1 Monetization of content creation means we all want to be content creators, so much so that we forget about reading others content and connecting with each other. I can only find two solutions to this aside from a change in the layout (communities), which I am tired of waiting for and they work best together.
The first is a wider distribution of wealth so we don’t have to fight so hard to gain consistent payout and readership, a smaller number of readers could allow us to make at least a few dollars. If we think only those with millions of viewers deserve payout, how is that much different from youtube? The other answer is a change in the culture where we actively come together to change our behavior and support real engagement and quality with our upvotes and deny our support to anyone who doesn’t behave with he communities interests in mind. This will take a whole lot of work and it’s exactly what I’m focused on, even more than content creation which is why I started here.
2 There are to many ways to game the system and self-interest is blinding a lot of people to how they damage the ecosystem, especially users who gain the most from them. Bidbots, self voting, multiple accounts, higher curation based on higher paying posts rather than a fair community evaluation, auto-votes, insane amounts of delegations to certain projects, shitposting etc. Users with Steem power can’t agree on how to approach these issues because many are using their ideologies to justify their behavior rather than looking at how they are effecting the ecosystem realistically. Many of these methods of gaming were created to combat other methods of gaming. It’s so easy to point fingers but hard to look at our own behavior.
All the ways to game the system makes engagement less fun and turns our attention towards making profits rather than real contribution, because just like in mainstream society, this arbitrary concept of “adding value” is played with in order to justify our selfish behavior because we know that we deserve more (and we truly do deserve more, all of us).
So we end up just going through the motions.
I’m with you. Think I’ll give this a resteem.
I think a change in the culture or at least in the mindset of the general user base is a great idea. It is possible this is going to happen with communities, but once again I think it's going to come down to people wanting to be the one person that gets seen instead of being part of a pool of people where everyone has a strong voice and a good payout.
I also think you're definitely right about gaming the system making things harder. it's not as fun when you know for a fact that your post is not going to make it to trending because you're not using a bid bot. That kind of ruins the joy of it a little bit.