I feel like this is very similar to the rant that I went on in my 1k follower thank you post ...
Active curation among the people who are in the community and no more buying upvotes from voting bots is the only way for the little guys to survive and eventually thrive! I think you sum it up a bit differently, but to the same end here:
But, I also think/know/believe that in order for many people to get support in the future without it only being pay-to-play, it is going to require middle class and up thinkers who are willing to put their VP into small communities that don't have the finances to pay to play.
In @tcpolymath's comment, he discussed a similar belief that promoting and creating a middle class (helping GOOD minnows grow their accounts) is a positive step towards building a fruitful future community. At least that's what I got out of these comments:
If we really want a middle class we need to be lifting a bunch of people so they can quickly do the same. It's exponential growth even more than what comes from self-voting.
Active curation is the only way (in my opinion) to make this happen. If you go back 2 years on some posts, there are some major community influencers discussing the merits of bots for curation .. I still disagree that using bots is helpful to the community. Sure, you can follow another account that's actively curating content.. but then you're not really promoting content that you like .. you're just following the crowd. Does that make it wrong? Does that make it OK? Who knows..
Anyway.. enough about bots..
Active Curation of minnows by minnows.. Active Curation of minnows by dolphins, whales, everyone ... Active curation of everyone by everyone! That's how we BUILD a Community. Everyone is busy trying to figure out shortcuts to everything.. When will we finally realize, learn, and understand:
There are no shortcuts in life!
I agree that the active curation is the way to go but, currently it is not unfortunately as those who are actually willing are too few and too far between. There are too many needing support and not enough supporters. Perhaps a split system where accounts can grow independently and, if their content/engagement/powering up is good, they will be boosted even further by the active curators. Currently, too many of the buyers are producing crap and have no long-term view. This place would be different if the buyrers for the last 9 months actually cared enough about the community here to help build it too. that is a general statement as i know some buyers who are engaged and spreading into the community. Like @tcpolymath.
At the moment, I am painfully leaning toward a hybrid approach as the current path leads to 100% pay-t-play but, it is just so tempting few can resist.
I've been psychologically conditioned for this role my entire life, so I'm sure not a fair test. But I would love to hear @phoneinf tell the story of how he got converted from a pure investor mindset to a community-builder one. I feel like I played a minor part in it but was offstage for too much to really understand.
It sounds like you're letting the nay-sayers bring you down. Stay Strong!
I feel like this is the problem with society today .. We're all (myself included) caught up in a world where we don't want to push back against opposing forces too hard because we don't want to deal with the aftermath of it. Instead, we bend our own personal beliefs to give the less-informed and less-willing-to-think the ability to have their way through compromise on our part; without an equal amount of compromise from the other side.
I understand that the THEORY all along has been that we (Steemit) "need investors" along with the community in order to build a successful platform. I feel like this idea has been the crux of the problem on Steemit.
We never needed investors. The platform itself is built in a way such that the community can be self-supported and thrive! Investors only muddy the waters by incentivizing the tempted (read: opportunist / non-community-focused) to stray from the original purpose of Steemit.
The rewards pool is constantly paying participants on its own. Why do we need outside investment? The value of Steem / SBD comes from the free market. If people find Steem valuable, because they're using it, then the value of Steem will naturally increase due to the increased demand for it.
The intent of Steemit was to allow individuals to bootstrap themselves out of their current situation and grow into a better situation. Was the platform likely flawed to begin with? Did the rewards pool start off too big? Did the initial distribution create the incentivized situation that we have now where people find it more valuable to invest in bots than they do in the community?
I feel that it all comes down to how much those of us who are invested in the community side are willing to continue investing in the community. And I'm using the word "invested" as a personal investment, not a monetary one. Money ruins the world (which is what is keeping people down, and the reason why Steemit was started in the first place).
I'll say it again .. which you know it better than most (proven by your relentless posts and other support in the community) ..
There are no shortcuts in life!
and I'll add:
Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.