What Does it Mean?
I have been thinking a lot about value after spending time on Steemit and learning more about how you can earn and reward people for contributions. It starts to give you a feeling of (or lack there of if you have no stake in it) power. On Facebook you can easily like and comment all the posts you want. There is no feeling of giving a value to it or even taking it away. It is like a quick conversation.
Here there is a new depth. Here you are reluctant to make that post because what if you only get one cent. What if you poor your heart and soul into it and you come away with nothing?! The value is showing its head again. In ways that we never had to deal with on Twitter or Facebook. Sure, we did take pride in getting lots of like and retweets, but there was not a loss if you did not achieve it.
If I make a post on Facebook or Twitter and only get a handful of likes I don't feel like I missed out. I don't really feel anything positive or negative honestly. On Steemit however, if a post is made and goes days without getting much moment we internalize that to mean that we are failure. Now we may not think we are a HUGE failure but on some level we know that we should (or could) have gotten more and we didn't.
Maybe I just needed more pictures. Maybe I just needed to make a few more points or say a few more lines. In fact, you are blogging and writing longer posts simply because you want to justify the opportunity to get the reward. But then your voice is lost in the crowd of all the others attempting to do the same. Getting traction is hard.
How Does This Change Things?
So it has shifted. We compare Steemit to Facebook a lot but it is a different beast. No longer am I just sharing my day or my thoughts. Now I am trying to what entices you and your thoughts. The constant push is to create something that makes brings value for you. The member of the community. All the members of the community.
My value, whether right or wrong, has now been tied tightly to a dollar value I see on the post that I submit. And it isn't a fair evaluation of my value or the value of my post. If your post is not seen then there is no way for the community to make a solid judgement on it. Also there is a large crowd effect that happens here. If something does not have momentum then others are not going to quickly jump on and help move it. In fact, it would be interesting to see the amount of posts that are upvoted and not even read. Simply because the crowd is moving the post in an upward direction do additional member jump in at large numbers.
What Do We Do?
I think the option is to embrace it. It would be nice if this was an "everybody gets a trophy" type of system but honestly, that is already what we have in Facebook and Twitter. It is just the trophy has a value of 0. The simple fact of limiting the "trophy" and making it have a monetary value causes it to not be equal.
The game will continue to change and the more stake you have in it, the more hurt it can cause when the rules are moved. You begin to feel that you are owed part of it. Steemit definitely feels different than Facebook. It is interesting that we are doing the same thing here as we are there and since we get a taste of value in it that we feel like our voice has more say and rightly so. I guess this is the true value.
I like you thoughts here. Just like we the users have a real stake in Steemit, whereas on Facebook we do not, we could also be applying this principle to other parts of life, like our jobs and communities. If we don't have stakes in these pillars of society, then someone is making a buck from our efforts without our best interests in mind.
Very true. When you are living as a complete consumer then you forget how you do have ownership (whether they acknowledge it or not) because you are contributing and your contribution has value. We just need to start responding like that.