Last night, I did something I haven"t for a while. I checked the Trending page of All posts. There was a fair share of familiar faces. Most of them were familiar to me because they are Hive-wide big names. One was familiar because I have been supporting the account longterm so even if I did not upvote their first triple-digit-payout post (I have already taken my foot of the gas pedal there), it made my day seeing the hardwork and talent combo made it once again (I am not calling the name out so that you could follow, I want you to go and look for the next hot prospect to experience the full ride yourself).
I also checked a post from someone I never noticed even though it was a wedding report with a bridal makeup focus. Not interested in the topic, just the backstage stuff (the backstage of star-making not the dressing table). I do not curate arts in general (let alone makeup) as I do not understand it enough. The non-technical part was a good read and the effortfulness of the post was pretty obvious.
Then I arrived at the comment section. Mixed feelings. The comments on the top read like the person leaving them failed to read (or misunderstood) the post and mistook the author for the bride. Fortunately, a handful of more carefully crafted comments followed. The author was the only person upvoting (all of them) so while I am not sure whether it was her mana recharging or time-based tiebreak for rounded scores, my guess is the bottom comments came early and generic, while the top ones could have been people joining the fun from the Trending page (with a possible hint of attention seeking). Now for a Trending post, I expected a couple more.
My native language has a saying about a poor boy coming out of barber shop. You can see he is tidied up. He even smells nice. Somehow, you can still tell he is not rich.
Do not get me wrong. The post was rich. The poor guy out of the barber shop is the platform that attempts to showcase its quality content spending 66 on a fancy piece in the shopwindow that has not been cleaned. Spending additional 0.66 on a basic home staging would vastly improve the message to casual passer-bys.
The author has joined Hive last month. The intro post was lovebombed (fully deserved). The common objection against big rewards on intro posts is it makes the recipients burn out real fast when they realise they get pennies on subsequent posts. This did not happen as the account is pretty much on autovote for OCD curation. The connection in the community exists, demonstrated by the regblogged posts that lead to fellow locals. They also seem to post well and they also seem to get a lot of attention from OCD. Is that a single curator going overboard? Is the neighbourhood on a hot streak? Can we somehow improve their integration to the Hive mainstream?
Someone really should. The account that gave the highest upvote on the author's introduction post has actually downvoted her previous post. I would not do that myself but I totally understand the apparent reason.