solution? Or Hive devs implemented some code in a hard fork? (Man, it feels like Hive could use an entire wiki dedicated to it.) I guess you being here for 4+ years kind of makes you a 'human wiki' for Hive, and I appreciate anytime you explain the nuances. I still think about one of your earliest comments to me regarding the value in onboarding of 'consumers.'
👌
I think that particular behavioral pattern is common in life, in general. In the workplace, it's management's fault they can't get that raise or promotion. On Hive stakeholders are management in a sense, and guess who gets the blame. Or, "If not for that damn police officer, I wouldn't have this speeding ticket," instead of if not for my speeding, I wouldn't have this speeding ticket. And we're most likely all guilty of it at some point, if not on the outside it's on the inside in brainland, but of course when it's published, it stands out more. They used to call it committing steemicide and the rage quit posts were steemicide letters. So on their final day, they figured out how to get attention, but went about it the wrong way.
'Trending' is supposed to mean content receiving high ratings organically. It was tough knowing in advance, no matter what you did, your work wouldn't be 'popular' by default. That's just superficial nonsense though. People were still interested in what I was doing regardless of ranking or post value. It's their fault I stuck through it. And the trending page wasn't a place you wanted to be, since nobody was looking there anymore. I mean, there was a dude who once purchased hundreds worth of votes just to say he'd be releasing a new post that day and everyone should stay tuned. Others were pretending they didn't buy votes and their content truly was 'popular' with the people. Often the comment sections were either quiet, full of advertisements that would come in automatically from the paid vote services used, or it was people arguing about the low quality and use of paid votes for crap like that. Yes, eventually downvotes were used, but they couldn't be used effectively until a hardfork change made them free.
And yes, consumers are important. I think if someone pulled up the data, of all the words I use, "consumers" is probably used way too much. Trying to get that message across is becoming a source of frustration for me. Almost want to put it down and walk away from it. My blog, the recent reblogged post about PeakD, there I am again yapping about consumers. LOL! Not a fun loop to be in.
Back then downvotes were controlled, more or less, by one fella.
What he flagged got flagged hard, what he protected got protected.
He has (probably) left now, and the breath of freedom is very refreshing.
Mentioning his name used to get you driven from the platform.
I predicted 3 to 5 years to get the greediest bad actors out, and here we are, no longer worth their time to reap us.
Now 'we' get to make what could've been.
I'm glad you @'d me, I'ma go read those posts now, critique incoming.